This is a guest opinion column

U.S. Sen. Katie Britt’s column this week endorsing Donald Trump for president contains important mis-shadings of facts, along with even worse abandonments of logic and of principle.

The endorsement is unnecessary, unwise, and unseemly.

Britt’s factual trickeries alone beg for refutation, even before the more consequential considerations of principle. In her column, Britt devoted more space to the crisis of illegal immigration than to any other issue, and she stressed that the first argument in Trump’s favor is that “he secured our southern border.” Nonsense. Yes, Trump spent the 2016 campaign loudly blasting former President Barack Obama’s immigration record. But by official statistics, Trump made the border even worse. In his four years, the 1,980,210 Border Patrol “encounters” of illegal immigrants exceeded those of either Obama’s first term (1,724,443) or second term (1,660,343), and would have been even higher if the pandemic hadn’t skewed the numbers downward in the final year of Trump’s term.

Britt also wrote that Trump “battled for fair trade,” but doesn’t mention that he failed. The U.S. trade deficit soared under Trump while U.S. manufacturing declined. Britt wrote that Trump “stood up for our incredible farmers.” That’s risible. Trump’s tariffs raised prices for American consumers and manufacturers and led to retaliatory levies by China and India that interrupted markets for American farm products. Trump bailed out the farmers his own policies had hurt only by using $28 billion in American taxpayer dollars, adding to the federal debt and to inflationary pressures.

Also spuriously, Britt wrote that Trump “combatted the opioid epidemic.” Actually, U.S. drug overdose deaths rose precipitously during his presidency.

In sum, Trump fumbled the very issues Britt listed as most important. Those failures, though, are the least of the reasons why Britt’s endorsement is so wrongheaded. Britt here was not making a choice between Trump and doddering liberal president Joe Biden. Instead, she was endorsing Trump over three remaining serious Republicans, each with strong records as conservative governors.

From a purely political standpoint, does Britt really think Trump stands a better chance of beating a Democratic nominee than do Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, or even Chris Christie (who twice won as a conservative in liberal New Jersey)? The polls repeatedly and strongly say otherwise. So does Trump’s record of losing the popular vote twice by millions of ballots and of losing the Electoral College in 2020 to an old man hiding in his basement. Trump also led fellow Republicans to defeat in congressional and statewide races in 2018, 2021, 2022, and 2023.

And does Britt really think Trump, at age 78 and sounding increasingly unhinged, could really govern better than those three rivals, especially considering that his mistreatment of so many talented former aides and Cabinet members has left only second-stringers willing to serve him? If he tried and failed to “drain the swamp” last time, how could he do so in a second term? If the “deep state” foiled his plans for four years, how can he now break its back? If he couldn’t repeal Obamacare, couldn’t “build the wall” or “make Mexico pay for it,” and if he spent more taxpayer money by every measure than every previous peacetime president in U.S. history, then why does she think he now can succeed?

Moreover, Trump has proved to be dangerously divisive. Does she really think it will be better for the country – for unifying America, for avoiding riots, for standing as one against China – than would the far more even-keeled Haley?

Most importantly, Britt is endorsing someone of much lower character than she claims to value. She was supposed to be better than this. Having seen him accuse opponents’ fathers of helping assassinate former President Kennedy, having seen Trump pay off porn stars, having seen him deliberately hold and lie about highly classified documents against all applicable law, and having seen him repeatedly pledge to punish political enemies upon a return to office, how can she say he is fit to govern?

That’s not even to mention that Trump spent months conspiring to overturn an election he clearly lost, assembled a mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol, continued inciting the mob against his own vice president even after he knew the mob was chanting for his vice president’s execution, and now claims in court that the presidential oath literally does not require him “to support the Constitution.”

Britt’s endorsement isn’t about what’s best for the country; it’s about relieving political pressure and maybe currying favor for a (longshot) selection as vice president. All she had to do was keep saying she’ll trust Republican voters to choose for themselves among excellent GOP candidates, and then work hard against Biden for whoever wins the nod. Instead, she caved to badgering from a “rabid dog” contingent of right-wing misfits and grifters.

If she can’t take the pressure now, five full years before her next election (by which time Trump would be limping to the end of his own second term, is she really as tough as she pretends? Her reputation as something other than a cynical, ambitious pol, meanwhile, has taken a massive, self-inflicted blow.

Mobile resident Quin Hillyer, a longtime chief editorial writer for the Mobile Register, is Deputy Commentary Editor for the Washington Examiner.