Donald Trump has a tendency to lash out, berate, and completely condemn anyone and anything that dares to question him — and the New York Times is no exception. He’s certainly not ashamed of the fact that he loathes the publication and makes it clear on Twitter every chance he gets.
Thankfully the Times has always made like a duck and let it roll right off their back. They never have allowed Trump and his tantrums to force them to back down and they have no intentions of doing so moving forward either. That’s why, Twitter tantrum be damned, NYT reporter David Leonhardt marched forward with a blistering column outlining a powerful and indisputable case for yanking Trump out of his position in the White House by his kicking feet — without even using impeachment, which “would probably rally the president’s supporters.”
Leonhardt instead demanded that we put Trump’s allies that are gunning for reelection “in a very difficult spot” by holding a series of public “sober-minded hearings to highlight Trump’s misconduct.”
Leonhardt stated:
The unrelenting chaos that Trump creates can sometimes obscure the big picture. But the big picture is simple: The United States has never had a president as demonstrably unfit for the office as Trump. And it’s becoming clear that 2019 is likely to be dominated by a single question: What are we going to do about it?
The easy answer is to wait—to allow the various investigations of Trump to run their course and ask voters to deliver a verdict in 2020. That answer has one great advantage. It would avoid the national trauma of overturning an election result. Ultimately, however, waiting is too dangerous. The cost of removing a president from office is smaller than the cost of allowing this president to remain.
He has already shown, repeatedly, that he will hurt the country in order to help himself. He will damage American interests around the world and damage vital parts of our constitutional system at home. The risks that he will cause much more harm are growing…
The biggest risk may be that an external emergency—a war, a terrorist attack, a financial crisis, an immense natural disaster—will arise. By then, it will be too late to pretend that he is anything other than manifestly unfit to lead.
For the country’s sake, there is only one acceptable outcome, just as there was after Americans realized in 1974 that a criminal was occupying the Oval Office. The president must go.”
The NYT reporter’s accusation of “misconduct” refers to Trump’s multiple, outrageous acts of misconduct, his terrifying and threatening ideology, his potential collusion with the Russian government, his refusal to meet basic job requirements that often leave “many empty hours on his schedule” and his overall “lazy approach to the job.”
Leonhardt wraps up his searing column by calling on Republicans to just wake up and f*cking listen, do the right thing by the American people:
Finally, there is the hope—naïve though it may seem—that some Republicans will choose to act on principle. There now exists a small club of former Trump administration officials who were widely respected before joining the administration and whom Trump has sullied, to greater or lesser degrees. It includes Rex Tillerson, Gary Cohn, H.R. McMaster, and Jim Mattis. Imagine if one of them gave a television interview and told the truth about Trump. Doing so would be a service to their country at a time of national need. It would be an illustration of duty.
Throughout his career, Trump has worked hard to invent his own reality, and largely succeeded. It has made him very rich and, against all odds, elected him president. But whatever happens in 2019, his false version of reality will not survive history, just as Nixon’s did not. Which side of that history do today’s Republicans want to be on?”
Wake up GOP. This is on you.
Featured image via DC Tribune gallery
