LA Times editorial board blasts Trump letter to Pelosi: ‘A uniquely bad, dishonest president’

The Los Angeles Times editorial board on Tuesday tore into President Trump’s fiery letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) condemning the House’s impeachment inquiry, saying the letter demonstrated that Trump is “a uniquely bad, dishonest president.”

In the editorial, the Times called the six-page letter released by the White House “a giant, overheated expression of grievance, a vitriolic attack backed mostly by half-truths, unsubstantiated assertions and whiny misrepresentations.”

{mosads}“Trump is a uniquely bad, dishonest president, unsuited and unprepared for the vast responsibilities of the office he holds. But that is entirely separate from whether he should be impeached and removed from office. His failures as president are best addressed at the voting booth in November 2020,” the editorial stated.

The newspaper’s editorial board wrote that Trump is correct about the gravity of impeachment as a process, saying it “should not be undertaken lightly” but that “the allegations against Trump were so serious that they could not be ignored.”

Trump’s letter objecting to the impeachment process accused Pelosi of cheapening “the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment” and compared the inquiry to the Salem witch trials.

The House is expected to pass two articles of impeachment in a party-line vote on Wednesday, accusing Trump of abuse of power in his dealings with Ukraine and obstruction of Congress. The issue would then go to the GOP-controlled Senate for trial.

“We hope the Senate will offer the president an opportunity to make a reasonable and full defense, and that it will compel the testimony of his senior aides,” the editorial stated. “We also hope, though we have little reason to expect, that partisanship will be kept to a minimum as Congress moves toward a resolution of this sorry episode in American history.”