Former President Trump pumps his fist as he exits the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference after speaking at the conference on March 4, 2023, at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland.
The New York Times editorial board on Thursday called on Republicans to reject Trump, the party’s presumptive nominee, ahead of next week’s convention, saying he is “unfit” for the presidency.
“Mr. Trump has demonstrated a character unworthy of the responsibilities of the presidency and a utter lack of respect for the Constitution, the rule of law and the American people,” the Times said in an editorial.
“Mr. Trump is driven not by a compelling vision for the country’s future, but by a thirst for political power — using the tools of government to advance his own interests, satisfy his own impulses, and exact revenge on those he believes have wronged him,” the editorial continued. “He is, simply put, unfit to lead.”
The scathing rebuke to Trump came less than a week before the Republican Party is set to formally nominate him as its lead presidential candidate at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Biden’s status as the presumptive Democratic nominee has also been called into question, with several lawmakers publicly calling for him to resign while others privately express concern about Biden’s ability to defeat Trump in November.
The Times, which has also called on Biden to drop out of the race, said Democrats are “rightly engaged” in the debate about whether the president should lead the party and sharply criticized Republicans for not doing the same.
“It is a national tragedy that Republicans have not made a similar argument about the clear moral and temperamental unfitness of their standard-bearer, choosing instead to ignore their long-held values and band together to overlook what those who worked most closely with the former president said was his systematic dishonesty, corruption, cruelty and incompetence,” the editorial board wrote.
The Times described the Republican Party as “once a great party, but now it serves the interests of one man, a man more obviously unfit to run for the presidency than any man in the long history of the Republic, whose values, temperament, ideas and language are in direct conflict with much of what has made this country great.”
The commission listed five “essential qualities” that a president must possess: moral fitness, principled leadership, character, the presidential word, and the rule of law.
“We urge voters to clearly recognize and reject the dangers of a second term for Mr. Trump. The importance and importance of the presidency demands an individual with essential qualities and values that earn our trust, none of which Donald Trump meets,” the committee wrote, citing five qualities.
The committee called on Americans to reject Trump by voting.
“Republicans will have to make a choice next week. Soon all Americans will be able to make their choice. What will Trump do in a second term? He has told the American people who he is and what kind of leader he will be,” they wrote.
“We cannot trust someone who repeatedly fails basic tests with the most important job in the world,” the editorial continued.
In response to the editorial, a spokesman for Trump called the Times “a declining publication that is out of touch with what ordinary Americans believe.”
“If they took the time to report more fully on the disaster that is the Biden Administration, they would understand how dangerous their false reporting is to our democracy,” the spokesman added.