We implore you to vote for Kamala Harris for president, and to clearly and strongly encourage everyone in your orbit to do the same. We do this because the only viable alternative is a man who has repeatedly proven himself to be unfit to hold the nation’s highest office. It has been more than a decade since an editorial in the Journal has endorsed a candidate but Donald Trump’s criminality and the threat he poses to our democracy leave us no option.
Let’s be very clear here, as this goes beyond party affiliation: Donald Trump is a poison sullying everything he touches. He’s a demonstrably selfish, impulsive, cruel, lawless, misogynistic, racist, morally bankrupt compulsive liar who has built his political career through dehumanizing and vilifying people for his own personal gain. He’s shown this with remarkable consistency. But there is no need to take our word for it, as Trump’s record speaks for itself.
First, there’s the criminality.
Trump has been federally indicted on 44 charges of criminal conduct stemming from his handling of classified documents after leaving office and his efforts to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election. If you believe these charges were politically motivated — despite their being brought by the same justice department that’s prosecuted the son of a Democratic president and two Democratic members of Congress — remember they were approved by at least 24 grand jurors, everyday citizens who took an oath to make their decisions based on evidence and the law.
Then there are the state charges. In May, a New York jury — again, everyday citizens who took an oath to decide the case based on the facts and the law before arriving at a unanimous decision — convicted Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in order to conceal having paid a porn star to keep an alleged affair secret from voters in 2016. Then there’s the Georgia racketeering case, in which at least a dozen grand jurors agreed there was evidence to believe Trump committed conspiracy to defraud the United States, along with three other crimes.
There have, of course, also been civil cases: the 2022 fraud case in New York in which Trump was found guilty and ordered to pay $355 million and the defamation case in which a jury found Trump had sexually assaulted and defamed writer E. Jean Carroll, awarding her $83.3 million, most recently. But hundreds came before those. Most notable among them: the 1973 housing discrimination case alleging Trump’s properties habitually didn’t rent to Black people, which he settled; the 1991 case that led the New Jersey Casino Control Commission to fine Trump’s property $200,000 for moving Black employees off the floor to accommodate the whims of a racist customer; the 2009 suit Trump settled after being accused of pocketing investors’ down payments in Mexican condos that were never built; the 2013 case in which Trump University was found to have defrauded thousands of students and Trump was ordered to pay $25 million in restitution.
But if you don’t believe the scores of jurors, career prosecutors, judges and oversight commissions in all those cases, consider what those who worked for Trump during his presidency have said.
Former Homeland Security and Chief of Staff John Kelly said Trump “has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution and the rule of law.” Former Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis said, “He is more dangerous than anyone could ever imagine.” Former Attorney General Bill Barr said, “He is a consummate narcissist. … He will always put his own interests, and gratifying his own ego, ahead of everything else, including the country’s interest.” Former National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster said Trump has “repeatedly compromised our principles in pursuit of partisan advantage and personal gain.” Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said, “He puts himself before country.” John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor and a stalwart of Republican administrations for decades, took stock of the now dozens of former Trump administration officials who have opposed his re-election and told USA Today: “The stunning thing about the number of senior Trump administration officials who have campaigned against him, I think, proves that it really is Trump’s flawed character, lack of knowledge, lack of philosophy, lack of fitness that has them concerned.”
Again, these are just a small handful of people who served in Trump’s administration — people he hand-picked and worked with — who now see him as unfit for office. There’s also the widely circulated letter from 111 former Republican officials, including defense secretaries, CIA directors and members of Congress, calling Trump “unfit” and saying he “promoted daily chaos in government, praised our enemies and undermined our allies, politicized the military and disparaged our veterans, prioritized his personal interest above American interests and betrayed our values, democracy and this country’s founding documents.”
There are, of course, many very good policy reasons to oppose Trump’s candidacy but they’re all secondary. After all, if Trump thought doing so would put him back in power, we have little doubt he’d pledge to tear down the border wall, reinstate the protections of Roe and reconfigure the Supreme Court.
Trump’s law breaking, whether shielded by wealth or under color of the nation’s highest authority, and pursuit of personal gain at the expense of the people of this country and their security, have shown him to be unfit in every way. We must put our country first because Trump has proven he will not.
Vote Harris.
This article appears in Ballot Measure Soup – A look at all those local revenue proposals coming before voters.