It was nice to see one of your readers coming to the defense of Donald J. Trump in the Port Washington Times two weeks ago.
Mr. Trump needs all the support he can muster, especially since Republican politicians don’t seem to be rushing to his defense in the wake of the nationwide pushback following the sacking of F.B.I. Director James Comey.
Not to mention the fact that polls show that a majority of Americans think that Mr. Trump’s abrupt dismissal of Mr. Comey was not appropriate; 46 percent think that he was fired due to the Russian investigation; and that even before the Comey sacking Mr. Trump had a near-record 36-58 percent job (dis)approval rating.
And those polls were taken before the revelation that Mr. Trump asked Mr. Comey to shut down the F.B.I. investigation into Michael Flynn’s ties to Russia, a report that the White House obviously denies.
It appears that your reader took offense to my legitimate criticism of Mr. Trump, calling it “incendiary and ignorant.”
Although he professed an inability to “go into detail due to the size limitations of a letter to the editor,” your reader managed to take almost a full page to “retort.”
I won’t take similar space to respond.
Regarding Mr. Trump’s foreign policy, he goes to great lengths to justify the China, Iran, North Korea, NATO and NAFTA bashing while ignoring how Mr. Trump has backed off from these attacks.
One day NATO is “obsolete;” the next day, not so much.
Wasn’t Mr. Trump going to tear up NAFTA on day one? Now, he’s not in such a hurry.
His shifts of position are not tactics, as your reader would have it. They reflect an inability to comprehend the complexities and implications of foreign relations.
Although your reader may prefer Mr. Trump’s style, foreign policy isn’t the same as negotiating a real estate transaction.
Our relations with one country have ripple effects on our relations with others, all of which have to be taken into account. Clearly, this is not something that Mr. Trump seems able to grasp.
Mr. Trump is the child pitted against the adults leading other countries.
Mr. Trump wanted to “lock up” Hillary Clinton because of her email server, though there has never been any indication that Mrs. Clinton exposed sensitive information from an ally or gave it to an adversary.
Yet Mr. Trump sat in the Oval Office and disclosed to the Russian Foreign Minister and Russian Ambassador highly classified information that had been provided to us by a Middle Eastern ally, a disclosure that could lead this ally to cut off our future access to such sensitive information.
Not to mention the fact that it could dissuade other nations from sharing sensitive intelligence information with us.
I’m not certain what investigation your reader has conducted in order to conclude that there were no links between Russia and the Trump campaign, but I’ll wait for an inquiry by an independent counsel with subpoena powers before drawing any conclusions.
Mr. Trump’s anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim attacks have served as recruitment posters for ISIS and other terrorist organizations.
So, yes, Mr. Trump can do much worse than Barack Obama and most definitely poses a threat to our national security.
On the domestic front, your reader serves as an echo chamber for Mr. Trump’s attacks on the federal courts. But, Mr. Trump’s attacks on the judiciary undermine its independence and threaten the rule of law which is the foundation of our democracy.
Federal judges are not “political hacks.” They have been confirmed by the Senate and have undertaken an oath to uphold the Constitution.
Mr. Trump has taken a similar oath, though it sometimes appears that he doesn’t understand that.
Remember when Republicans had a hissy fit over the adoption of the Affordable Care Act because they claimed they didn’t have time to read it?
Well, Mr. Trump had no trouble getting House Republicans to pass a bill to repeal and replace the ACA without reading it and without waiting for the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to evaluate how many people would lose their health insurance or the bill’s impact on the federal deficit.
The only thing we know for certain is that the bill would provide people with incomes over $1 million with huge tax savings.
When well over 90 percent of published climate scientists have concluded that recent climate warming is real and is mostly produced by human activity, there is a consensus that the present global warming trend is anthropogenic.
And, no, we’re not talking about the conclusions of “crony socialists,” we’re talking about peer-reviewed scientific papers.
And most definitely we’re not talking about those of so-called climate scientists funded by the fossil fuel industry and touted by the conservative media which have not been subjected to peer review.
This climate research-for-hire resembles the discredited tobacco industry funded research of the past which attempted to refute connections between smoking and cancer and other diseases.
As for the economy, those without a selective memory may recall the double-dip recessions of the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and the stock market crashes of 1987 and 1989.
Republicans talk loosely about the need for accountability, but engage in pretzel-like contortions to avoid accountability when it comes to the Great Recession under George W. Bush.
In much the same way, your reader attributes the dot-com bubble and the Great Recession to Bill Clinton and claims that the economic growth of the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama years had nothing to do with their presidencies.
The fact is, trickle-down, supply side economics didn’t have anything to do with that growth.
And, yes, most economists, including Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman, have discredited that “voodoo economics” as magical thinking.
Thanks to Barack Obama, corporate America has emerged from the Great Recession with more than enough capital reserves to invest and doesn’t need the tax cuts that congressional Republicans so desperately want to provide.
But, instead of investing those capital reserves, corporate America has been engaged in share buybacks, dividend increases and mergers and acquisitions. Not to mention the fact that top management has continued to grow their compensation packages while suppressing the wages of their employees.
And, has your reader noticed how his investment portfolio grew under Barack Obama?
Those coal mining jobs Mr. Trump promised aren’t coming back no matter how many so-called job killing regulations are cut because coal isn’t competitive with other energy sources.
And those manufacturing jobs he promised aren’t coming back because those jobs are now handled for the most part by robots.
So, yes, the workers who voted for Mr. Trump because he said, “I love the poorly educated,” are being short changed. It’s the Republicans, not the Democrats, who don’t “give a damn about the American worker.”
Jay N. Feldman
Port Washington
