Donald Trump was never qualified to be president — or anything else

Let’s get one thing straight before Election Day — and before nearly half the electorate votes for him: Donald Trump was never remotely qualified to run for president of the United States of America, let alone to hold that office. That judgment doesn't come from me; it’s what people closest to him have said for decades, from the journalist who first warned us about Trump to the ghostwriter who regrets working on “The Art of the Deal” to the people who worked most closely with him during his four years degrading the presidency, shredding political norms and tearing our country apart. In every way one can imagine — and even in ways no one could ever have imagined — Trump has proved himself, as Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told an aide after the 2020 election, “a despicable human being.” According to journalist Michael Tackett's account in his new McConnell biography “The Price of Power,” the legendary Kentucky senator also described Trump as “stupid” and “ill-tempered.” Trump appears to be a sad physical specimen, likely due to his atrocious fast-food diet, but as bad as his body looks, the condition of his mind is more concerning: Hundreds of mental health experts have signed statements warning Americans of his narcissism, sadism and sociopathy — all now made worse by what is widely perceived as obvious cognitive decline, although the corporate media avoids the subject as much as possible. Perhaps the ultimate irony at the end of that tale of Trump race-baiting is that those young men were falsely convicted of rape and demonized by a man who, many years later, would be found liable by a civil jury for a sexual assault committed around the same time — an assault that the judge described as rape, "as many people commonly understand the word."