USA Today: ‘Uniquely Awful’ Trump ‘Can Always Find Room For A New Low’

In this Dec. 12, 2017, photo, President Donald Trump speaks before signing the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington. An FBI agent removed fro... In this Dec. 12, 2017, photo, President Donald Trump speaks before signing the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington. An FBI agent removed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team over politically charged text messages at one point referred to Trump, then the Republican presidential candidate, as an “idiot.” The Associated Press reviewed dozens of text messages between Peter Strzok, an FBI counterintelligence agent, and Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer who was detailed to Mueller’s team earlier this year. The Justice Department turned the messages over to Congress on Dec. 12. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) MORE LESS
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

The USA Today editorial board on Tuesday pilloried President Donald Trump for his sexually suggestive attack against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY).

With his latest tweet, clearly implying that a United States senator would trade sexual favors for campaign cash, President Trump has shown he is not fit for office,” the editorial read. “Rock bottom is no impediment for a president who can always find room for a new low.”

Trump had tweeted that Gillibrand — who is calling for him to resign over numerous allegations of sexual misconduct and assault — “would do anything” for political donations, including “begging,” which he wrote in quotation marks. “USED!” he exclaimed of New York’s junior senator.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday that Trump’s comment wasn’t sexist, and that it was meant to call attention to the administration’s commitment to ethics, a claim which doesn’t hold much water given the administration’s record on the matter.

A president who would all but call Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand a whore is not fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library or to shine the shoes of George W. Bush,” USA Today’s editorial board wrote.

Presidents Bush and Obama each had their failures, the editorial asserted, but Trump is “uniquely awful.”

“His sickening behavior is corrosive to the enterprise of a shared governance based on common values and the consent of the governed.”

The editorial outlined Trump’s frequent tactic, during the 2016 presidential campaign, of asserting that the women accusing him of sexual assault weren’t attractive enough to be his victims, and listed a series of points which underlined, it said, the President’s “utter lack of morality, ethics and simple humanity”: supporting Roy Moore; habitually lying; stirring division along racial, ethnic and religious lines; and cozying up to white supremacists, to name a few of the paper’s examples.

“The nation doesn’t seek nor expect perfect presidents, and some have certainly been deeply flawed,” the editorial concluded. “But a president who shows such disrespect for the truth, for ethics, for the basic duties of the job and for decency toward others fails at the very essence of what has always made America great.”

Latest Livewire
140
Show Comments

Notable Replies

  1. Avatar for reggid reggid says:

    “The nation doesn’t seek nor expect perfect presidents, and some have certainly been deeply flawed . . . But a president who shows such disrespect for the truth, for ethics, for the basic duties of the job and for decency toward others fails at the very essence of what has always made America great.”

    “But Hillary’s emails!,” the editorial continued.

    A day late and $2/issue short.

  2. “A president who would all but call Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand a whore is not fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library…”

    [Enthusiastically offered without comment.]

  3. And yet, you had people in the Sanders camp who insisted that there was no qualitative difference between Trump and Clinton. I don’t expect the GOP to know any better, but I do expect more of our side.

  4. Avatar for ajoguy ajoguy says:

    “Uniquely” seems almost to be a compliment. Has to be a better word to describe his awfulness.

  5. “A president who would all but call Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand a whore is not fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library or to shine the shoes of George W. Bush,” USA Today’s editorial board wrote.

    A bit harsh.
    I’m sure with a couple years of training he could learn to clean toilets or shine shoes.

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

134 more replies

Participants

Avatar for pluckyinky Avatar for ajoguy Avatar for patterman Avatar for george_spiggott Avatar for squirreltown Avatar for carlosfiance Avatar for sniffit Avatar for chelsea530 Avatar for sparrowhawk Avatar for maxaroo Avatar for ronbyers Avatar for darrtown Avatar for tena Avatar for georgeh Avatar for spencersmom Avatar for demyankee Avatar for jacksonhts Avatar for michaelryerson Avatar for dannydorko Avatar for cub_calloway Avatar for pike_bishop Avatar for krux Avatar for gromilini Avatar for mm4406

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: