To the Editor:
I returned from a three-week absence to find our president giving “All praise to Allah” for the human and structural destruction in Iran. And, too, offering to answer questions at the Future Investment Initiative in Miami, “You can ask me anything you want. You can talk sex.” Trump also attacked Pope Leo, who answers to a higher authority, advising the first American-born Pontiff to “get his act together” and curiously asserting that, “If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.” Later, Trump posted a picture of himself as Jesus Christ on Truth Social. His incremental dementia is now undeniably without conscience, delusional, and rampant.
Trump’s War continues nearly 50 days in. Still no defensible reason to support it (besides Bibi’s demands,) still no Plan B or European allies, and no retreat plan except to spontaneously declare “victory” and withdraw, leaving the Middle East more volatile than ever. But a new Iranian Toll on oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz!
Trump’s “Peace Negotiation Team” consisted of two real estate moguls and VP Vance, whose mission was to make Iran: forget or overlook that Trump has doubled-down on threats to reduce their three-thousand years civilization to rubble and commit genocide on its people, and to release the blockage and oil shipment toll now set on the Strait, making an already terrible government more powerful.
Trump’s reaction to the peace negotiation failure is a retaliatory threat to counter blockade the Strait from the Mediterranean, setting up a crisis when, say, a ship from China wants to fill up a tanker in Iran, an imminent fact he has not confronted. The tsunamic ripples have only begun, but will overtake many lives in many places, including here.
The Republican Congress has shamelessly and consistently enabled and encouraged this grandiose, emotionally critically -wounded president who cares only for his own glory, embraces cruelty, struts like a potentate, and who has surrounded himself with advisors hired to assure him of his wisdom and righteousness. Truth, as always with Trump, is irrelevant. American citizens, and the free world, are at the mercy of this uncontrolled, malignant administration. But there is hope.
The 25th Amendment is a fairly messy, lengthy process that relies only on the Party in power.
Waiting for the midterms is dangerous because, since 2024, Trump has been working to disenfranchise voters (especially likely Democratic voters), trying to take over the election process in the states to “reduce fraud” (the Republican House-passed SAVE Act) for which there is no significant evidence anywhere, even after numerous audits. Trump has actually said that there will be no need to have another federal election (Arizona, 2023). If all else fails, we know from experience that he will conjure up a “national emergency” to halt the election process.
Impeachment is the true immediate remedy and, while the Republicans have shown neither comprehension or courage in confronting Trump on behalf of the American people, the rest of us must, as it as the only immediate survival mechanism for our, and our children’s, free futures.
Martin, wailing impending doom in the fetal position, waiting for heavenly intercession to save us from our own created messes, and refusing responsibility for the cleanup and amends, is not defensible. We have made some singularly bad political decisions with massive world repercussions. Here’s where the critical move toward responsibility, world stability, and peace must begin. As Americans, we alone have the power and means to enlist a Constitutional remedy in Impeachment. Let Congressional Republicans vote and tell us where they stand on our futures.
Vance is a distasteful piece of work and a pro-despot, uncertain negotiator, and craven power seeker, but this is the option we have been given. But he does not appear to be a war monger and, as yet, does not reek of madness.
Kelly Scoles,
Fillmore, Ca.