The USA Today is the latest American newspaper that has concluded that Republican candidate Donald Trump is not fit to become the country’s President. Earlier, several other major publications, including The New York Times , Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, have come out against Mr. Trump.
“By all means vote, just not for Donald Trump,” USA Today told its readers, taking sides in a presidential campaign for the first time in 34 years. The newspaper’s editorial board was unanimous that the Republican candidate is unfit to be President but it did not endorse Democrat Hillary Clinton. “Whatever you do… resist the siren song of a dangerous demagogue,” the paper wrote.
Besides the big papers, numerous smaller publications, some of them ardent conservatives for more than a century, have declared their opposition to Mr. Trump. The Arizona Republic, The Dallas Morning News and The Cincinnati Enquirer are among them.
‘Unique danger’Not all the papers that are opposed to Mr. Trump have endorsed Ms. Clinton. While NYT and LA Times have endorsed Ms. Clinton, Washington Post has not. Mr. Trump has been described as “a unique and present danger”, “uniquely unqualified to serve as President, in experience and temperament”, “the worst nominee put forward by a major party in modern American history”, and “a catastrophe”, by various newspapers.
“He is erratic. He is ill-equipped to be commander in chief. He traffics in prejudice. His business career is checkered. He isn’t leveling with the American people. He speaks recklessly. He has coarsened the national dialogue. He’s a serial liar,” The USA Today said.
While the conventional media has taken a pointedly anti-Trump position, the Republican has accounted for that too in his campaign strategy. He constantly derides media platforms and individual journalists, but never misses the opportunity to give interviews to them.
Recently, he kept all the TV stations on tenterhooks, promising an “important announcement on Obama’s birth” and tricked them all into live covering his new hotel in Washington. “He has gamed us again,” an exasperated CNN anchor said on TV. He has given numerous interviews also to the papers that constantly question him, but his forte is social media.
On twitter he has 11.9 million followers, while Ms. Clinton has 9.23 million; and on Facebook he has 10 million likes against Ms. Clinton’s 5.2 million. On You Tube, Ms. Clinton is ahead with 16 million views and 64,000 subscribers, while Mr. Trump has 8 million views and 45,000 subscribers.
