Great New York Times conservative Columnist Bret Stephens said Monday he would vote for Kamala Harris to prevent another Donald Trump presidency.

“I really would have preferred to just sit out Election Day. But January 6 and election denial are unforgivable,” Stephens told his columnist partner Gail Collins in an article published Monday. “As my friend Richard North Patterson likes to say, 'Donald Trump is crazy in every sense of the word.' And what brings the craziness is JD Vance, who I think is worse than Trump because he is just as cynical but twice as smart.”

Previously a Harris skeptic, Stephens continued to question MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle Real Time with Bill Maher Why Harris didn't sit down for a real interview and make her policy positions clearer to undecided voters like him.

In a widely shared viral moment, Ruhle took him to task: “We have two options. There are some things you may not know the answer to either. In 2024, we know exactly what Trump will do, who he is and what kind of threat he poses to democracy.”

Stephens described his hesitant vote as “99.999 percent” a vote against Trump and “0.001 percent” a vote for Harris, who he described as “as expressionless behind the scenes as he is on the public stage.” He said he feared it would stumble against foreign adversaries such as China and Russia and make policy decisions in the service of more progressive values.

Still, he said, “I'd rather take my chances with a president whose competence I doubt and whose policies I don't like than with one whose character I detest.”

Stephens, a columnist whose columns on climate change and the Jewish people have drawn widespread criticism, has long loathed Trump.

During his term as Wall Street Journal As a columnist, he wrote numerous articles denouncing a Trump presidency in the run-up to the 2016 election and argued in the 2018 Just that Trump should be impeached. Ahead of the 2020 election, he tried to sell skeptical Republicans on the concept of being a “Biden conservative,” arguing that a Joe Biden presidency would serve conservatives better than four more years of Trumpism.

“The domestic problem of our time is not the size of government,” Stephens wrote at the time. “It is the unity of the country. We are experiencing the worst social unrest in 50 years. We have a president who is inherently divisive and deliberately fomenting it.”

Trump also expressed no love for Stephens, calling him a “Trump-hating loser” last month who “seemed completely confused and insecure” after Stephens called Trump “anti-Semitic.” Real Time with Bill Maher. Stephens said at the time he would not vote for Trump, although he had not committed to voting for Harris either.

By voting for Harris for president, Stephens said Monday, he wanted to prevent a complete embrace of traditional Republican values ​​by Trump.

“This election could be the last chance for Reagan conservatives like me – those who support lower taxes, free trade, deregulation, free speech (even those who disagree with me), a strong military, and defending embattled populations “Allies like Ukraine – to drive a stake into the heart of Trumpism,” Stephens told Collins. “If he wins, we will be faced with an isolationist and nativist conservative movement for generations to come.”