Williams assumes role of Trump propagandist
The recent column by Armstrong Williams is so replete with misstatements and blatant falsehoods it should appear in a new section of The Baltimore Sun titled “Propaganda” (“Armstrong Williams: The second coming of Trump,” Nov. 10).
Inflation was a worldwide problem, a result of the pandemic that Donald Trump botched. Remember him saying it will just go away by summer and that you should inject yourself with bleach? The economy under President Trump did not boom — unless you were very, very rich. President Joe Biden’s economy did, in fact, boom.
Immigration has been lower in Biden’s last year than in any year of Trump’s term. And not to mention Trump killed a bipartisan bill that would have helped ease the crisis because he wanted a campaign issue. Immigrants pay billions of dollars in federal and state taxes and Social Security for benefits they will never receive. And not to mention the thousands of business that will go under because their workers will have been deported.
It was Trump who made the disastrous deal with the Taliban that Biden had to honor. Trump released Taliban prisoners and their weapons that were used against our soldiers. And those fallen soldiers Trump called losers because they fought and had nothing to gain.
Trump will end the war in Ukraine by cutting off weapons for their defense forcing them to cede territory to Russian President Vladimir Putin. And Putin will then know he can attack our allies and Trump will give him free rein because Trump doesn’t believe in allies.
Trump didn’t peacefully transfer power: He led an insurrection against the United States.
In closing, Armstrong says Trump’s statements are just histrionic and then says we should take Trump at his word. I do and those words terrify me.
— John Gazurian, Baltimore
No room (thankfully) for Pompeo in Trump’s cabinet
President-elect Donald Trump unburdened me of another great fear recently when it was announced former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would not be joining the Trump cabinet (“Trump says Haley, Pompeo won’t be invited to join White House,” Nov. 9).
For context, as CIA director from 2017 to 2018, Pompeo considered kidnapping and possibly assassinating WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. And more recently, Pompeo was caught on video dancing with Israeli soldiers as they celebrated the continued slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
This was the auspicious sign I needed to show me that perhaps Trump has learned from first-term missteps. By overlooking Pompeo, the president-elect is declaring loud and clear that conscienceless, war-itchy neocons — like Victoria Nuland, Liz Cheney and Mike Pompeo — have no place within the ranks of this visionary administration.
But I also detect an honor-bound commitment to the pledges Trump made while campaigning — to men and women in hardhats with calloused hands and weather-beaten work boots and to that vast hopeful sea of resolutely supportive red caps. Trump vowed to end the perverted indoctrination of schoolchildren through hypersexualized curricula and to deport the millions of illegal migrants waved in under President Joe Biden’s watch.
This suggests that Americans will witness more than Band-Aid fixes, that with his election mandate and a Republican majority in Congress, Trump will overhaul the education system into a fountainhead of moral and academic excellence. And he will sign into law immigration reforms that enhance America and that will impregnably safeguard against a future domestically engineered invasion.
Good luck, President-elect Trump. I know you won’t let us down.
— Scott R. Hammond, Baltimore
What is Armstrong Williams thinking?
Until his most recent column, Armstrong Williams has been presenting himself as a fairly rational conservative.
In “Armstrong Williams: The Second Coming of Trump” (Nov. 10), however, he reveals his true self when he describes Donald Trump’s first term as “luminous” and states that he “peacefully transferred power to President Joe Biden on Jan. 20, 2021.”
Really? This made me think of the famous line from the movie “When Harry Met Sally”: I’ll have what he’s having!
— Steve Block, Baltimore
Evolving view of veterans in the Trump era
I agree wholeheartedly with Tom Jurkowski’s recent commentary in the Baltimore Sun, “To honor our veterans, give them what’s been promised” (Nov. 11).
Sorry that he and his fellow servicemen were disrespected upon returning from Vietnam, but times have changed. Those vets, along with the most recent, now get the love they deserve.
But I wonder if those feelings will survive if President Donald Trump uses U.S. troops to go after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other enemies “from within” as he’s promised.
— Jim Dempsey, Edgewood