The Dallas Morning News will not endorse the Republican nominee for president for the first time in nearly six decades.
In a blistering editorial published Tuesday morning, the Morning News said Trump has been “at odds with nearly every GOP ideal” the paper holds dear and is neither a Republican nor a conservative.
“Trump has displayed an authoritarian streak that should horrify limited-government advocates,” the paper said before calling the candidate an “impulsive, unbridled New York real estate billionaire.”
The major Texas newspaper, which has endorsed every GOP presidential nominee since 1964, blasted Trump for opposing free trade agreements, floating the possibility of withdrawing from NATO, and showing an “alarming” admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“It’s not easy to offer a shorthand list of such tenets, since Trump flips from one side to the other, issue after issue, sometimes within a single news cycle,” the editorial said, adding that Trump “doesn’t reflect Republican ideals of the past [and] we are certain he shouldn’t reflect the GOP of the future.”
“We have no interest in a Republican nominee for whom all principles are negotiable, nor in a Republican Party that is willing to trade away principle for pursuit of electoral victory,” it added.
Trump has faced similar criticism from editorial board members at other major news outlets.
The Washington Post called him a “unique threat to American democracy” this summer, and the New York Times’s editorial board questioned his “commitment to democracy [and] understanding of what it means to be commander in chief” after he joked that Russian hackers should locate Hillary Clinton’s missing emails at a press conference in July.
