Bret Stephens, deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal‘s extremely right-wing editorial page, says that Republican big wigs who support and excuse Donald Trump’s sadistic bullying will be lumped with supporters of “the foul names of America’s 20th century,” such as “Huey Long, Charles Coughlin, Alger Hiss, Joe McCarthy, and Bull Connor.” Despite his dislike of Clinton, Stephens thinks Clinton should and will win the election and that Americans will dump her after one term.
What makes Mr. Trump’s remarks so foul is their undisguised sadism. He took a woman too heartbroken and anxious to speak of her dead son before an audience of millions and painted a target on her. He treated her silence as evidence that she was either a dolt or a stooge. He degraded her. “She was standing there. She had nothing to say,” Mr. Trump told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “She probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say. You tell me.”
In this comment there was the full unmasking of Mr. Trump, in case he needed further unmasking. He has, as Humayun’s father Khizr put it, a “black soul.” His problem isn’t a lack of normal propriety but the absence of basic human decency. He is morally unfit for any office, high or low.
Most of the commenters on the WSJ page are very mad at Stephens for not being nice to Mr. Trump, the only person saving them from the unimaginable horror of a Clinton presidency.