I’ve been wondering about this for years: Why aren’t editorial boards screaming: Trump has to go? Joe Lockhart analyses and seeks to answer this.
After three years of political and actual carnage under Trump, including Robert Mueller’s description of acts that amounted to, he told Congress, obstruction of justice; Trump’s “fine people on both sides” reaction to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville where a counter-protester was killed; his rampant conflicts of interest and credible accusations of his violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution; his close to 17,000 false statements; a travel ban that primarily targets mostly Muslim-majority countries;impeachment for alleged extortion of a foreign government (he was acquitted in the Republican Senate), and the gross mishandling of a deadly pandemic, you’d think somebody on an editorial board might say it’s time for the President to leave.
Y’think???? But only one has called for his removal, The LA Times, and they said exactly what every single member of every responsible editorial Board knows should happen :
while a handful of large-newspaper editorial boards called for his impeachment, I could find only one — the LA Times — that called for his removal (and with a headline that covered all the bases: “Convict and remove President Trump — and disqualify him from ever holding office again”).
The article is long but worth reading to get a sense of the history of newspapers calling for presidential resignations. But the reason why only one newspaper has called for Trump to go is never directly stated, although a lot of virtual ink is spilled talking around the reason: They’re cowards.
And in fact, Joe Lockhart is also a coward for his refusal to explicitly label his pals’ cowardly behavior for what it is. Still, he does conclude nicely, although he surely knows he’s whistling in the dark:
…they [newspapers] should go down fighting. If the President is unfit to lead the country, then say it. And if lives are at risk and our Constitution is being attacked on a regular basis, then it is the duty of our great editorial pages to seek the ultimate remedy — a call for resignation.
Never going to happen. As I said: cowards.