Donald Trump's hometown newspaper laid into the former president and endorsed President Joe Biden months in advance of November's election.
The Palm Beach Post also endorsed Biden in October 2020, with the editorial board members saying they were among the voters who "yearned so strongly to remove" Trump. They got an early start ahead of his year's election by saying the case against the quadruple-indicted Republican frontrunner was glaringly obvious.
Palm Beach, Florida, is the location of Mar-a-Lago, which Trump now considers his primary home.
"It’s time for those who remain undecided to look with a set of fresh eyes at the evidence amassing before them," the editors wrote.
"As annoying as the acid taunts of pundits and penmen about the former President may strike you, cast that rhetoric aside for a minute and evaluate the evidence," they added.
"And we use the word 'evidence' advisedly, because aside from candidate Trump’s own crowd-stirring lies about the elections and an abundance of audio and video recordings going back years, there’s now a growing record of court testimony and documentation, tested by argument and counterargument, that is laying itself out before us."
Judges and juries have also found the evidence against Trump overwhelming and penalized him more than a half-billion dollars, with interest, in civil cases where he's been found liable for fraud, sexual abuse and defamation, and he faces criminal indictments alleging that he attempted to unlawfully overturn his election loss, improperly kept classified materials and illegally paid off a porn actress to cover up an extramarital affair.
"Trump has openly demonstrated why, even if you put character aside — which we can’t — the nation would have much to fear from his second term," the editors wrote.
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The former president has openly admired autocratic leaders and mused about copying their tactics, threatened to walk away from NATO, privately endorsed a federal 16-week abortion ban, continually spewed hateful and bigoted rhetoric and shifted campaign donations to pay his small army of lawyers.
"Sure, though it seems increasingly unlikely, he could win a round or two in the courts," the editors wrote. "And if he won a new term in office, he could erase any impact that the prosecutions might have had. But you’ll know what he did."
"So, before that happens, as you consider your ballot, though you might prefer his tilt to the right to Biden’s tilt to the left, ask yourself if this is the quality of a man who should represent you, speak for you, act in your name, be the master of your universe," they added. "Don’t listen to the pundits. Just look at the evidence."
