Last week we watched two iconic newsrooms step away from endorsing candidates due to the cowardice of their billionaire backers, signaling a crumbling of our societal infrastructure. Its failing. Norms are no longer normal this campaign season, which reached a new nadir Sunday with a disgusting racist, sexist and xenophobic display from former President Donald Trump, the man whom these billionaires covet through their acquiescence.

Our extensive reporting on this campaign season has proved, over and over again, that Donald Trump is not qualified to return to the Oval Office. We know this because, at HuffPost, we are a pro-truth, pro-fact, reality-based newsroom, grounded in pragmatism and dedicated to our audiences health, happiness and safety all of which are under threat in a Trump presidency. Weve been beating the drum, with the support of our readers , warning all about the dangers of this man long before he came down that escalator in 2015 and went on to allow more than a million Americans to die of COVID-19 on his watch.

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This should be disqualifying enough, but for many, it hasnt been. In fact, none of it has been. And theres a lot of it. The blatant racism; the hatred of immigrants in a country of immigrants; the sexual assault accusations ; the mocking and denigration of our military and veterans; the collapse of his COVID economy ; the lies and demagoguery that led to the assault on our nations Capitol and the loss of life on Jan. 6, 2021; his praise of Adolf Hitler . None of these things, plus countless more , have been disqualifying for nearly half the country as the race has remained deadlocked. And theyve been particularly not disqualifying for those poised to benefit the most from Trumps return to power: the billionaire elites.

The neglect and heel-turns from the ultra-wealthy are not for ideological or emotional reasons. This has little to do with policy or lawmaking and everything to do with convenience, cowardice and quid pro quo .

They know of profits often engineered on the backs of underpaid and under-protected labor . They know of influence in the form of turning platforms like the social network formerly known as Twitter into megaphones for racists and unfettered hate . But they know not of ethics, specifically the belief in a separation of church and state between their newsrooms and the moneyed ownership.