The Trump Threat | Unfit to Lead

By any measure, Donald Trump is unfit for public office.

The short list includes four indictments, two impeachments, one conviction, a sexual assault finding, pandemic mismanagement, an attempted coup, and thousands of lies.

A second term is a bigger threat to America as Trump’s words and deeds make clear.

That’s why The Inquirer Editorial Board spent the year sounding the alarm about Trump’s possible return.

A sampling of some of those editorials appears below. Read the full series here.

Originally published Jan. 14

The stakes are high and the risks are great. America barely survived one Trump term. Another four years could do irrevocable damage.

Despite a chaotic first term that ended with an insurrection and four criminal indictments, Trump still has a hold on the majority of Republican voters. After eight years of driving the daily news cycle, Trump’s corrosive words and deeds have almost become normalized.

Trump spews so many reckless lies, threats, and hate that his norm-busting outrages often get lost or forgotten in the fire hose of information and misinformation coming at voters. Some people find Trump entertaining, while others like that he is crass and cruel. But voters — especially those tuned out or turned off to politics — must grasp the full import of a second Trump presidency.

Put simply, Trump is unfit for office.

This election is bigger than the traditional policy differences between the two likely candidates. This is about the kind of country we are going to live in and pass on to future generations.

Indeed, the choice is stark.

Will we side with the better angels of our nature, or elect a reckless tyrant seeking “retribution”?

Will we elect a president who upholds the Constitution, or one who has suggested terminating it?

Will we elect a president who believes in the peaceful transfer of power, or one who fomented a deadly insurrection?

Will we elect a president who believes in the rule of law, or one who has been criminally indicted an unprecedented four times and is campaigning while out on bail?

Will we elect a president who works with U.S. allies, or one who wants to leave NATO and is inexplicably enamored with war criminal Vladimir Putin?

Will we elect a president who confronts income inequality, or one who kowtows to the ultrarich?

Will we elect a president who acknowledges racial inequality, or one with a long history of racism?

Will we elect a president who is supported by the military, or one who insulted dead soldiers, called top generals “losers,” and suggested executing former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley?

Will we elect a president who aims to combat climate change, or one who views the existential threat to our planet as a hoax?

Will we elect a president who reads the daily intelligence briefings, or one who spent much of his time in office watching TV or golfing?

Will we elect a president who pays his taxes, or one who engaged in shady schemes to dodge taxes for years and whose company was convicted of tax fraud?

Will we elect a president who supports an independent attorney general, or one who would direct the U.S. Justice Department to investigate his enemies?

Will we elect a president who supports workers, or one whose policies hurt them?

Will we elect a president who understands he is not above the law, or one who brags about being a dictator?

Will we elect a president who is decent and honorable, or a narcissistic bully who invokes the rhetoric of some of history’s most malicious figures?

With the future of American democracy on the line, understanding Trump as a clear and present danger is paramount.

Originally published Feb. 18

Many gasped recently when Donald Trump said he’d encourage Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” with NATO allies who don’t pay their share of the transatlantic alliance’s defense spending. It was a brazen but hardly surprising turn from someone who has shown a long and loyal affection for Russian President Vladimir Putin, a wanted war criminal.

Trump has called Putin — a former KGB agent who jails and murders critics — smart, savvy, and his friend. Trump sided with Putin after a U.S. intelligence community assessment found Russia meddled in the 2016 election. More troubling, in 2017 Trump shared highly classified intelligence with the Russian ambassador.

These were not innocent missteps. Rather, they are part of Trump’s decades-long support for Russia. As he mounts another presidential bid, voters must understand that Trump remains a national security risk.

Trump’s fawning over Russia has a long and disturbing arc.

A former KGB agent said Trump has been a Russian asset since the 1980s. Politico reported that the KGB may have opened a file on Trump as early as 1977, after he married a model from Czechoslovakia. In investigative journalist Craig Unger’s book, American Kompromat, the former spy said Trump’s “low intellect” and “hyperinflated vanity” made it easy to manipulate him with “simple flattery.”

In 1987, the Russian ambassador met with Trump in New York and invited him to Moscow to discuss a hotel deal. Trump bragged in his book, The Art of the Deal, about staying in the Lenin suite of the Hotel National, which likely was bugged.

In the 1990s, as Trump’s business empire teetered on the edge of financial collapse, U.S. banks stopped lending to him. Trump turned to foreign banks and wealthy Russian backers. By 2008, Donald Trump Jr. told attendees at a real estate conference, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets.”

Trump’s fawning over Russia has a long and disturbing arc.

In 2014, Trump’s son, Eric, told a reporter who inquired about financing for a golf course development: “We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”

In 2007, Trump said Putin was “doing a great job.” In 2013, Trump said Putin “outsmarted” America and tweeted a pathetic note wondering, “[W]ill he become my new best friend?” In 2015, Trump defended Putin’s alleged murders of journalists.

Putin returned the favor by authorizing a sweeping Russian campaign to help elect Trump in 2016. During the campaign, Trump Jr., Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. Even sleazy Steve Bannon, a twice-indicted and pardoned former Trump strategist, called the meeting “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.”

After getting elected, Trump appointed several officials to his administration with ties to Russia, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who resigned after one month due to his vulnerability to blackmail over previous dealings with the Kremlin. Flynn twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his interactions with Russia but was also pardoned by Trump.

Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser, was convicted of lying to Congress, witness tampering, and obstruction following the investigation into his role in Russia’s election interference. Trump later pardoned Stone.

The Trump circle has many more ties to Russia. That may explain why Trump doubled down on his comments about letting Russia do whatever it wants — even though he faced significant backlash.

This much is clear when it comes to Trump and Russia: A vote for Trump is a vote for a useful idiot.

Originally published March 1

Only in Donald Trump’s doublethink world would he try to appeal to Black voters by reminding them that he is an unapologetic racist.

During a recent campaign rally before mainly conservative Black voters in South Carolina, Trump said the stage lights were so bright that he couldn’t see many faces in the crowd. Then he added: “I can only see the Black ones. I can’t see any white ones.”

Trump went on to claim Black people identify with him now that he has been indicted four times and sat for a mug shot. He said the criminal charges and civil judgments for sexual abuse, defamation, and fraud show that he, too — a rich, privileged white male — has faced discrimination.

In normal times, voters would be appalled to learn the likely 2024 Republican standard-bearer thinks and talks like Archie Bunker. Instead, Trump’s outrageous comments came and went with little attention paid. That is because Trump’s decades-long history of racist rants no longer shocks anyone. Nor does his xenophobia and misogyny.

From the minute Trump launched his first presidential bid in 2015 by accusing Mexico of sending criminals, rapists, and drug dealers to America, he has demonized marginalized groups.

Trump’s racist bona fides are hard-won.

In 1973, the U.S. Justice Department sued Trump for discriminating against Black apartment seekers looking to rent in buildings owned by the company his father started. The case was eventually settled.

In 1989, Trump took out full-page ads calling for the execution of five Black and Latino teenagers who were wrongly convicted of raping a white woman in Central Park.

A 1991 book written by John O’Donnell, the former president of a Trump casino, quoted Trump saying that “laziness is a trait in blacks.”

Trump’s racist bona fides are hard-won.

In 2004, when Trump hosted the reality TV show The Apprentice, he used a racial epithet to question if viewers would “buy” a Black person winning the competition for a job at his company, according to one of the show’s producers

In 2011, Trump began falsely claiming that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and thus was ineligible to be president.

Once in the White House, Trump ramped up his racist and xenophobic views through both words and deeds.

In March 2017, Trump signed an executive order that blocked citizens from six majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States. (If elected in November, Trump promises to ban Palestinian refugees from Gaza from entering the country.)

During a 2018 meeting with lawmakers to discuss a bipartisan immigration deal that would protect immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and countries in Africa, Trump asked, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”

In a 2019 tweet, Trump told four congresswomen of color to “go back” to the countries they came from. The following year, Trump rolled out the angry Black woman trope soon after President Joe Biden selected Kamala Harris as his running mate.

After the pandemic spread from China in 2020, Trump referred to the deadly coronavirus as the “kung flu.” Supporters at a rally in Arizona responded with cheers and laughs. As he campaigned last year, Trump repeatedly said undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.”

As Trump’s recent legal troubles mounted, he has used coded racial attacks to go after Black prosecutors leading the cases, calling Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg an “animal.”

After New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a civil fraud suit alleging Trump inflated his assets, he called her a “racist.”

As the 2024 presidential race comes into focus, Trump is once again playing on voters’ fears and differences instead of America’s strengths and similarities. It’s a tired act. The country cannot move forward by sending a bigot back to the Oval Office.

Originally published Feb. 23

With the ink barely dry on the U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned the constitutional right to abortion, Donald Trump and his fellow MAGA Republicans are on a crusade, mixing religion with politics and further undermining reproductive rights.

Nearly a dozen antiabortion measures were included in federal budget bills last year, including a national ban on abortion pills, limits on access to contraception, and a ban on paid leave for military service members seeking the procedure.

If elected again, Trump reportedly supports a 16-week national abortion ban, which would override Pennsylvania’s law that allows abortions up until 24 weeks of pregnancy. Trump apparently wants to secure the GOP presidential nomination before going public with his view for fear of upsetting social conservatives who support a more restrictive law.

Of course, in his last term, Trump appointed the three conservative Supreme Court justices who voted with the majority in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that had guaranteed a right to abortion for nearly half a century. Trump’s three appointees included one justice sworn in under a cloud of alleged binge drinking and sexual harassment, another who never tried a case to verdict, and a third who signed off on the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization opinion that overturned Roe in just 10 minutes.

Trump recently boasted that he “was able to kill Roe v. Wade.” During a town hall meeting, Trump added: “I did it, and I’m proud to have done it.”

Now comes a recent ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court that said frozen embryos — millimeter-wide blastocysts consisting of a few hundred cells — are children. Or “little people,” as Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote in a concurring opinion.

The decision will further upend women’s reproductive health care as other red states will look to follow the Yellowhammer State. In fact, Alabama’s largest hospital already halted IVF treatments. So, the zealots who want to stop individuals from ending a pregnancy have now prevented pregnancies from starting.

Parents desperate to have babies may face higher costs for an already expensive and lengthy procedure. More troubling is how Christian nationalism continues to animate Republican politics. The Alabama ruling is the latest to blur the bright line that has separated church and state since America’s founding.

Welcome to the American theocracy.

Of reversing Roe, Trump said: “I did it, and I’m proud to have done it.”

Never mind the U.S. Constitution does not mention God or Christianity, or that a 1797 treaty with Tripoli declared “the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” Indeed, Thomas Jefferson referred to the First Amendment as “a wall between Church and State.”

But in recent years, the GOP has been dismantling that wall. Under Chief Justice John Roberts, the U.S. Supreme Court has chipped away at the separation of church and state, siding with religious organizations 83% of the time. During oral arguments on a First Amendment case in 2022, Justice Neil Gorsuch derisively referenced the “so-called” separation of church and state.

More recently, House Speaker Mike Johnson called the separation of church and state a “misnomer.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., QAnon) cut to the chase and proudly called the GOP the “party of Christian nationalism.”

If Trump is elected in November, Christian nationalism, which subverts the separation of church and state and imposes rules on religious minorities, LGBTQ people, women, and other marginalized groups, will shape American policy. A think tank tied to Trump plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas throughout the administration, documents obtained by Politico show.

Even though Trump has mangled the Bible and is not devout, many followers believe he was sent by God. Trump is clearly on a mission to strip away human rights, exact revenge, and impose a Christian nationalist ideology.

God help us all.

Originally published Aug. 15

Donald Trump was always unfit to be president, however his apparent cognitive decline since he last ran for office in 2020 is alarming.

He has long spewed lies and conspiracies, but Trump’s rantings have become more delusional — underscoring how he can’t be trusted with the nation’s nuclear launch codes, let alone to manage budgets, unpredictable crises or delicate matters of foreign affairs.

If elected again, his detachment from reality poses a threat to the stability of the country and the free world.

Trump is stuck in a dark place, making it impossible to lead the nation to a brighter future. His fear and anger routine feels especially tired next to Vice President Kamala Harris’ vision of joy and hope. Indeed, the growing wave of enthusiastic support for Harris has seemingly knocked Trump loose of his moorings.

In recent weeks, he has significantly reduced his campaign schedule and retreated to his Palm Beach resort, where he gave a rambling news conference that was unglued even by Trumpian standards. With no supporting facts, he claimed the stock market was crashing, that the country was on the brink of a depression, and World War III was looming.

Trump made a number of bizarre claims, including that people were “dying financially because they can’t buy bacon” and that Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ vice presidential pick, was “heavy into the transgender world.”

Trump wrongly said everyone would be forced to buy electric cars, and that would require every bridge in the country to be rebuilt because the weight of the batteries made electric vehicles heavier.

He went off on a wild tangent about the time he almost crashed in a helicopter with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, even though Brown says he never flew with Trump.

Trump is stuck in a dark place, making it impossible to lead the nation to a brighter future.

Trump repeatedly overstated crowd sizes at his rallies. At one point, he falsely claimed more people attended his speech on Jan. 6, 2021, than the estimated 250,000 who watched the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial.

By the time the news conference ended, Trump issued 162 misstatements, exaggerations or flat out lies in just over an hour, according to a review of the transcript by a team of reporters and editors at NPR.

Trump’s drivel may be chalked up to him giving the MAGA masses more bread and circuses. But it is more troubling than that, as Trump is once again undermining democracy by recklessly sowing seeds of doubt in the upcoming election.

During recent rallies, Trump has gone on incoherent rants about sharks and electric boats. He has an odd obsession with fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter.

At a rally in Montana, he strangely said no one knows Harris’ last name. Uh, it’s Harris, just like her father, the retired Stanford University economics professor.

For his part, Trump claims that he “aced” a cognitive test, though mental health experts note that it is hardly an effective diagnostic tool.

And it’s unlikely that the former president would ever feel compelled to release more details about his mental state.

So it will ultimately be left to voters to determine whether Trump’s outlandish ravings are the product of “a very stable genius,” or someone who is more dangerous, more delusional, and more unfit to be president with each passing day.

Originally published June 23

The heat dome baking Philadelphia and much of the Northeast should remind voters that climate change is here — and on the ballot in November.

But only one presidential candidate has done anything about climate change, or even believes it is real.

Let’s begin with the rhetoric, which is riddled with nonsense. Donald Trump has called global warming a “con” and a “hoax.” During deep freezes or blizzards, he often takes to social media to argue against global warming.

Among Trump’s long list of foolish and bogus claims about climate change was this whopper: It was invented by the Chinese to make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive. Trump also falsely said the noise from wind turbines causes cancer.

Beyond the drivel of his climate comments, Trump’s actions were worse than his words.

Moments after being inaugurated, the White House website deleted nearly all mentions of climate change. The following year, Trump rejected his own government’s findings that warned natural disasters were becoming more frequent, intense, and costly because of global warming.

After reading some of the report, Trump said, “I don’t believe it.”

During his one term, Trump gutted major climate policies and rolled back more than 125 rules governing clean air, water, wildlife, and toxic chemicals. He relaxed regulations designed to curb carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants.

The sweeping deregulation was projected to add 1.8 billion metric tons of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere by 2035 — more than the combined annual energy emissions of Germany, Britain, and Canada.

Trump absurdly called himself a “great environmentalist” and compared his record with Teddy Roosevelt, America’s conservation president. He has no shame.

Among Trump’s claims about climate change is this: It was invented by the Chinese to diminish U.S. manufacturing.

Trump weakened a 102-year-old law that protected migratory birds and the Endangered Species Act, which was signed into law by President Richard Nixon and is credited with saving the alligator, bald eagle, and grizzly bear from extinction.

Trump put anti-environmentalists in charge of environmental policy. He appointed Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt was a climate change denier who repeatedly sued the EPA before taking over the agency.

Once installed, Pruitt cozied up to polluters. After he resigned amid a cloud of ethics scandals, Trump installed Andrew Wheeler, a coal lobbyist, to head the EPA. Wheeler proceeded to eliminate the agency’s Office of Science Advisor, Policy, and Engagement while undermining mercury pollution safeguards and weakening air, water, and land regulations.

A second Trump presidency poses an even bigger threat to the environment. Allies and advisers are already plotting a more focused effort to sideline science, rollback regulations, and boost fossil fuel production.

The first steps would likely be to reverse President Joe Biden’s efforts to curb planet-heating emissions and to withdraw again from the Paris climate accord. The top target would be to repeal or dismantle Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act.

House Republicans have tried to chip away at the measure even as it has brought jobs and investment to their districts.

In a recent meeting with oil executives, Trump promised to reverse Biden’s environmental regulations and policies while asking for $1 billion in campaign donations. Griping about regulations by the oil bosses came as the industry posted record profits.

The meeting provided a window into the corrupt and transactional way Trump operates. He is willing to sell out future generations to help himself.

A Trump victory in November would lead to an additional four billion tons of carbon emissions, causing $900 billion in global climate damages, according to an analysis.

A recent poll found a large majority of U.S. adults support Biden’s plans to slash climate pollution, including 50% of Republicans. Given Trump’s threat to the environment, why support a one-man Superfund site?

Originally published Oct. 13

While Donald Trump did lasting damage during his first term in office, the method to his madness was often scattershot. But a more devious and systemic plan awaits if Trump wins a second term.

It’s all spelled out in Project 2025, a detailed blueprint to strip away freedoms and turn the federal government into a Christian nationalist autocracy. If Trump wins, the 920-page proposal will be used to guide the new administration by taking direct aim at civil liberties, the rule of law, the separation of powers, and the separation of church and state.

The plan starts by replacing many of the more than two million federal career civil service employees with Trump loyalists. Think climate change deniers running the Environmental Protection Agency, oil lobbyists controlling the U.S. Department of the Interior, and anti-vaccine proponents in charge of the Food and Drug Administration.

Project 2025 proposes closing entire agencies and remaking the rules to fit far-right views and fringe conspiracies. Under the plan, the White House and the U.S. Department of Justice would act “as a team.” Trump would have total control over federal investigations, eliminating the department’s independence and clearing the way for him to go after perceived enemies and protect loyal friends.

Project 2025 would dismantle other federal agencies that protect citizens, including the FBI, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It also calls for closing the U.S. Departments of Education and Commerce.

The proposal takes aim at civil liberties, the rule of law, the separation of powers, and the separation of church and state.

However, the plan is not about reducing the size of government bureaucracy or making it more efficient. In fact, there is a reference to the need for a “vast expansion” of political appointees to replace the career civil servants and experts.

Nor is the proposal designed to depoliticize the federal government. Instead, it would infuse extreme MAGA views into government policy. Here’s one example: Any research “conducted with taxpayer dollars” would be required to “serve the national interest” in line “with conservative principles.”

Project 2025 would also upend fundamental freedoms by prohibiting same-sex marriage and eliminating protections for LGBTQ people. The plan even calls for outlawing pornography and jailing creators and distributors of pornographic content.

Efforts to combat climate change would essentially stop under the plan, which calls for boosting oil, gas, and coal production while ending efforts to promote wind and solar energy. It would also do away with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration because it promotes climate change alarm awareness, which Trump calls a hoax.

Overall, Project 2025 would upend the rule of law, destabilize democracy, exacerbate climate change, increase poverty, undermine national security, jeopardize health care, hurt farmers, increase inequality, weaken education, and benefit the very rich.

Project 2025 is bigger than Trump. He is just a vessel for the far-right to do away with checks and balances within the government to impose their extreme views on the country. Trump is callous enough to carry out the effort.

Under Project 2025, if Trump wins, everyone else loses.

Originally published March 31

Despite two impeachments, four criminal indictments, a civil fraud judgment, a sexual abuse finding, a mismanaged pandemic, an attempted coup, a deadly insurrection, 30,573 lies, unending chaos, and incompetence, many voters continue to stand by Donald Trump.

But some Republican leaders who know Trump best no longer support him.

Former Vice President Mike Pence stood beside Trump until his final days in office, when he refused to help overturn the election. Some Trump supporters wanted to hang Pence, and Trump sided with the mob. The ever-loyal Pence now says he cannot “in good conscience” endorse Trump for president in 2024.

Other Trump cabinet officials have also sounded the alarm.

John Kelly, a retired four-star general who served in Vietnam, was Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff. After the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, Kelly said he would have voted to remove Trump from the White House.

Kelly remains dumbfounded by the continued support for Trump. “What’s going on in the country that a single person thinks this guy would still be a good president?” he wondered.

James Mattis, another retired four-star general, was Trump’s first defense secretary. He issued a lengthy statement after Trump threatened to use the military to quell protests following the 2020 murder of George Floyd.

“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” he wrote.

Mark Esper, another former defense secretary under Trump, said the former president is “unfit for office.”

A number of other Trump administration officials refuse to support him in November, including former national security adviser John Bolton, deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews, and the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley.

Some Republican leaders who know Trump best no longer support him.

Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former assistant to Trump and White House director of strategic communications, fears what would happen if Trump were elected in November. “A second Trump term could mean the end of American democracy as we know it,” she said. “And I don’t say that lightly.”

Ty Cobb, the former White House lawyer who defended Trump during the Russian election interference probe, urged voting against Trump. “He has never cared about America, its citizens, its future or anything but himself,” Cobb wrote.

Cobb called Trump “the gravest threat to democracy that we’ve ever seen.”

Liz Cheney, a former top-ranking Republican congresswoman, was voted out of office after she voted to impeach Trump for his role in inciting the insurrection. She has called Trump a “liar” and a “con man” and vowed to do everything she can to ensure he is not elected.

Jennifer Horn, the former chair of the New Hampshire GOP and cofounder of the Lincoln Project, said she would not vote for Trump or any Republican who refuses to denounce him. “He is a grotesque, narcissistic, emotionally ill criminal who has already made it clear he is willing to toss aside the Constitution and incite an insurrection,” Horn said.

Horn and some Republican officials who know Trump best have put the country ahead of their party. Will enough voters heed their warning?

Originally published Jan. 21

Being president of the United States is an awesome responsibility. In addition to swearing an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, presidents decide when to send soldiers into combat and oversee a federal government that employs almost three million people and spends $6 trillion a year.

But presidents show their true character during times of crisis or when mistakes inevitably happen. During Donald Trump’s one term in office, he repeatedly failed that character test.

That’s because when things go wrong, Trump never takes responsibility. It is a character flaw that endangers the country if Trump returns to the White House. It is just one reason why the Republican front-runner is unfit for office.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump blamed a long list that included China, the media, past presidents, blue states, and hospitals. After he misled the public and undermined the science, a study found that Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic caused thousands of needless deaths.

Yet, when asked about his role in the lack of testing, Trump said, “I don’t take responsibility at all.”

That sums up Trump’s MO before, during, and after his time in office.

In 2015, he blamed Mexico for sending criminals, drug dealers, and rapists to America. Before the 2016 election, Trump blamed people of color and those with low incomes for ruining the suburbs. That same year, he blamed George W. Bush for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. When a couple of dozen women came forward claiming Trump sexually assaulted them, he blamed the media.

Asked about his role in a lack of COVID-19 testing, Trump said, “I don’t take responsibility at all.”

After a 2017 march in Charlottesville, Va., led by the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis, left a woman dead and others injured, Trump blamed the violence on both sides. That same year, after a Navy SEAL died in a raid in Yemen, Trump blamed the generals.

In 2018, Trump again blamed the media for the rise in anger after a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue. After General Motors cited Trump’s tariffs as a reason it was cutting jobs at five plants, he blamed the automaker for making “bad cars.”

After taking credit for stock market gains, Trump blamed the Federal Reserve for a 2018 drop in share prices. In 2019, he again blamed the Fed for the sluggish economy and manufacturing slowdown.

After protests broke out following the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, Trump fanned the flames, then blamed the unrest on Democrats. Months later, he blamed Gold Star families for giving him COVID, even though he tested positive before meeting with them.

Before votes were counted, Trump claimed with no evidence that the 2020 election was rigged. He blamed Senate Democrats and big cities with large Black populations for stealing votes. Trump blamed his election loss on a fantastical conspiracy between “big media, big money, and big tech.”

Trump and his allies proceeded to blame his election loss on a kooky concoction that included Dominion Voting Systems, a deceased Venezuelan president, George Soros, state election officials, the U.S. Justice Department, the U.S. Supreme Court, and even Vice President Mike Pence.

Former President Harry S. Truman famously kept a sign on his desk that read, “The buck stops here.”

The only time the buck stopped with Trump was when it went into his pocket. America can do better than an aggrieved, petulant president who blames everyone but himself.