September 30, 2016 | No Comments
Republican nominee Donald Trump on Friday lashed out at USA Today over its “disendorsement” of him, as well as red-state newspapers that have thrown their support behind Hillary Clinton.
“The people are really smart in cancelling subscriptions to the Dallas & Arizona papers & now USA Today will lose readers! The people get it!” Trump tweeted.
USA Today’s editorial board on Thursday wrote that they unanimously came to the conclusion that Trump is “unfit for the presidency.” The paper has historically avoided taking a position on presidential elections, writing, “The editorial board has never taken sides in a presidential race. We’re doing it now.”
The paper has only ever “disendorsed” one other candidate for public office, and that was former KKK leader and white supremacist David Duke in 1991 when he ran for governor of Louisiana. USA Today’s decision follows similar historic moves by the Cincinnati Enquirer and Arizona Republic, when both papers endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, marking the first time they endorsed a Democratic candidate in decades. USA Today, however, did not endorse Clinton.
The article explains that because each presidential election is different, USA Today revisits its no-endorsement policy every four years, writing, “We’ve never seen reason to alter our approach. Until now.”
“This year, the choice isn’t between two capable major party nominees who happen to have significant ideological differences. This year, one of the candidates — Republican nominee Donald Trump — is, by unanimous consensus of the Editorial Board, unfit for the presidency,” the editorial board wrote.
The board outlined several reasons for their call to not vote for the Republican nominee, calling him “erratic,” “ill-equipped to be commander-in-chief,” “reckless,” and a “serial liar.” The article also said that “he traffics in prejudice,” that “he isn’t levelling with the American people,” that “his business career is checkered,” and that “he has coarsened the national dialogue.”
On Friday, after the disendorsement, Trump unleashed a tirade of tweets in which he attacked former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, who has become a central figure in the race after Clinton dredged up Trump’s past comments about her as “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping.”