"Habitual Mendacity, Pathological Narcissism, Profound Ignorance And An Astonishing Dearth Of Basic Human Empathy"

That's Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer describing Donald Trump in a searing new column at the Washington Post titled "It's not the 'locker room' talk, it's the 'lock her up' talk." Key passage:

Such incendiary talk is an affront to elementary democratic decency and a breach of the boundaries of American political discourse. In democracies, the electoral process is a subtle and elaborate substitute for combat, the age-old way of settling struggles for power. But that sublimation only works if there is mutual agreement to accept both the legitimacy of the result (which Trump keeps undermining with charges that the very process is “rigged”) and the boundaries of the contest.

The prize for the winner is temporary accession to limited political power, not the satisfaction of vendettas. Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chávez and a cavalcade of two-bit caudillos lock up their opponents. American leaders don’t.

One doesn’t even talk like this. It takes decades, centuries, to develop ingrained norms of political restraint and self-control. But they can be undone in short order by a demagogue feeding a vengeful populism. Read the entire column here.