Abandon Trump to safeguard democracy

The saying goes like this: counting other people’s sins does not make you a saint. And it defines Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate. Trump, a political neophyte, has attacked anything and everything during his primary campaign preceding nomination. He is uncouth, impulsive and belligerent. And he does not mince words. And yes, he shoots from the hip. Many like his political ‘correctness’. But many more despise him.
Trump’s unvarnished delivery has become a hallmark of his extraordinary White House campaign, getting him into trouble with strategists, military veterans and fellow Republicans as much as it endears him to his fans.
The billionaire Republican candidate has criticized Muslims, babies, firefighters, the military, and slain US soldier prompting his wincing Republican backers to issue awkward denunciations.
Congressman Richard Hanna went one step further, becoming the first Republican lawmaker to say he will vote for Trump’s opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, in November.
“I find Trump deeply flawed in endless ways,” Hanna wrote in a newspaper editorial announcing his decision.
And on Tuesday, in a searing and virtually unprecedented presidential rebuke, Barack Obama declared embattled Republican White House nominee Donald Trump ‘unfit’ to be president and called on party leaders to disown him.
Obama piled on as Trump’s campaign reeled from multiple self-inflicted scandals, calling the 70-year-old mogul “woefully unprepared” and ‘unfit to serve as president.”
Obama turned up the heat on Republicans who appear increasingly ill at ease with Trump but have not withdrawn their endorsement. He says Trump case is not of something where you have an episodic gaffe. Rather, this is daily and weekly occurrences. Although the number of Republicans distancing themselves from Trump statements are growing, but that is not enough to stop Trump from moving ahead. The supporters must draw a line and say “enough is enough and we are not going to vote for somebody who is simply not fit for the role of Commander in chief of USA.”
Trump’s sparked outrage over the weekend when he aggressively countered the claims of Khizr Khan, the father of a Muslim American soldier killed in action who said Trump had “sacrificed nothing and no one” for his country.
And his unrestrained attacks on Republican leaders who have rebuked him for it, threaten to shatter his uneasy alliance with the Republican Party at the outset of the general election campaign.
Trump’s obstinacy in addressing perhaps the gravest crisis of his campaign has triggered drastic defections within the party. And it is not without reason that Republican lawmakers and strategists have begun to entertain abandoning him en masse. Trump won the Republican primary handily, but is trailing Clinton in general election polls by around four percentage points.
Obama has already endorsed his fellow Democrat and has repeatedly pilloried Trump’s populism.
The truth is that Trump is politically naive. He is carrying ‘boss mentality’ which he should ideally save for boardroom. Here, Democracy and American values are at stake.
Should the American people choose Trump, there will be consequences, because a US election is a global election.