The Orlando Sentinel's Anti-Endorsement Of Trump

by Noah

Sometimes a newspaper makes bigger news by what they write on their editorial pages than from what they report on their news pages. Such was the case last week, when on the eve of Senor Trumpanzee's visit to Orlando to launch his 2020 campaign, the Orlando Sentinel came out with their Anti-Endorsement of Trump. To say the least, the anti-endorsement caught Sentinel readers of all political persuasions by surprise. The reaction from readers was swift, with Republicans going berserk and feeling abused by some sort of "Deep State" conspiracy, making threats, etc. All in all though, the reaction was half favorable and half negative.

Like most of Florida, central Florida is a world gone wrong. It's a land with an astounding concentration of the dumbest human actions and dumbest crime incidents known to our species. Whenever you see an article with a headline that begins with the words 'Florida man', chances are really good that the story is about something that happened within The Sentinel's readership area. The area surrounding Orlando is also home to some of the tackiest tourist destinations known to humankind. It's a godforsaken home to over-sized, soul-killing excuses to sell cotton candy called theme parks, and, endless giant sinkholes that threaten to swallow the area as if Mother Nature herself was screaming "Enough!" The place is a cultural and ecological disaster. Fittingly, it's also Trump Country.

The Sentinel, a conservative paper, almost always, but not always, endorses republicans. They once endorsed LBJ and they endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016. But for 2020 they have jumped the gun and told their readership one candidate for president that they won't be endorsing is President Trump. They've also made their reasons clear, no beating around the bush. That's a measure of the urgency as they see it. It's the first such endorsement editorial of the 2020 campaign by a major newspaper. While we can do better than "Not Trump" when it comes to getting a real president, and the editorial won't change the minds of the lost, hopefully, it will start a nationwide rejection trend. And to think that such a thing would possibly start in Florida.

The editorial began:

Donald Trump is in Orlando to kickoff his re-election campaign. We're here to announce our endorsement for president in 2020, or, at least, who we are not endorsing: Donald Trump. Some readers will wonder how we could possibly eliminate a candidate so far before an election, and before knowing the identity of his opponent.

The Sentinel's answer to that one followed immediately:

Because there's no point pretending we would ever recommend that readers vote for Trump. After 2 1/2 years, we've seen enough. Enough of the chaos, the division, the schoolyard insults, the self-aggrandizement, the corruption, and especially the lies... Trump's capacity for lies isn't the surprise here. It's the tolerance so many Americans have for it.

Personally, I'm not so surprised about that last point, but I realize that, sadly, most people seem to be surprised, even people who are otherwise intelligent. The editorial continues:

There was a time when even a single lie-a phony college degree, a bogus work history-would doom a politician's career. Not so for President Trump, who claimed in 2017 that he lost the popular vote because millions of people voted illegally. They didn't. In 2018, he said North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat. It is. And in 2019, he said that windmills cause cancer. They don't. Just last week he claimed the media fabricated unfavorable results from his campaign's internal polling. It didn't. Trump's successful assault on truth is the great casualty of this presidency, followed closely by his war on decency.

The anti-endorsement editorial uses some of Trump's own statements and actions to back up their position. The paper then goes on to discuss how Trump has ruined the reputation of the United States in the rest of the world:

Trump has diminished our standing in the world. He reneges on deals, attacks allies and embraces enemies. This nation must never forget that humiliating public moment in Helsinki in 2018 when the president of the United States chose to accept Vladimir Putin's denials of Russian interference in the 2016 election over the unanimous assessment of the American intelligence community. Such a betrayal by a U.S. president would have been the unforgivable political sin in normal times. As if that's not enough, Trump declares his love for North Korea's Kim Jong-un, a genuine villain who starves and enslaves his people and executes his enemies with antiaircraft guns and flamethrowers. But he wrote the president a "beautiful letter." Flattery will get you everywhere with this president, and that's dangerous.

It's not like the editorial offers anything that DWT readers don't already know, but, context is everything. Location. Location. Location. It's worth reading the whole editorial for reference and reminder purposes, not yours, but perhaps some crazy Neo-Nazi supporting uncle you may have to suffer at a 4th of July family get-together. As for the Trump rally itself, it was the typical Republican Goon-a-Thon, complete with an opening sermon by a Republican Jesus Evangelical Crackpot named Paula White (perfect surname) who called all of the Democratic 2020 hopefuls "Demonic" to the crazed cheers of the audience, one of Trump's sons making jokes about the cancer of Joe Biden's son, outdated attacks on Hillary Clinton, an attack on a reporter after encouragement by Trump, 15 false claims in just a little over an hour and, of course, what Republican get-together would be complete without platoons of Proud Boy white supremacists marching to the rally wearing their red solidarity hats and flashing white power hand signs. It's a Republican thing. It was enough to make Stephen Miller and the rest of the White House staffers weep with joy.