To the Editor:
Trump’s poll number’s have been declining to the point where around 55% of the voting population disapproves of his performance so far, but 40% still approve. The real question is not why so many disapprove, but why so many still approve.
Granted, he has closed the border, which I and a majority of Americans approve of, but it is hard to see any other accomplishments. He has alienated almost all of America’s allies. He has slowed our economic growth, raised inflation.
He has attacked media and our environment, and most recently his administration has threatened to take legal actions against people like Beyonce, Kamala Harris, ex-president Obama and even Oprah.
His heartless deportation of thousands of resident foreign workers, many of whom have been in the U.S. for years without causing any trouble, often separating families in the process, is more than troublesome; it verges on despicable. He has attacked Fed Chairman Powell and countless politicians, including many in his own party, often lashing out with angry name-calling.
His latest trade negotiations with the Japanese has them “investing” $550 billion in the U.S. economy, which he translates into new factories built by them for American workers, but actually that is around $540 billion in loans for any purpose, all of which will entail interest paid back to Japanese banks. And already the cost of Japanese-made cars has risen for American buyers.
I can understand why most people don’t realize those facts about the loans; after all, they are rather technical, but why anyone would take Trump’s word for his “successes” is beyond me, given his history of empty boasts, numerous failures, not to speak of his endless flow of flat-out lies, one of the latest being his claims about destroying Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
And that doesn’t include hundreds of actions that are beneath the media radar like his USDA halting all applications for the Rural Energy Application Program for two months, leaving thousands of farmers scrambling for money.
Now, despite endless warnings from both scientists and economists about the growing cost of climate-change-related events, Trump’s EPA is trying to eliminate the 2009 ruling that CO2 from car exhaust is a major cause of atmospheric pollution and climate change, thus putting Trump’s repeated false claims about scientific issues into motion.
Couple that with his recent embarrassing rant on TV with EU chief Von Der Leyden about “windmills” causing cancer (which was completely off the subject) in front of the world to see, and his idiotic statement that China is not producing wind farms when in fact their 520 gigs of wind energy is almost equal to the rest of the world combined is simply two black eyes for America.
But the worst part of Trump’s entire presentation of the U.S. to the world is that he is drawing a picture of our country in decline. The tariffs say that we can no longer compete with the global economy on the cost/quality basis of our products.
The way deportations are being handled says that the U.S. has lost its humanitarian justice, and Trump’s absurd rants, attacks on science and education tell the world that we no longer value knowledge.
And worst of all, the fact that his party, voters and politicians, are so quiescent about all that says that the U.S. is becoming a nation of cowards.
Not good at all.
Bruce Allen
Del Haven
