Trump doesn't merit return to Oval Office

Americans have good reasons wide and deep to keep Donald Trump from returning to the White House. His well-known erratic messaging, his lack of the essential belief that the rule of law applies to him, his utter disdain for the independence of our courts, and his defamatory and divisive style show he cannot rise to meet the serious challenges ahead for the United States. 

He was rejected by voters by a substantial margin in 2020, and now brandishes retribution as a weapon to intimidate detractors and critics. Even if his rhetorical threats prove hollow as usual, they feed the untenable suggestion that he's the "strong man" Americans need to rescue us from the "enemy from within."

Voters who believe he would improve the economy should consider what happened this month when the Wall Street Journal surveyed 50 professional economists on policy measures unveiled by Trump and his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Sixty-eight percent of these experts said prices for goods would rise faster under Trump whose proposed changes would likely aggravate not just inflation but deficits and interest rates.

Even if the severe tariffs pitched by Trump eventually spur more domestic manufacturing in some areas, U.S. consumers and producers will pay the freight. Trump stubbornly misstates how tariffs work and seems to be in denial about economic gains made during the Biden-Harris administration.

Nor is it reassuring that Trump is running against his own record on taxes. To punish New York in his previous term, he signed a bill capping state and local deductions on federal income taxes, known as SALT, which increased taxes for many Long Islanders. Now he’s promising to negotiate with Congress to fix his SALT cap. That's not credible.

Even today, Trump seems unwilling to grapple with climate issues. He carried out cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency in his term, and seems bent on pandering to businesses trying to duck federal goals on carbon emissions. He tells fake stories about wind turbines.

Consider, too, the chaotic migrant influx, a subject of justified concern. Trump's policies reduced border crossings, but migration expanded under Biden. Trump, however, can’t be considered serious when he promises to rectify that with something he cannot deliver — an unprecedented deportation of millions of people, the largest such action in American history. The dollar cost of tossing out an estimated 11 million people who are undocumented would be stratospheric. By one recent estimate, deporting only 1 million people would cost taxpayers $20 billion. The logistics would be daunting. Economic disruption in various communities, and legal and constitutional hurdles, make his simplistic fix even less doable than his old mirage of a Mexican-financed "beautiful wall" across our southern border.

DEFAMATION AND DIVISIVENESS

Trump's continued slur that legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating their neighbors’ pets is disgraceful. After all these years, he still reaches reflexively for false accusations and sadly smears entire ethnic groups. Not only doesn’t he apologize, he doesn’t explain. Nor does his running mate, two-year Sen. JD Vance, who could succeed him.

More disturbing is the frightening effort to destabilize the nation in 2021 for which Trump and core followers remain under federal indictment. To this day, Trump and Vance fail to plainly acknowledge that the 45th president lost the 2020 election and that he incited violence at the Capitol. Failing every fabricated legal challenge before numerous state judges, Trump and his team pressured former Vice President Mike Pence to reject the real results in the House so they could install impostors in the Electoral College.

This scandal alone disqualifies Trump. 

Who says he wouldn’t try another unlawful act to seize power? 

Stating the opposite of the truth has been a chaos-inducing arrow in Trump’s rhetorical quiver from the start. At 78, his rally performances, with their made-up stories and absurd claims, are becoming harder for audiences to understand. How much about golfer Arnold Palmer do you want to have to explain to your children? Jarringly, Trump refuses to release his medical records, intensifying concerns about any mental and physical limitations. Remember, too, his misstatements and mishandling of the pandemic.

As president, Trump failed miserably in what was supposed to be his strong suit — making deals. Even with the House and Senate in Republican hands, Trump couldn't negotiate promised improvements in the nation’s health insurance laws. Instead, he tried to kill the Affordable Care Act out of resentment for his predecessor, Barack Obama. Now he cites "concepts of a plan" which he will introduce ... whenever. Immigration and infrastructure deals proved far beyond his skill set.

Trump doesn't detail how he’d change foreign policy. But he hints he’d roil NATO and cave to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. In a recent podcast, Trump blamed both Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and President Joe Biden for Putin's war. That gives us no confidence Trump would be an impartial agent for peace anywhere. Nikki Haley, who served as Trump’s U.N. ambassador but then challenged him in the GOP primaries, said he tried to "buddy up" to dangerous dictators, including Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

AUTOCRATIC TENDENCIES

Trump insists international success is about personal relationships. But he seems passive and as vulnerable as ever to flattery and manipulation by foreign powers. His former national security adviser, John Bolton, labeled his policies "destructive," saying, "If his first four years were bad, a second four will be worse."

The most convincing warnings against another Trump administration come from those he hired to work closely with him. They number in the dozens. Retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, Trump's longest-serving chief of staff, said his ex-boss had "nothing but contempt" for the Constitution. Kelly, who shaped the administration's response to MS-13 on Long Island, said Trump suggested, more than once, that Adolf Hitler "did some good things."

Based on Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, former Attorney General William Barr said Trump "shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office." Pence adds: "Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States."

Why would any honest conservative — or liberal — disbelieve them?

Trump is running while under federal indictment for alleged crimes more destructive than the New York false-record felonies for which he’s already been convicted. He has pardoned corrupt GOP and Democratic figures with whom he’s been allied.

Trump has proved to be mendacious, contemptuous, and self-absorbed. He offers the nation nothing but a second term of cynical practices, personal grievances and a dark vision of the republic.