In a piece entitled “Witless Ape Rides Escalator,” National Review Online’s Kevin Williamson thoroughly eviscerated Donald Trump and the June 16 announcement of Trump’s presidential “candidacy.”  Anyone who witnessed or saw coverage of the spectacle can relate to Williamson’s vivid characterization of the Donald as “uniquely positioned to lead the most indebted organization in the history of the human race.”

The Trump conglomerate is the Argentina of limited-liability companies, having been in bankruptcy as recently as 2009. To be sure, a lot of companies went bankrupt around then. The Trump gang went bankrupt in 2004, too, and in 2001. Before that, Trump was in bankruptcy court back in 1991 when his Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City — the nation’s first casino-cum-strip-club, an aesthetic crime against humanity that is tacky by the standards of Atlantic City — turned out to be such a loser that Trump could not make his debt payments.

Williamson observed:

Donald Trump, being Donald Trump, announced his candidacy at Trump Plaza, making a weird grand entrance via escalator — going down, of course, the symbolism of which is lost on that witless ape. But who could witness that scene — the self-made man who started with nothing but a modest portfolio of 27,000 New York City properties acquired by his millionaire slumlord father, barely out of his latest bankruptcy and possibly headed for another one as the casino/jiggle-joint bearing his name sinks into the filthy mire of the one U.S. city that makes Las Vegas look respectable, a reality-television grotesque…grunting like a baboon about our country’s “brand” and his own vast wealth — and not see the peerless sign of our times?

After noting that Trump's father's middle name was Christ, Williamson concluded:

The problem with messiah complexes is that there’s no way to know whether you are going to rise on the third day unless somebody crucifies you.  Trump has announced, and I say we get started on that.

Metaphorically, one assumes.  Read it all.

It’s a free country, of course.  Anyone who meets the constitutional qualifications for the presidency can run.  No one disputes that Trump meets those.  But the real problem with having Trump in the mix is that the Republican field, the broadest, most interesting in decades, containing a number of highly qualified candidates, will be made to stand on debate stages with the tacky megalomaniac, a wealthy vulgarian who cheapens everything and everyone around him.

Democrats welcomed Trump into the race, celebrating, at long last, the entry of “a serious Republican candidate.”

Trump will get a lot of coverage from the left-leaning press.  They’ll attempt to tar the entire Republican field with Trump’s conspicuous coarseness.