As President Trump prepared to announce the official start of his re-election campaign Tuesday night in Orlando FL, that city’s leading newspaper, the Sentinel, declared it will not endorse him.
“After 2½ years we’ve seen enough,” wrote the paper’s editorial board.
“Enough of the chaos, the division, the schoolyard insults, the self-aggrandizement, the corruption, and especially the lies … told out of ignorance, laziness, recklessness, expediency or opportunity.”
The editorial cited the Washington Post’s ongoing tally of Trump’s “more than 10,000” lies and deceptions since taking office.
“Trump’s capacity for lying isn’t the surprise here, though the frequency is,” the editorial says.
“It’s the tolerance so many Americans have for it.”
The Sentinel says Trump’s “successful assault on truth is the great casualty of this presidency, followed closely by his war on decency.”
Even the strong economy and the stock market are not enough, the editorial says, noting that while the S&P 500 was up “about 21%” from Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 to the end of May this year, it was up more than twice as much — 56% — during the same period under President Obama.
The editorial writers emphasized that their decision against backing Trump does not mean they will endorse “whomever the Democrats choose,” noting that the paper “has a history of … favoring Republicans.” They point out that the Sentinel backed Mitt Romney over Obama in 2012.
“The nation must endure another 1½ years of Trump. But it needn’t suffer another four beyond that,” the editorial concludes.
“We can do better. We have to do better.”
Meanwhile, Trump supporters began lining up long before dawn on Tuesday, intent on becoming among the first of as many as 20,000 people jammed inside the Amway Center in downtown Orlando when what’s expected to be a raucous rally begins. More are expected to gather outside to watch on TV screens.
It’s all unfolding after a weekend that saw the Trump campaign fire three of its pollsters after a leak of internal polling data showing Trump “far behind former vice president Joe Biden,” the Post reported.
The New York Times says fewer than 40% of voters polled in “ruby red Texas” will “definitely” cast their ballots for Trump. And the internal campaign numbers, the Times says, “may be even worse, putting him behind Mr. Biden by double digits in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania” the three Rust Belt states credited with putting Trump over the top in 2016.
