An Open Letter to Maureen Dowd

An open letter to Maureen Dowd:

Dear Maureen,

I don't usually read the "Sunday Review" in The Times because I get the paper for facts, not the opinions of others, even those with whom I agree.  But on December 1 I did read it for some reason, and I came across your, or should I say your brother's and sister's love letter to Donald Trump.  I understand that you allow them to control your column every year around Thanksgiving, but maybe that's a bad idea because even Trumpers have to admit that facts matter, and opinions based on fiction have a "malign" (to use a popular word among Trump fans) effect.

As to your sister's admiration for Jim Jordan, I doubt she would admit it if she realized that he does nothing but swear to someone else's lies.  For example, at the televised intelligence committee hearings he insisted in his highest dudgeon that Trump won the electoral college in a "landslide," which is also Trump's favorite way to characterize his electoral college victory.  But the fact is that Trump won the electoral college vote by the smallest margin of any president since Jimmy Carter...except one: good old W.  Bush also gave us the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the worst recession since the Great Depression, won by fewer electoral votes...twice.  Both W and Trump, unlike any other presidents in that era, won with less than 60% of the electoral votes--a dubious distinction that they also share.  But they also share the distinction of winning the presidency by losing the popular vote.  Trump wins there though; he lost by almost three million popular votes.  That's the landslide that Trump lied about and Jordan swore to.

As to your brother, I have no idea what his opinions are based on...certainly not reality.  As to Trump's economy, he inherited eight years of continuous growth from Barrack Obama and managed to add three amounting to the longest continuous period of growth in American history.  But without Obama, Trump would have accomplished nothing.  Obama inherited an economy that was losing 750,000 jobs a month from our old pal W and handed off an economy that was producing over a hundred thousand jobs a month and an unemployment rate down from the rate on the day of his inauguration approaching 10% to about 4.5% when Trump took over.  It's Obama's economy, not Trump's.  It has just continued the trend that Trump inherited.  He didn't create it.

Regarding international affairs, as to Iran and North Korea, Iran has gone back to distilling uranium to fissionable grade since Trump bowed out of the deal that the international community is now failing to save without us.  So Trump's accomplishment with regard to Iran is that he put them back on the path to development of a nuclear bomb.  And as to Trump's bromantic partner in North Korea, he is doing just what he was doing when Trump boasted that he had turned him around as his predecessors had failed to.  North Korea is still testing medium range to long range missiles, and they already have nuclear weapons, so Trump gets a zero for Kim Jong-un.  And let's just not talk about Ukraine.  Then of course there is the wall that Mexico was going to build.

Your brother's admiration for Trump's hardening in the New York construction trade is a little misguided too.  Trump built casinos in Atlantic City and formed management companies to run them.  Then, when the casinos started losing money and sinking into the New Jersey beach sand, Trump sold junk bonds, paid the fees of his management companies, and then wiped out the bond holders in bankruptcy.  He promised a bunch of Polish workers a certain wage if they would come over here and help build Trump Tower, and then paid them less.  When they threatened to sue, he told them that he would tie their lawyers up in court so badly that they would wind up with less than he paid them after attorneys' fees.  Trump wasn't hardened in the construction trade.  He just learned to lie and cheat with the help of his late concilliary, Roy Cohn, and the abetting of his now incarcerated minion, Michael Cohen, Esq.

Finally, Kevin said "God help me," when he talked about leaving God out of oaths taken prior to testimony and House hearings.  Well, through afflatus God helped us all when he caused our founding fathers to proscribe state religions in the very first provision of a list of our democratic rights that Jefferson and the rest inserted into our constitutional Bill of Rights.  And maybe he will help us convict our liar-in-chief as well.

Your friend,

Mike