When deliberating over a presidential endorsement, the Daily News Editorial Board strives to identify the person who offers the greatest promise to brighten the futures of Americans and to safeguard the national security.
Never have we questioned a candidate’s fitness to serve.
Then came Donald Trump — liar, thief, bully, hypocrite, sexual victimizer and unhinged, self-adoring demagogue.
The 16-month campaign since Trump vaingloriously entered the race has horrifyingly revealed that the Big Lie brazenly told — built on smaller falsehoods and spread by social media and a lust for TV ratings — can bring the United States to the brink of electing an aspiring strongman with no moral bearing or self-control.
But, now, with his defeat all but certain, Trump is conjuring for his followers demons that conspire to destroy them and the nation.
Chillingly, he refused in Wednesday night’s debate to commit to honoring the results of the November election. Doing so, he questioned the fundamental soundness of America’s democracy.
Trump’s reckless willingness to damage trust in the electoral process — in order to save face and hold leadership of the paranoid wing of U.S. politics — is the most pressing reason why voters must defeat him in a landslide.
To take full stock of Trump must be to understand the urgency of barring him from the White House, as well as to reckon with how an authoritarian fabulist has gotten so close to leading the globe’s beacon of democracy.
History will mark the presidential contest of 2016 for demagoguery that distorted America’s electoral process from a competition of ideas into, on the one hand, a reach for power based on a cultish thirst for vengeance, and, on the other, a bipartisan drive to save the American presidency itself.
Herewith, we fervently pray, is the political obituary of Donald Trump and all that he stands for.
Donald Trump launched his product in ostentatious spectacle on June 16, 2015, with a full-blown demonstration of demagoguery — defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as the “use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power.”
Connecting with millions who had suffered the loss of jobs and homes in the Great Recession, as well as the loss of opportunities in the shrinkage of industries and the stagnation of wages in the country’s continuing struggle to recover, Trump roared that America had gone to hell and beyond.
A sampling from his opening remarks:
“Our country is in serious trouble. We don’t have victories anymore. We used to have victories, but we don’t have them.”
“The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems.”
“Even our nuclear arsenal doesn’t work.”
“We got nothing but problems.”
And, finally: “Sadly, the American Dream is dead.”
Next, he railed at villainous enemies — foreigners and evil corporate titans — who were to blame.
Japan: “When did we beat Japan at anything? They send their cars over by the millions, and what do we do? When was the last time you saw a Chevrolet in Tokyo? It doesn’t exist, folks. They beat us all the time.”
Mexico: “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
China: “They are ripping us. We are rebuilding China. We’re rebuilding many countries. China, you go there now, roads, bridges, schools, you never saw anything like it.”
Next, America’s political leaders have betrayed all but the rich: “We have people that are morally corrupt. We have people that are selling this country down the drain.”
Finally, the superlative wonders of a President Trump would bend the world to his will in order to “Make America Great Again.”
He would not only build a wall along the entire Mexican border to prevent the hordes from stealing American jobs, he would force Mexico to pay for it.
If the Ford car company planned to move a plant to Mexico, Trump would force a begging CEO to reverse course.
“They have no choice. They have no choice,” Trump promised, his vows reaching a crescendo with the words: “I will be the greatest jobs President that God ever created. I tell you that.”
Rage at nightmares that only he and his audiences saw, fury at enemies that only he and his audiences were willing to name and faith that Trump was the savior played out in rally after rally.
“I’m going to make our country rich again,” he declared.
“We’re going to win so much. You’re going to get tired of winning. You’re going to say, ‘Please, Mr. President, I have a headache. Please, don’t win so much,’” he vowed.
Over time, Trump’s pledges grew ever more grandiose.
“I alone can fix it,” he said.
“I will give you everything,” he told supporters for whom the truth was either irrelevant or a conspiracy of lies.
2. TRUMP THE FRAUDSTER [...]
3. TRUMP THE HEAD CASE[...]
Even more notoriously, Trump ridiculed the parents of Muslim U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan — who was killed in Iraq — after they criticized his call for banning Muslim immigrants.
He lashed out at Navy veteran John McCain, revered for enduring, with high honor, five brutal years as a Vietnam War captive.
“He’s not a war hero,” Trump declared of McCain, before modifying his venom to say: “He’s a war hero ’cause he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, OK?”
Trump’s need for unqualified approval — and the high he gets from a whooping throng — are so powerful that he has chased after cheers by musing about violence against peaceful protesters.
“I’d like to punch him in the face,” Trump said of one. About another, he said, “I’ll beat the crap out of you,” adding, “Part of the problem ... is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore.”
4. TRUMP THE FAKE PHILANTHROPIST [...]
A month after the 9/11 terror attacks, while appearing on Howard Stern’s radio program, Trump pledged to donate $10,000 to the Twin Towers Fund.
Between 2010 and 2015 alone, he claimed to have given away more than $100 million.
“I give to hundreds of charities and people in need of help,” Trump told The Associated Press in a 2015 email.
Almost all of this is false. [...]
At the same time, Trump has exploited the foundation for self-dealing.
In 2014, he drew on it to pay $10,000 for a painted portrait of you-know-who at a charity auction at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort and residence.
The foundation also spent $20,000 for Melania Trump to purchase a 6-foot Donald portrait; $12,000 to buy a Tim Tebow helmet at a charity auction; and $258,000 to settle legal disputes and unpaid fines involving Trump’s businesses.
In 2013, the Trump Foundation contributed $25,000 to an organization supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, after Bondi announced she was considering whether to join New York Attorney General Schneiderman’s investigation of fraud at Trump University.
It would be charitable to call Donald Trump a philanthropist.
5. TRUMP THE LIAR [...]
The Republican Party standard-bearer has proven to be the most extraordinary, if not pathological, liar ever to seek the presidency.
Small, large and in-between, Trump’s standard-issue falsehoods are deliberate and purposeful. He spouts them with bravado even after his facts have been proven wrong. And he has done so for decades.
Writing in Politico this year, former New York Post Page Six editor Susan Mulcahy recalled covering the up-and-coming real estate mogul in the 1980s.
“Trump had a different way of doing things. He wanted attention, but he could not control his pathological lying,” Mulcahy wrote.
“He lied about everything, with gusto,” she added.
In a sworn deposition given in the bankruptcy case for Trump Plaza in 1993, Trump’s own lawyer, Patrick McGahn, testified that attorneys always visited the client in pairs. Why?
“We tried to do it with Donald always if we could, because Donald says certain things and then has a lack of memory.”
McGahn added: “He’s an expert at interpreting things. Let’s put it that way.”
The former journalist who actually wrote Trump’s pride-and- joy biography, “The Art of the Deal,” has an even more damning assessment of the would-be President. Asked what he would title the book today, Tony Schwartz told The New Yorker magazine: “The Sociopath.”
During the campaign, Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact has rated fully 71% of Trump’s statements as mostly false, false, or pants-on-fire false. The Washington Post Fact Checker has given 65% of the Trump statements it reviewed four Pinocchios, its worst rating for truthfulness. [...]
Never was Trump, the steadfast liar, on more vivid display than when he claimed to have seen thousands of Muslims celebrating the toppling of the World Trade Center on 9/11.
No one has ever found the television footage.
6. TRUMP THE FLIP-FLOPPER
Equally damaging to Trump’s claim to authenticity has been his epic, cynical shifts on almost every significant issue. [...]
Does Trump want to raise the federal minimum wage?
Last year, Trump said he was “sorry to say it, but we have to leave (the wage) where it is.”
In May, he said he was “looking” at a possible increase in the federal minimum, adding, “I’m open to doing something with it because I don’t like that.”
What is Trump’s perspective on abortion?
Although once “very pro-choice,” he told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews in March:
“You have to ban” abortion, adding that “there has to be some form of punishment” of women if they were to terminate pregnancies after the enactment of such a ban.
An hour later, the Trump campaign said the issue “should be put back into the states.”
An hour after that, the campaign said “the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman. The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb.”
The following day, Trump told an interviewer, “At this moment, the laws are set. And I think we have to leave it that way,” meaning he would not pursue an abortion ban. [...]
Researchers at NBC News have catalogued Trump’s positions on major issues since the start of the campaign.
They found, as of early October: 18 different positions on immigration reform; 15 different positions on banning Muslims; nine different positions on how to defeat ISIS; eight different positions on raising the minimum wage; seven different tax plans, and eight different strategies for dealing with the national debt.
7. TRUMP THE IGNORAMUS
Add genius to the marketing of Trump the Product. He boasted during the campaign that he has an IQ that is “very high” and that, with “one of the highest,” he would finally put high-caliber brainpower in the Oval Office.
Yet his statements have revealed that Trump lacks even rudimentary knowledge of American government and world affairs. Worse, Trump — who has asserted that he knows “more about ISIS than the generals do” and similar boasts — doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.[...]
In March, The New York Times threw Trump this basic test of foreign-policy fluency: “In terms of Israel, and in terms of the peace process, do you think it should result in a two-state solution, or in a single state?”
Responded a clearly clueless Trump:
“Well, I think a lot of people are saying it’s going to result in a two-state solution. What I would love to do is to, a lot of people are saying that. I’m not saying anything.”
He returned after a break with a prepped response: “Basically I support a two-state solution on Israel.”
Finally, Trump expressed utter obliviousness to President Vladimir Putin’s world-defying annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea.
Putin is “not going into Ukraine,” the candidate predicted well after Putin had done just that.
8. TRUMP THE CONSPIRACY THEORIST
As American voters began to see through his sales job, Trump latched onto conspiracy theories to gin up hysteria and distract from his defects.
His latest paranoiac ramblings — that the election will be “rigged” — have taken a presidential campaign deep into the fever swamps at the fringes of American life.
He claimed that “that Google search engine was suppressing the bad news about Hillary Clinton,” and supported the debunked theory that vaccines cause autism.
After Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died in February at the age of 79, Trump intimated that the famed conservative jurist had been the victim of foul play.
“They say they found a pillow on his face, which is a pretty unusual place to find a pillow,” he told radio host Michael Savage.[...]
9. TRUMP THE TAX EVADER [...]
Finally, summary sheets of Trump’s 1995 state tax returns authenticated by the New York Times revealed that Trump reported an unfathomable $916 million loss in a single year — a claim that would have enabled him to avoid taxes on massive amounts of income for 18 years into the future.
In the debates with Clinton, Trump admitted that in some years he had paid zero income taxes, declaring, “That makes me smart.”
Has Trump written off his private jet and expensive suits, forcing taxpayers to subsidize his lavish lifestyle?
To whom does Trump owe money? Other documentation shows that Trump carries at least five loans, each over $50 million — one of which is held by a German bank. Does Trump owe other foreign financial institutions?
How much does Trump give to charity, and to whom? Trump’s tax plan would limit charitable deductions.
How do the taxes Trump has paid and the deductions and credits he has claimed match up with the tax plan Trump has offered the country?
Would his reform agenda pad his wealth? It appears to put him in line for a bonanza, while preserving the riches he would presumably pass on to his children.
By keeping his tax returns secret, Trump is asking voters to trust him. Request denied.
10. TRUMP THE DIVIDER [...]
If this was the only evidence of calculated racial divisiveness in Trump’s campaign, it would be one thing. It is not.
Last year — in one of the many tweets by racial supremacists that he has promoted to 12 million followers of his Twitter account — Trump disseminated the falsehood that blacks kill 81% of white homicide victims. (The actual number is 15%.)
In February, asked on national television whether he would reject the support of former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, Trump said “I just don’t know anything about him.”
He later blamed an earpiece — and said that he disavowed Duke. But the message, the wink and nod, had been sent.
More chilling were images of African-American protesters getting pummeled at Trump rallies, with the candidate himself inciting violence.
With black support as low as 1% in some polls and facing rejection by moderate white suburbanites, Trump this summer began what was billed as an attempt to reach out to black voters — but he did so with racial stereotypes. [...]
As journalist Yair Rosenberg wrote for Tablet magazine, voting for Trump would represent “the mainstreaming of anti-Jewish and anti-minority bigotry into the American government and the country’s political discourse.”
11. TRUMP THE AUTHORITARIAN [...]
Although Russian President Vladimir Putin has squashed dissent and trampled international law with military power, Trump compared Putin favorably with Obama, saying: “I think in terms of leadership, he’s getting an A and our President is not doing so well.”
The Republican presidential nominee outright invited Russian hackers to conduct espionage in the U.S. by penetrating Hillary Clinton’s email server in hope of recovering deleted emails.
And, despite being explicitly told otherwise by the experts, Trump expressed doubt about U.S. intelligence findings that Russia had hacked into Democratic National Committee computers.
It goes well beyond Putin. Speaking about Kim Jong Un, the ultra-absolutist dictator of North Korea who is starving his own people, Trump said:
“If you look at North Korea, this guy, I mean, he’s like a maniac, OK? And you’ve got to give him credit. He goes in, he takes over, and he’s the boss. It’s incredible. He wiped out the uncle. He wiped out this one, that one.”
In July, while musing about longtime Iraqi boss Saddam Hussein, Trump waxed longingly about dictatorial powers:
“He was a bad guy, really bad guy. But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good. They didn’t read them the rights — they didn’t talk, they were a terrorist, it was over.”
Trump has a history of thinking this way. In a 1990 Playboy interview, Trump expressed admiration for the Chinese Communist Party’s murderous crackdown on the Tiananmen Square student protest.
“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength.”
In perhaps his most frightening show of authoritarian tendencies, Trump has signaled that First Amendment guarantees extend only to speech of his pleasure.
He has revoked campaign press credentials of news organizations that fail to offer him sufficient or consistent praise, and he responded to coverage he perceived as negative — the likes of which Presidents face all the time — with threats of lawsuits and by saying:
“I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”
12. TRUMP THE SECURITY RISK [...]
At the height of his power as a candidate salesman, Trump told the crowd assembled at the Republican National Convention: “The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon, and I mean very soon, will come to an end.”
He has complemented that assertion with the pledge that he will “knock the hell out of” ISIS, and will build a military so strong, “nobody’s going to mess with us anymore.”
Scrutiny of his plans, and Trump’s own words, have given the lie to his cavalier promises.
Some presidential candidates spend decades readying for terrible responsibilities, culminating in having to decide when to send American troops into harm’s way — or even to order a nuclear strike.
Not so Trump, who declared, “I know more about ISIS than the generals do,” and pronounced that the nation’s top brass has been “reduced to rubble” and is “embarrassing our country.”
Even so, Trump has often promised to follow the advice of his generals — after chillingly vowing that he would force military commanders to illegally torture and kill terrorists’ families.
“They won’t refuse,” Trump pronounced. “They’re not gonna refuse me. Believe me.” [...]
Global security rests on interlocking alliances, the most important of which is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Since the end of World War II, NATO allies have stood with each other, on the core notion that an attack on one is an attack on all; the principle was invoked in the wake of 9/11, when allies rushed to America’s side in the war in Afghanistan.
Trump sees NATO as just another contract to be broken. Asked whether he would provide military aid to NATO members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania if Russia encroached on them, Trump suggested the U.S. would honor treaty obligations only if an invaded country was appropriately paying into NATO’s budget.
It is little wonder why 50 Republican national security officials wrote an unprecedented joint letter saying that Trump “would be the most reckless President in American history.”
13. TRUMP THE MISOGYNIST [...]
14. TRUMP THE ENEMY OF DEMOCRACY [...]
“Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors,” he said.
And no one but Trump could tell the American people what’s really going on because the country’s “corporate media” is engaged not only in a conspiracy of silence but in a covert war to elect Clinton.”
Now, suggesting that Clinton uses drugs to enhance her debate performance, insisting she should be jailed, screaming that the evil forces are rigging the election against him, Trump would rather burn it all down than admit he has miserably failed — and is flailing even in some historically safe Republican states.
In Wednesday night’s debate, he refused to condemn the Russian hacks that have compromised the email of Clinton’s campaign manager, the worst foreign interference in an American election the nation has ever witnessed. Trump wouldn’t even accept the consensus judgment of the U.S. intelligence community that Moscow was responsible.
About whether or not he’ll accept the will of the voters expressed at the polls, Trump told the nation, “I’ll keep you in suspense” — the most direct challenge to the orderly transfer of power modern America has ever seen.
Spitting paranoia, dripping with sore-loser petulance, Trump has stoked the fury of the mob in some of his supporters.
A Milwaukee sheriff urged insurrection with the words, “Pitchforks and torches time.”
In North Carolina, Trump ralliers seriously beat a protester.
In Kansas, the FBI busted a militia called the Crusaders for allegedly plotting mass-casualty attacks on Muslims, with one of the accused plotters writing on Facebook, “I personally back Donald Trump.”
In Arizona, the Republic newspaper and its staff were bombarded with death threats after endorsing Clinton.
Donald Trump is ending his campaign in an ever more inflammatory and destructive assault on American democracy. The end of his presidential dreams must come under an avalanche of anti-Trump votes on Nov. 8.
