(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Between 18 hours and a week, one or the other Donald Trump Or Kamala Harris will be president-elect of the United States.

Neither deserves this honor; and none of them can be trusted with the responsibility he will inherit.

For his part, Trump has repeatedly disqualified himself. His irresponsible rhetoric is appalling and often cited by his detractors as one of his main flaws, but it is a symptom of a larger, more insidious disease.

Donald Trump is a narcissist who will go to lengths almost no one else would to satisfy his ego. He lied about the election he lost in 2020, inspired a mob to march to the Capitol as Congress fulfilled its constitutional duty to certify the results, and eggs this mob continued as they threatened the life of their vice president. On this basis alone, he is unfit to serve his country in any capacity, much less as Commander-in-Chief.

But even if the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol had never happened, Trump would be an unworthy occupant of the Oval Office. Character is destiny, and if it wasn’t for his sore loser syndrome that disgraced the nation, it would have been or would be something else. There is more to be done against Trump, but he fails so miserably on the most basic preliminary question that he makes the rest redundant.

Harris, on the other hand, is an inveterate liar who has no accomplishments to highlight during her nearly 8 years as a federal minister. A near-empty pantsuit with radical tendencies, she would say anything, do anything, and be anything to climb the next rung. In 2020, Harris ran for president on what would have been one of the most radical agendas in American history, promising, for starters, to abolish private health insurance, ban fracking , open the border and pay for the sex of illegal immigrants. transition treatments.

It was embarrassing. And if her 2024 campaign is any indication, she’s embarrassed about it. Harris has spent her second White House bid somehow moving away from her previously expressed positions, one unsigned statement or dodge at a time. On Sunday, Harris was asked how she voted on a California ballot proposal to impose harsher sentences on people convicted of theft or drug crimes.

She answered“I’m not going to talk about voting on this because, honestly, it’s the Sunday before the election, and I have no intention of creating an endorsement one way or another around this .” At least she was honest about her dishonesty: Americans aren’t always so lucky. Axios asked if the vice president was sticking to the 18 different policies she pushed for in 2020, but received 18 cheeky “No comments.” Who knew cowardice could be so insulting?

Oh, and all that, not to mention the damning roles she played in Biden’s failed administration: “last person in the room” and border czar (de facto Or de jure).

Of course, condemning these candidates is not the same as condemning the voters who will pull the lever for them. The two main American parties have asked the rest of the country to make a choice, we can’t blame them. The most notable virtue of a Trump victory would be to thwart Harris and vice versa. It’s not much, but it’s something.

All this East say this: whoever loses will only have themselves to blame.

Republicans have rebranded a man who tried to overturn the results of the last election and with less impulse control than the 8-week-old puppy this author brought home last weekend.

The Democrats tried to convince their failing, rapidly declining president to replace him with a far-left incompetent.

When the results are known, the loser will inevitably blame some nebulous force for their defeat. Trump would double down on his lie about election fraud; his supporters would cry on the media; Harris and his supporters would blame every “ism” in the book.

But the hard truth is this: while the winner will barely have deserved their victory, the loser will more than deserve their fate.

This is an opinion article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.