Salt Lake City Tribune endorses Hillary Clinton for president
Major Utah newspaper The Salt Lake City Tribune on Wednesday endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in an editorial, calling her the “only qualified candidate” and “the best choice.”
“It is time to make a reasonable, considerate, realistic vote for president of the United States,” the editorial said. “There is certainly not a perfect choice but, at this point, the only candidate who comes close to being qualified and fit for the post is Hillary Clinton.”
The editorial said that Trump’s “outsider candidacy” began with “some good intentions” such as being willing to challenge the Republican Party’s religious right and taking a more critical view of President George W. Bush’s administration.
“But, as it played out, his entire campaign was based on divisive, bigoted and insulting rhetoric. On lies about how bad things are,” it said. “On a promise to fix things by basically being a dictator. It was all designed to inflame a vocal minority of us who haven’t adjusted to the fact that the America where white males brought home the bacon from secure factory jobs — and didn’t have to deal with a globe of different ethnic backgrounds — is gone for good.”
The editorial concluded that “Trump is astoundingly unfit” and “the best choice, without a doubt, is Hillary Clinton.”
The endorsement comes less than a week after Trump’s lewd comments about women from 2005 surfaced in a video late last week, which stirred up revolt within the GOP.
A number of elected officials in Utah have since pulled their support for Trump including Gov. Gary Herbert, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman. After the 2005 lewd Trump tape surfaced Friday, Sen. Mike Lee called on Trump to step down from the ticket -- Lee had never endorsed Trump, however. Sen. Orrin Hatch endorsed Trump over the summer, and while he condemned Trump’s remarks on the 2005 tape, he did not withdraw his endorsement.
Clinton has reached out to Utah voters including in an editorial published in the Deseret News in August. She wants to tap into growing antipathy for Trump, especially within the Mormon community, which could make Utah up for grabs in the general election. The state has not supported a Democrat for president since President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, but Clinton could put the state into play now more than 50 years later.
