The conservative New York Times columnist concedes that Trump deserves all the success he has enjoyed so far in the Republican primary, but argues that he doesn’t deserve the presidency. It is nothing that hasn’t been said before, but it has the virtue of being correct.
Donald Trump is epically unprepared to be president. He has no realistic policies, no advisers, no capacity to learn. His vast narcissism makes him a closed fortress. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and he’s uninterested in finding out. He insults the office Abraham Lincoln once occupied by running for it with less preparation than most of us would undertake to buy a sofa.
He continues:
He is a childish man running for a job that requires maturity. He is an insecure boasting little boy whose desires were somehow arrested at age 12. He surrounds himself with sycophants.
Brooks still can’t bring himself to offer a full diagnosis of what motivates Trump’s voters—“they are left out of this economy,” he writes—but his stalwart opposition might buck up #NeverTrump forces that are starting to lose their resolve.