The country’s leading conservative editorial page called out President Donald Trump for his ongoing conspiracy theory campaign about Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough, condemning the ongoing personal attacks as a “presidential smear.”

In a Tuesday editorial, the Wall Street Journal pulled no punches in acknowledging that this isn’t the first time Trump has pushed viciously false claims about a political foil. “But this latest accusation against MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is ugly even for him,” the Journal said.

Noting that Trump continued to double down on his outlandish rumor-mongering on Tuesday, the WSJ editorial board pointed out the facts: “There’s no evidence of foul play, or an affair with the woman, and the local coroner ruled that the woman fainted from an undiagnosed heart condition and died of head trauma.”

“Suggesting that the talk-show host is implicated in the woman’s death isn’t political hardball. It’s a smear,” the Journal declared. “Mr. Trump rightly denounces the lies spread about him in the Steele dossier, yet here he is trafficking in the same sort of trash.”

The paper then pointed out that numerous other conservatives, like Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, have publicly urged Trump to “Just stop. Stop spreading it.” 

“We don’t write this with any expectation that Mr. Trump will stop,” the editorial board acknowledged. “Perhaps he even thinks this helps him politically, though we can’t imagine how. But Mr. Trump is debasing his office, and he’s hurting the country in doing so.”