Is that true? If the question is if Donald Trump should be president, even I’ve been clear from the start the answer is no. But deserve? When the Times reaches for a word like that, they complicate what should be a simple question. Does the Times editorial board deserve President Trump? As William Munny put it with a bullet in Unforgiven, deserve’s got nothing to do with it. …

In this fantasy world, Republicans merely put up with Trump, as a means to securing traditional conservative ends like cutting taxes and reversing Roe, because of “the idea that he is a winner.”

You’d have to be high as a Georgia Pine to believe this. There may be some Republican politicians who made the Machiavellian calculation the Times describes, but his voters weren’t thinking that. They just saw a way to send a giant Fuck You to people they hated and distrusted more than Trump.

That means you, esteemed members of the New York Times editorial board, along with the boards of other papers like the Washington Post, and TV and cable networks, both political parties, and most every major American or American-led institution, from NATO to the Fed to Merrick Garland’s Justice Department to the DHS and beyond.

There are probably 75 million Americans who think you’re all less trustworthy than Donald Trump, and that’s not because they think Trump is a saintly Clean Gene savior (the Times featured photos of Trump supporters “praying before Donald Trump”). On the contrary, they know he’s a bullshit artist of the first order. They just think you’re worse.