Support our journalism Become a subscriber today to support editorial writing like this. Start getting full access to our signature journalism for just 99 cents for the first four weeks. Although his policies are, for the most part, variations on classic Republican positions (many of which would have been undertaken by a President Ted Cruz or a President Marco Rubio), they become far more dangerous in the hands of this imprudent and erratic man. In the months ahead, Trump will bring his embrace of alternative facts on the nation’s behalf into talks with China, North Korea or any number of powers with interests counter to ours and that constitute an existential threat. ” Share this quote 
 
 On Inauguration Day, we wrote on this page that it was not yet time to declare a state of “wholesale panic” or to call for blanket “non-cooperation” with the Trump administration. Richard Nixon said “I am not a crook” but by that point must have seen that he was. This is the second in a series.
– It's not unusual for newspaper editorials to criticize a president's policies. But the editorial board at the Los Angeles Times is taking the concept to a new level with a multi-part series called "Our Dishonest President." Part one on Sunday issued a warning that President Trump is "so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-regard, so untethered to reality that it is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation." Those traits may have helped him get elected as an "outsider," but hopes that they would be reined in once he entered the White House are fading. The editorial ends with a plea for voters, protesters, members of Congress, state legislators, the courts, the media, etc., to be vigilant about protecting America from its own president. On Monday, part two focuses on Trump's capacity to lie. Plenty of politicians lie, of course, but what Trump "brings to the equation is an apparent disregard for fact so profound as to suggest that he may not see much practical distinction between lies, if he believes they serve him, and the truth." What makes this especially dangerous is that Trump repeats the lies of others, even crackpots. "He gives every indication that he is as much the gullible tool of liars as he is the liar in chief." Verification seems to be a foreign concept to Trump, but it can't be for everyone else, write the editors, who close with advice: "Investigate. Read. Write. Listen. Speak. Think. ... Be suspicious of those who confuse reality with reality TV, and those who repeat falsehoods while insisting, against all evidence, that they are true. To defend freedom, demand fact." Read part one and part two.