Where to begin with Don Roberts’ absurd Jan. 28 column, “Trump robbed of a fair chance.” “Respect for the office” of the president? Donald Trump has disgraced that office with his repeated lies and ignorant actions.

Roberts, like Trump, can’t accept that nearly 3 million more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton. His recital of statistics from the Dallas Morning News is irrelevant. Many Americans feel that Trump’s loss of the popular vote, coupled with Russia’s meddling and the profusion of fake news stories, really does call the legitimacy of Trump’s election into question.

Roberts calls us “the world’s greatest democracy.” I’d call us the worst. In what other democracy is the vote winner denied office?

There is no excuse in a real democracy for giving a voter who chooses to live in a rural locality more influence than an urban voter when choosing our president. The patriots of 1776 were inspired by the Declaration of Independence’s assertion that “all men are created equal,” not by an Electoral College that denies that ideal.

If Roberts could see past the “alternate facts” of Trump World, he would see the destruction and chaos already evident in Trump’s actions. Not only will most Americans’ lives be worse, we will be much less safe.

Citing 9/11, Trump prohibited travel from seven Muslim countries, yet he ignored the obvious candidate: Saudi Arabia is the source of three-quarters of the 9/11 hijackers and, more importantly, of the virulent radical Islamist ideology inspiring al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.

Trump has removed the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of National Intelligence from permanent membership in his National Security Council and added the extreme right-wing propagandist Steve Bannon. Seriously. His very own Joseph Goebbels.

Roberts got one thing right: “We are poised at the edge of a nasty precipice.”

John R. Merrill

Augusta

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