letters2america

letters2america tag:letters2america.com,2010-03-24://1 2026-07-06T20:42:44Z Movable Type Pro 4.38 Letter 2 America for July 6, 2026 tag:letters2america.com,2026://1.1060 2026-07-06T20:41:11Z 2026-07-06T20:42:44Z

Michael Wolf http://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge
I don't remember what allegation prompted Trump to say this, but he tweeted that he was "a stable genius," both elements of that claim being preposterous. In fact, it has always been my opinion that he isn't smart enough to tie his own shoes, but until now that conclusion was debatable. Now however, since the advent of his Democrats are communists campaign, I'm pretty sure I'm right about his intellect, and I'll tell you why.

Not everyone knows that Trump was once represented and mentored by Roy Cohn. Cohn was a lawyer as execrable as Trump became under Cohn's tutelage. Ultimately, Cohn was disbarred, just weeks before he died of AIDS related conditions, having denied that he had AIDS during his lifetime. The significance of those facts isn't the fact itself, but its implications. Cohn was a rabid homophobe active in government and socio-political organizations dedicated to persecution of homosexuals. Put another way, with regard to the issue of sexual preference, Cohn was a hypocrite. He was also a, shall we say, morally flexible cohort of some questionable politicians, and related to some questionable people as well. As to the politicians, he was chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy, and let McCarthy's inquisition in pursuit of communists in government and elsewhere, including Hollywood. He helped McCarthy and the committee he chaired to ruin the lives of many people, which ultimately led to McCarthy's censure by The Senate for his abuse of power, to which Cohn was an accomplice. And after McCarthy's public disgrace, Cohn went back into private practice in New York where his dubious tactics helped him prosper to the extent that, in 1973 Trump hired Cohn to represent him in a government suit against Trump's real estate company alleging racial discrimination. Cohn filed a counter-suit alleging that the charges were, if you'll excuse the expression, trumped up and false. The suit failed, and Trump settled the case with the government by entering into an agreement to desist in his discriminatory activities. In fact, I recall seeing Trump on the sidewalk outside the courthouse claiming that the agreement was a victory for him, which he apparently convinced himself was true since he seems not to have learned his lesson. Less than ten years later he was in court again facing the same charges.

But be that as it may, Cohn was a mentor to Trump and coached him not to ever admit that he was wrong or guilty, among other dubious stratagems. And it is also obvious that the Cohn tutelage took as Trump continues to this day to brag whenever the opportunity presents itself, like when he propounded what he called the "Don-roe Doctrine," which he said was what others were calling his reprise of the Monroe Doctrine vis-à-vis South America, where China seems to be courting affiliations. And that in turn leads me back to the shoe-lace-tying issue; it wasn't more than a couple of months after the self-aggrandizing version of an old idea was flouted and Trump teamed up with Bibi Netanyahu to first bomb the hell out of Iran's nuclear facilities, and then bomb them again because Bibi told him that they were building a nuclear bomb--a fallacy that only someone who isn't too bright could swallow the way Trump did. And then there's the lame effort to negotiate his way out of the ostensible war that he himself created, but that leads me to the ultimate point.

Trump's "they're all communists" campaign seems to have come out of the blue, but it was in him waiting until he got an excuse to embark upon it. Cohn was an avid anti-communist, and my guess is that that too is something that he taught Trump since Trump has never had an original idea in his life. But the fact that Bernie Sanders coined the phrase democratic socialist, and that Zohran Mamdani has promoted it among his political protégés doesn't make it apt. I would say that "secular humanist" would have been a more apt sobriquet for that political camp, but that is neither here nor there.

Trump doesn't care about much that isn't happening to or about him, so I doubt that he knows what happened to McCarthy and Cohn back in the 1950's. McCarthy used the accusation of communist affiliation to impugn all kinds of people, and ultimately he went to far, which led to his ruination. Now, Trump calling Democrats communists as he did in his 4th of July speech is the same kind of egregious overreaching that finished McCarthy, and what I think will happen is this. Someone, Maybe Chuck Schumer or better yet, Bernie Sanders is going to stand up in front of The Senate and say something like this. "Have you no human decency, at long last?"

Your friend,

Mike

]]> Letter 2 America for June 25, 2026 tag:letters2america.com,2026://1.1059 2026-06-25T19:06:22Z 2026-06-25T19:11:48Z

Dear America,It is time to designate Israel an "oppressor nation" in our foreign policy and stop affording that country military aid or access to weapons we produce in that they use those weapons to indiscriminately kill Palestinians both in Gaza,...

Michael Wolf http://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge
It is time to designate Israel an "oppressor nation" in our foreign policy and stop affording that country military aid or access to weapons we produce in that they use those weapons to indiscriminately kill Palestinians both in Gaza, with which it has a putative ceasefire that is violated every day with bombs and gunfire, and in the occupied West Bank territory. According to the UN Human Rights Commission as of early April 2026, 738 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since that October 10, 2025 ceasefire; that number surely exceeds 1000 by this date in June 2026. That brings the total number of Gaza citizens killed since the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel, in which approximately 1200 Israelis were killed, to a figure well in excess of 70,000, including women and children; a casualty rate on the order of 60 to 1. That is not to reduce the matter to a statistical battle, but rather to reify the scale of the Israeli retribution, and it does not include the Palestinian casualties in the West Bank Palestinian enclave inflicted by Israeli settlers as the Israeli Defense Forces stood by and watched, thereafter taking no law enforcement actions in consequence of the crimes committed by the settlers against the legal residents of the territory. We do send weapons and aid to Ukraine in response to the Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory, but of course, we do not send them to the Russian invaders. Doing so would be the equivalent of our actions vis-à-vis Israel.

American political figures have cleaved to our relationship with Israel in light of several things, including The Holocaust, and for the most part understandably so. And since 1947 when Israel took control of their portion of what used to be called Palestine, or The Levant, our country along with the rest of the world perceived a duty to foster the independence as a Jewish state of Israel despite the fact that the autochthonous Palestinians had been displaced under questionable circumstances and, euphemistically put, tactical pressures. But certainly as of this point in history, it is apparent that the Israeli quest for suzerainty over what was once the territory of others bears a taint of tyranny if not the kind of extirpation intended for them by Nazi Germany. If anyone should understand the injustice of it all it is the Israelis, primarily Jews with family histories that mostly include death-camp extermination of members of their own hereditary lines. But even setting an expectation of empathy aside. The cruelty and zeal with which the Israelis deal with the Palestinian people, regardless of what cruel things the Palestinians may have done in light of their expulsion from the homeland they knew before it became Israel, should be a deterrent to persistence on Israel's part, just on a secular humanitarian basis. This has all gone too far, even for the Middle East in which internecine conflict is a way of life today as it has been for millennia. And Donald Trump's affiliation of American forces with the Israeli campaign against Iran is no exception to that reality.

As I read back through what I have written I recognize the likelihood that it will all be characterized tendentiously as anti-Semitism, but in advance response let me recount some of my own family history. I am just shy of 80 now, so I was born almost immediately after World War II, and my father was an Austrian Jew who took refuge in the United States and went to Camp Richie to become a part of the American forces who interrogated German prisoners during the war, at which time he was life-threateningly wounded at the Battle of the Bulge. He survived and lived a good life in this country, but his brother, who's name I bear as my middle name, did not have such good fortune. He was a member of the underground in Vienna during the war, and he, the gentile woman to whom he was married and their infant son disappeared, it is presumed at the hands of the Gestapo or the SS. I am acutely aware of the loss of their company in this world, even today, as I am of the fact that I am half Jewish myself. I am an ardent advocate for the world's Jewry and I believe wholeheartedly in their collective moral probity. But Israel is a country. It is not Jewry even within its borders, where approximately 25% of the population is not Jewish. Israel is a political entity, not a religious one, and as such, it is bound by the laws that bind all nations with regard to crimes against humanity.

I'll end there.

Your friend,

Mike

]]> Letter to America for June 24, 2026 tag:letters2america.com,2026://1.1058 2026-06-24T19:47:17Z 2026-06-24T19:47:55Z

Michael Wolf http://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge
It's been about a month and a half since I have written anything here because anyone who watches the news has seen Trump as many times as they have watched it and knows who and what Trump is. And other than what Trump is doing and how the weather is creating climate-change-havoc, there really isn't much to comment on. That translates to the presumption that everyone knows who and what Trump is up to and that the climate is changing. But what doesn't get discussed much, if at all, is how the position of the United States, America, has changed among the community of nations, and that is of profound consequence. We have alienated centuries old allies, we have undermined the confidence of the world in our commitment to democracy and civil liberty, beneficence as a general matter, loyalty to our friends and commitment to the thwarting of enemies of those things. That doesn't mean much for us at the moment as we continue to be well armed and sheltered from sea to shining sea by the simple fact of our geography. But consider what is continuing to happen to exacerbate those declines in our repute.

I have said this before, but it is worth repeating: truth and magnanimity are non-existent in the Middle East. Bibi Netanyahu is proof that Israel, like Iran, Lebanon, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinians and every other nation, nationality, tribe faction or social group, cannot be trusted to recount the facts of any occurrence or event. I heard a representative of the Israeli government say during a news interview within the past couple of days that Israel's invasion of southern Lebanon was just, like all of its military activities, solely an attempt to defend Israel's legal borders. If he had had the audacity to say that when he was standing in the West Bank, someone would certainly ask how inserting three quarters of a million settlers in the last bastion of Palestinian civilization constitutes defending Israel's legitimate borders. In fact, the Jewish settler incursion in the West Bank has a character much like when Israel was formed sua sponte in 1947 after, among other things, the bombing and assassination of British soldiers in the King David Hotel. The Israelis have always said that no one made the Palestinians leave what had become Israel, they just did. And the flight of tens of thousands of Palestinians from what Israel claimed as a new, independent state, fleeing their homes without compensation of consideration, was their choice. I can't claim to be intimately familiar with the circumstances of that era, but I wonder what the Israelis are saying about the assaults and murders of Palestinians on their own land in the West Bank today, all with impunity from official consequence for the settler's lawlessness and brutality.

As to Iran, the JCPOA of the Obama administration's inspiration included curbs on Iranian nuclear weapon development, and the Iranians claimed that they were complying with the provisions of the agreement, but they weren't as evinced by the enriched uranium buried under sites bombed last year by the United States at the behest of old Bibi. And the invasion of Iran a year later based on the claim that Iran was once again a nuclear threat, contrary to Trump's pronouncements that the Iranian nuclear threat was a thing of the past as of that June bombing last year, the "Art of the Deal" king once again let Bibi lead him by the nose into a conflict that has been a disaster for our nation in all kinds of ways, contrary to Trump's self-serving fulminations. And as to what we have gained in consequence of Trump's submissiveness to the plots and plans of a known liar, start with the cost of keeping the Strait of Hormuz open, which it was before the war, but isn't securely so now. And then there is the JCPOA itself, which was no less potent than what Trump and his cohorts claim they are going to get now. Then there is the havoc wreaked upon our oil producing allies in the middle east, the ridicule to which we are being subjected every time Trump says one thing and his minion Marco repeats it while an Iranian leader says the opposite, and the likelihood that despite Trump and Rubio's conditional allowance of $300 billion in reparations if Iran plays nice, they are going to wheedle it out of us somehow no matter what. And there's so much more that looks like expensive failure to discuss.

It comes to this. Our nation has been diminished in the eyes of the world by our dishonest used car salesman being duped into a massively destructive war by a another dishonest used car salesman. I just hope Trump doesn't make any more deals on our behalf.

Your friend,

Mike

]]> Letter 2 America for April 30, 2026 tag:letters2america.com,2026://1.1057 2026-04-30T15:27:01Z 2026-04-30T15:34:25Z

Michael Wolf http://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge
Hegseth's appearances before congress are a disturbing reminder of the degradation of American values being overseen by the Republican Party. Recently, I heard a Republican congressman being interviewed about the failure of Congress to vote for a bill funding the non-immigration involved portions of the Department of Homeland Security--the Coast Guard, TSA, etc.--passed unanimously by The Senate...both parties...because, according to him, you can't fund just part of the DHS. That just isn't true, especially in light of the fact that those immigration involved parts of the department were funded in Trump's omnibus budget bill with $70 billion in what amounts to a slush fund currently being employed to pay the salaries and otherwise fund ICE and the rest of the draconian deportation effort. At best his claim was a dissemblance, at worst an outright, purposive lie. Now comes Pete Hegseth, the smarmy Secretary of Defense who had the audacity to defame the Democrats and some members of his own Republican Party as being a worse adversary for the United States than Iran itself because they deigned to criticize the war for it's lack of authorization, legitimate purpose and plan for it's execution. That criticism of people who disagree with Trump and him rivals Trump's condemnation of an interviewer as a "horrible person," a tactic he has employed in one form or another over and over again. Hegseth has no imagination, and his tendentious arguments about the Iranian nuclear threat are either a manifestation of stupidity or outright mendacity. But his resort to vituperative vilification of those who question him is nothing other than a base rhetorical scamming technique that he learned from his boss to use when he doesn't have any idea how to justify his position. He is a reactionary who deludes himself into thinking that he is an original thinker, and he and Trump are holding the hand basket in which they are carrying us all to hell. The hypocrisy of Republican party loyalty is so malodorous that I can smell it from here.

Take the claim that the Iranian nuclear threat was imminent and justified the preemptive attack on that country. First of all, last June the United States dropped three giant bombs on Iran's uranium storage sites that buried that material under 300 feet of rubble that will take a long time to dig out from under, and the fact that that material was not enriched enough to make a bomb. Out of self-congratulatory conceit, Trump claimed that those bombs had eliminated the Iranian nuclear threat. Eight months later he claimed that Iran had to be bombed in the current war because the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon was "imminent," which is the absurd claim that Hegseth repeated in the course of effectively calling critical members of Congress a menace to the security of the nation. Add to that the fact that half-a-dozen nations, including the United States under the leadership of Barrack Obama, entered into an agreement with Iran, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), eleven years ago that would have prohibited Iran from developing such a weapon even up to the end of this decade. But Trump claimed it was a deficient agreement and withdrew the United States from it, at which point Iran withdrew from it as well. In lieu of that purportedly defective agreement, we got nothing but ultimately our currently futile and universally costly war over getting another agreement and confiscating nuclear fuel that couldn't be used for a bomb anyway. Getting something for nothing is a great deal; getting nothing for something is not.

And then there's the fact that as Kim Jong Un was putting the finishing touches of North Korea's first Nuclear bombs, Trump went to the Korean DMZ for a play-date with Kim at which they became a bromantic couple according to Trump. After that tryst and the exchange of a few mutually cordial letters along with the development of ultimately intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of delivering that bomb to the conterminous United States, Trump did not declare war. He did nothing. And then of course there is Israel, which refuses to deny its own nuclear capabilities, but which everyone feels quite sure is nuclear armed. Not only has Trump failed to do anything about Israel's lethal capabilities, he bombed Iran for Israel so as to give Israel impunity to use its nuclear weapons should it so desire. And for all of that, Hegseth is Trump's primary enabler.

Hegseth wants to be hailed as some kind of mach-military hero, but in reality, he is nothing but a sycophantic reactionary, and he is leading Trump down a primrose path. Unfortunately, if it all hits the fan, we'll all be in the front row while Trump and Hegseth retreat to a luxury bunker somewhere.

Your friend,

Mike

]]> Letter 2 America for April 26, 2026 tag:letters2america.com,2026://1.1056 2026-04-26T18:05:25Z 2026-04-26T18:06:02Z

Michael Wolf http://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge
At the beginning of the war, the Trump administration purportedly delivered a 15 point peace plan to Iran, which entailed various restrictions imposed on Iran, but none on Israel. Given that much more damage has been inflicted upon Iran by Israel than Iran has inflicted upon Israel, what incentive is there for Iran to agree to it? That is really the problem, and it dates back about three thousand years to when the region was still called Canaan and the 12 tribes of Israel were born. Now, Trump has pronounced Iran a war criminal by virtue of its purported goal of creating a nuclear weapon--just creating one whether they use it or not. The audacity of making such a pronouncement, and of basing on it the destruction that we have wreaked upon Iran while giving North Korea and for that matter, Israel, not even a rebuke for not just aspiring to nuclear armament but accomplishing it, is the height of hypocrisy, not to mention absurd idiocy. It is especially so in light of the conduct of Israel in the middle eastern area formerly known as Palestine, and before that the Levant, and even before that, Canaan among other things. The concerted campaign aimed at the extirpation of the people known as Palestinians, and the usurpation of the last bastion of their existence on the West Bank of the Jordan River is indubitably a war crime, and now we are complicit in that we arm Israel and we have led the way in the Iran campaign, which is part and parcel of the Israeli strategy of eliminating the regional opposition to Israeli expansion of Israel "from the river to the sea," and potentially beyond.

I haven't written you for the past six weeks or so because the news every day seems to be about nothing but this travesty of "American exceptionalism" that Donald Trump seems to feel is justified, even in spite of his recently invented "Donroe Doctrine," which is supposed to exclude Asian and European powers from involvement in western hemisphere matters. Presumably, Trump would have to concede that his eponymous fiat worked both ways, but as we all know, Trump is the ultimate arbiter when it comes to what is right, and apparently he has deemed his doctrinal dictate to be one dimensional, that is assuming that he thinks about anything at all, even in his ego-driven minute little mind. But all that speaks for itself. What no one seems to be talking about is Trump's recently propounded policy of waiting for the right moment for his next move...not being in any rush. For example, there were supposed to be diplomatic talks this past weekend, but Trump called his emissaries back without explanation, I would think because the Iranians declined to show up. That is what really caused the course reversal, but as of yet, I haven't heard anyone talking about it, even though it is probably the single most important development before us. The truth is that all Trump's talk of being in no rush to resume hostilities is just a prevarication...half the truth. In reality, he has now finally gotten it through his bleached-blonde head that the Iranians are going to persist at least for a long time, if not in perpetuity. Trump's threat of destruction for Iran and its culture is seen in Iran as just one more example of Trump's obscene braggadocio, and this time, they're calling his bluff. And Trump knows it, thus evincing that his and his punk, frat-boy "Secretary of War's" initial display of insurmountable determination to bring the putative foe to its figurative knees was a bite seriously too big for them to chew. Trump is in no rush because all that loss of life and destruction in Iran as well as a few American lives and billions of American dollars was nothing but a grandstand play, and he needs time to find a way out of being "outed", so to speak. However, unless he can coax the Iranians into sitting down with his people, Trump's only way out--our only way out--is going to be to let this conflict die on the vine and move on to the next Trump travesty. Trump hasn't admitted it, and he probably never will, but he has been outplayed, and the nation is far the worse for it: The real Trump legacy will be embarrassment over overplaying out hand, and the shame and diminution we will suffer internationally in consequence of it.

Oddly enough, I hope Trump can find a way to save face without causing more chaos. The reality is that he will find a way to blame others for this debacle and his acolytes, as I heard them called lately, will continue to worship at his feet, whether out of adulation or fear. If he were really the man he claims to be, he would admit his mistake and just withdraw, but we all know that such admissions aren't in the trumped-up Trumper. Maybe the best we can hope for is that he does nothing and just lets all these machinations and lies fade away as out navy and soldiers come home after much ado about nothing.

Your friend,

Mike

]]> Letter 2 America for March 12, 2026 tag:letters2america.com,2026://1.1055 2026-03-12T18:08:34Z 2026-03-12T18:09:01Z

Michael Wolf http://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge
During his 2024 campaign, Donald Trump promised to reduce energy prices when he said this: "Under my administration, we will be slashing energy and electricity prices by half within 12 months, at a maximum 18 months." But the experience of most Americans has been quite the contrary. We're now 14 months into Trump's second term and I dare say that the experience of all of my countrymen has been just the opposite, and it's getting worse now in light of Trump's elective war on behalf of his buddy Bibi Netanyahu. In my own case, my wife and I paid $311.68 for 185 ccf (hundred cubic feet) of natural gas in March 2025 and we will have to pay $425.51 for exactly the same amount this month, March 2026. That's an increase of more than 36%. As to electricity, we paid $138.69 for 487 kwh (kilowatt hours) in March 2025 and $195.31 for 439 kwh in March 2026; that's 56% more for 10% less electricity. So much for promises from Donald Trump. But to be fair, let's consider what our president has done to keep his promise.

The U.S. Energy Information Agency predicted that energy production would go up in this country by 1.7% in 2026 after a 2.4% increase in 2025, most of which would be a function of growth in the renewable energy, solar and wind power, over the course of those two years. But Trump wants to "bring(ing) back clean, beautiful coal" to accomplish that task, necessitated by the growth of AI in large part, while reducing the role of renewable energy by cutting federal funding for such projects. Everyone knows that coal is neither clean nor beautiful, and Trump's concomitant promise to increase miners wages has resulted in a gigantic gain for them in the amount of $.07 per hour. In other words, Trump's remedy for our energy problem is to gouge coal miners for more work while reneging on his promise to compensate them mightily and to burn the most polluting of fossil fuels while doing so in lieu of clean solar energy production and the effective termination of at least one major wind project off the coast of New Jersey despite the fact that it is almost completed as well as several other projects that have either started or been fully planned at the producers' expense. Then there is gasoline.

Trump recently pontificated that "gasoline is now under $2.50 a gallon in much of the country. In some states it, by the way, just hit $1.99 a gallon. But the actual price of gasoline according to AAA is just under $2.90 per gallon, down from $3.03 a year ago. I know that I paid $2.87 a gallon about two weeks ago at our local economy retailer, and $3.37 two days ago, largely presumably because of Trump's war against his buddy Bibi's enemy, which raises two more issues. First, back in the '70's, Nixon imposed wage and price controls on, among other things, gasoline. Considering that we produce enough petroleum and natural gas in this country to fill our own needs, price controls seem completely logical, and with Trump's affinity for peremptory executive orders regarding whatever bug is up his you-know-what, it would seem that if he wanted to keep his promises to us all to bring down energy prices he could do so with the stroke of his Sharpie, affixing his name to a "big, beautiful executive order" that really would be big and beautiful as opposed to being a euphemism for "look at me folks." It would be that easy for him to keep his promise to Americans if he was willing to cross the fossil fuel executives whom he importuned to give him a billion dollars in campaign funds so that the Republican Party could be further enabled to use Trump's shovel to dig us a great big hole make us all live in.

The bottom line is this. Instead of trying to keep his promises, Trump has made a diligent effort to line his own pockets and keep his party in three-branch power for the foreseeable future by ensuring that there is enough money on hand to campaign toward that end. Between gasoline and energy in general, Trump could actually keep his promises fairly easily, almost without repercussions if he truly wanted to, but it would cost him and his sycophants in the Republican congress some money that they are expecting, but don't even have yet.

If it were just that Trump is a liar, I could understand how people who share his prejudices could vote for him, even though their motives would be ignoble. But in the final analysis, Trump is selling his country down the river, both those who voted against him, AND those who have supported him with their votes, some of them three times. That's not loyalty. That's masochism and a few other personality flaws I can think of, and his enablers are the Republicans in congress and in his administration. Trump is a bully, and all of his cadre are weak, that is why he picked them. It's the same for Iran. Russia is at least as evil as the Ayatollah's and their loyalists, but Trump calls Putin for regular buddy chats. Trump is a bully and a coward, and in the bargain, he isn't going to leave the White House except under military escort on his way to prison. That's what we have chosen to be our president. As I always say, on election day, the plurality of the American people get just what they deserve. We need a plurality that deserves more than we've got.

Your friend,

Mike

]]> Letter 2 America for March 10, 2026 tag:letters2america.com,2026://1.1054 2026-03-10T13:25:17Z 2026-03-10T13:27:29Z

Michael Wolf http://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge
The United States is self-sufficient with regard to oil. That has been the case since the Obama administration when the law prohibiting the export of petroleum was repealed by congress and signed into law by President Obama. So, if we are petroleum independent, why has the interdiction of petroleum supply at the Strait of Hormuz caused gasoline prices in this country to even go up, much less skyrocket? The Strait is the route oil follows when it is going east to the orient and southern Asia, not to us; Thus it has nothing to do with the supply of petroleum or gasoline in the United States. Given Trump's promises relative to "affordability" and inflation in this country, why isn't he prevailing upon the oil companies to stop gouging the public with the spikes in gas prices that we're seeing this week? They are deracinated from the Israel-Iran war, especially since the reality is that we are participating in that war electively rather than by necessity. Iran has no nuclear weapons, or even a weapon development program despite Trump's declamations to the contrary. If nothing else, they would have been ended last year when, at Netanyahu's request, we dropped huge bombs on the Iranian uranium supply rendering it inaccessible for any purpose, much less for developing a nuclear bomb.

To put it concisely, somebody is lying regarding gasoline prices.

Your friend,

Mike

]]> Letter 2 America for March 2, 2026 tag:letters2america.com,2026://1.1053 2026-03-02T22:06:04Z 2026-03-02T22:06:35Z

Michael Wolf http://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge
As I listened to the news this afternoon, Marco Rubio came on complaining that Iran was purportedly manufacturing 1000 long range missiles a week, which made them a threat to all those around them. That may or may not be true, but either way, it made me think of the word "demagogue." Actually, it came to mind several times over the past few days, in fact every time Donald Trump spoke. He and Rubio are a match made in heaven...or somewhere anyway. They're both deriding Iran for its bellicosity and war-footing manufacturing as a justification for the unilateral inception of what is likely to be denominated the American-Israeli war against Iran, which is an issue in itself. After all, if it hadn't been for Israel's stoking, it is unlikely that Trump would have thought to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities a few months ago, and their missile manufacturing capacity now. Of course, Trump's invective relative to Iran is self-serving, and that is to be expected whenever he opens his mouth. But as his conduct of his first administration demonstrates, he wears his hypocrisy is like a tattoo across his forehead, and now Rubio is joining the effort to justify the indefensible. Let me explain myself.

In Trump's first administration, he bragged about forming a "bromance" with Kim Jongun while Kim was in the course of the final stages of developing his own nuclear arsenal. Trump went to visit Kim, not with bombers and aircraft carriers, but with a glad hand as the walked almost arm in arm across the demilitarized zone between North Korea and South Korea, laughed together and evinced no end of cordiality. Concomitantly, Kim was developing North Korea's ICBM capacity, ultimately to the extent that North Korea is now capable of loading a missile with a nuclear warhead and putting it down anywhere in the United States...an actual manifest threat to this country, and for that matter, the entire free world. Notably, Rubio never mentioned North Korea during his tenure and Trump's utility cabinet member. And of course there is Ukraine being invaded by Vladimir Putin, and Trump welcoming him with a big smile and another glad-hand shake to Alaska so they could hang out for a while and eat some king crab together. Putin strung Trump along then and thereafter, but again, no bombers and no aircraft carriers as Putin continues to abuse the world order by demolishing Ukraine and Trump refuses to send weapons that might change the war's one sided mayhem to a battle of equals on the fields that Putin has been fighting for and coveting for over ten years now, and with renewed vigor relative to the Dombas region that is now so war torn that it is hard to understand how it has any value to anyone. But from Trump, not just no bang, but not even a whimper. Just as a sidebar relative to Rubio, his parents entered the United States illegally in 1956, and if Trump had been president then, Marco would have been born in Havana in 1971, but that hasn't stopped him from donning his most outrageous cloak of sanctimony relative to the ICE abuses that we have all seen on the news.

I'm going to skip my opinions about the role that Bibi has played in all this, and the tendentious screeds in which he has indulged regarding Iran and the Palestinians, as well as his speciously justified plan to annex all of the West Bank territory that is all that is left for the Palestinians to occupy. Despite the fact that the territory occupied by the State of Israel used to be called Palestine...not Judea or Samaria, but Palestine, Judea and Samaria not being applied to the territory since before the common era...Bibi persists in his sanctimonious claims, and Trump just simpers in acquiescence. Regardless of any of those transgressions, Trump, Rubio and Netanyahu are indulging in the most odiously selective acrimony toward a foe that I can ever remember seeing.

Don't misunderstand me. The Iranian regime is not defensible in any way as far as I can see. But the manufactured indignation on display in Washington and in Netanyahu's Jerusalem is despicable. And with regard to Iran in particular, there was a deal in place before Trump took office the first time that served at least to forestall the advent of Iranian formidability, which would have given the world time to compose a broadly endorsed strategy for keeping the Iranian regime, no doubt led by someone other than the already eighty odd year old Ayatollah, an ultimatum in disguise that would have allowed face saving and ongoing peace. What we have instead is what will ultimately be known as "Trump's War." He claims it will be over in a month, but his judgment hasn't born the desired fruit in the past, and I don't believe it will this time, most unfortunately.

Just to be sure you understand, let me say this. As to what is to come, I hope to God I'm wrong.

Your friend,

Mike

]]> Letter 2 America for February 21, 2026 tag:letters2america.com,2026://1.1052 2026-02-21T21:40:43Z 2026-02-21T21:41:14Z

Michael Wolf http://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge
I've mentioned this historical tidbit before, but it seems particularly relevant today. Will Rogers, a political commentator/comedian of the 1930's, used to say that he wasn't a member of any organized political party: he was a Democrat. Now it is again germane given what the Democrats are doing, and trying to do, to each other these days. The Republican has once again drawn its foot-shooting pistol and is firing round after round, a series of self-inflicted wounds that might well mean a November failure if left hanging in the air. But the Democrats are not content with the boost that Republican folly could represent. No, it just required them to draw their own foot shooter, which they have loaded with a profoundly stupid round just like the one they fired last year when they shut the government down last time. The difference is that the Democrats were then promoting the well-being of perhaps the majority of the 24 million users of the ACA (Obamacare) who were about to lose the subsidies on which they relied for payment of their health insurance premiums. That was not just prudent, it was the right thing to do. Back then, they were doing the people's work. But now?

The current shut-down, now only about a week old, is depriving hundreds of thousands of civil servants who keep the airports and airliners on which we ride safe from those who would do us Americans harm. Other employees of the Department of Homeland Security who perform all kinds of similarly valuable civil service are also going without pay as well, but do you know who is getting paid? This is all about the malfeasance and misfeasance of ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. As anyone who has watched the news since ICE agents shot and killed two American citizens on pretexts that were exposed as such on video shot by bystanders knows, the Democrats are trying to force changes in the ICE procedures and rules that will prevent this kind of thing from happening again. But as Will Rogers would have expected, the only people who are not suffering in the ranks of DHS are...ICE agents. Ice has a slush fund of tens of billions of dollars that congress...the Republican dominated congress...appropriated for them in the "Big, Beautiful Bill," otherwise known as the big ugly tax cut for Trump and his rich compatriots. And because the Republican congress is populated by poltroons who will give Trump anything he demands out of fear of retribution if they don't, they are sitting on their hands regarding the issues raised by the Democrats, which are also on the minds of the majority of us. There are even a few Republicans who think the Democrats are right--those few Republicans who are bound by some sense of political morality, if that isn't an obvious oxymoron. The problem is that the only people suffering are not the subject perpetrators, they are those perpetrators co-workers...all of whom have the right to vote.

It may well be the case that those people won't hold it against the Democrats that they caused some of them to have to placate landlords who are owed rent and kids who can't eat what they like because their parents aren't getting paid on account of the Democrats self-flagellation on this ICE issue. And it may also be the case that none of them would ever have voted Democratic anyway. But even on the off chance that the kind of ill-advised, misdirected tactic that the Democrats have already had to abandon once after receiving no more than token gratification and are now employing again in the vane hope that it will result in a better outcome won't alienate those who suffer on account of it, the Democrats are not exhibiting an abundance of prudence right now. The only question is, will they soon recognize that they are trying to do the right thing, but in the wrong way. We can write our congressmen and senators, and we can write entries in our blogs, but who's to say that they are reading those things? And even if they are, can they all talk to one another with sufficient alacrity to avert a debacle in November.

This is just an opinion, but I really think that between Trump's insane recent conduct--sending a couple of fleets to the middle east to bomb Iran because Israel doesn't want them to be able to defend themselves against Israel's own nuclear arsenal, arresting a dictator in his own country and commandeering his county's oil tanker fleet, threatening Brazil if they convict a former president who engineered his own January 6 style uprising, pardoning a Latin American ex-president who was in one of our prisons for abetting the drug trade that Trump professes to abhor, subsidizing soybean farmers for producing soybeans that nobody is buying, exempting Argentine beef from his illegal tariffs even though the American beef industry is crying poor, and on and on and on--and the Republicans' failure to do anything about inflation, the Democrats are in pretty good shape...as long as they stop shooting themselves in the collective foot.

Your friend,

Mike

]]> Letter 2 America for February 10, 2026 tag:letters2america.com,2026://1.1051 2026-02-10T21:30:39Z 2026-02-21T20:49:45Z

Michael Wolf http://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge
I don't understand why Donald Trump continues to have the support of his "base" voters. To use Trump's favorite pejoratives, he is a disgusting disgrace, but beyond that, he is a national embarrassment by virtue of his flagrant conceit and vanity as well as his vindictiveness and pettiness. The latest vapid episode relates to his attempts to plaster his name across every significant feature of the country, in this case Penn Station in New York City and Dulles Airport outside Baltimore. In Trump's defense, he apparently is afflicted with suspicions about his own adequacy considering this obsession with putting his name on things and his invidious deprecations of predecessor presidents like Joe Biden, who beat him in the 2020 election in both the electoral college and the popular vote in which Biden beat Trump by more than 7 million, and Barrack Obama who has an insurance system named after him, which is utilized by about 24 million Americans. With regard to this most recent name embarrassment, former president Reagan is the eponym for an airport, and to go him one better, Trump also wants a train station. But these things and other overt vanities are just cause to consider him a joke. The problem is that his neurosis/psychosis doesn't stop there.

Trump has now threatened to cut off federal funds to ten states that didn't vote for him, just because he feels insulted by their preferences for another candidate. That governance based on personal loyalty is a diminution of democracy in that allowing federal largess only to those who have demonstrated fealty to him makes Trump an autocrat at a minimum, but an aspiring tyrant as well. The fact that his acolytes and the beneficiaries of his whimsy and patronage enjoy privilege and that he bestows his largess without reproach from his cadre of ulteriorly appointed bureaucrats only exacerbates the menace his self-serving governance constitutes. He has installed the mechanisms by which he can continue to be president as a usurper in 2028, and that will not serve even his minions in the final analysis. And as to the voters who continue to support him, it seems not to have occurred to them that when even reproaching Trump precipitates calumniation or even vengeful acts on his part, no one is immune from consequences. For Trump, loyalty is a one way street, and he has demonstrated that fact over and over again. People who have fallen out of his favor as reported in the press have suffered public denouements.

Then there's his importuning of the executives of the fossil fuel industry to give him a billion dollars in political support--what kind of support isn't clear to me since he can't run for president again under the constitutional limit--in exchange for his support for their industry, I assume in the form of his sabotage of the effort to fight climate change with renewable energy and reduction in carbon emissions in accord with the international climate change effort (from which he has withdrawn the United States) and his exhortation to the nation to "drill baby drill" despite the fact that we already have petroleum to export, and to resurrect our use of "clean, beautiful coal." He must be the only human being who hasn't heard that coal burning pollutes the atmosphere. And of course there is his personal investment in cyber currency with his own cyber token scheme, bearing his image of course, ostensibly run by his sons and without his participation in the effort. Add his plan to plaster his image on a new national coin--I presume a silver dollar--and his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, now to be known as the Gulf of America.

In recent days there is his vilification of an Olympic skier because he was critical of the Trump administration...according to Trump that should have disqualified him from competing for the United States, the United States being synonymous with Trump himself, and on and on.

I'm really tired of writing and talking about this guy. I guess I wish he would go back to being a piker in the New York construction business, at least in the eyes of real New York real estate barons of note. The bottom line is that it isn't just us Americans who need to be concerned. This bureau of peace he has solicited membership in on the world scene for an entry fee of a mere billion dollars is a step toward bypassing national governments and creating a single empire under his control of course, and several of his transactional buddies have signed up. Let's hope they don't live to have the same regrets we have about following Trump to the pinnacle of power, which is the only place he will stop, although maybe God had better watch out.

Your friend,

Mike

]]> Letter 2 America for February 5, 2026 tag:letters2america.com,2026://1.1050 2026-02-05T16:27:15Z 2026-02-05T16:27:46Z

Michael Wolf http://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge
Obtuse as Donald Trump is, the necessity of keeping his Republican Party in congressional hegemony has not been lost on him. He spoke to his party recently and adverted to the peril that loss of Republican control of congress represents when he said that should the party lose control, he had no doubt that the Democrats would impeach him...again. And he wants to avoid such a calamity, I suspect, because when 2028 comes around, his intention is to repudiate the constitution's 22nd amendment and take control of the country by force. That seems apparent based on his two efforts--the first in the form of sending the National Guard to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. purportedly to restore public safety when it had not been disrupted, and then his flooding of Minneapolis with ICE agents for the ostensible purpose of deporting criminal illegal migrants and allowing them to commit mayhem and murder two civilians in the process--to deploy the military forces of the country to control major cities. But Los Angeles succeeded in thwarting the effort in court, and public outrage has driven his popularity down significantly rendering any plan to vitiate the result of the next presidential election more dubious than it already was. He will try again, no doubt, but if the results are as negative for him as his first two disingenuous efforts were, he will fail in any 2028 effort as well.

Still, he will probably be undeterred, just as he has been internationally. The NATO nations have arrived at the realization that Trump constitutes a diminution of the American commitment to the alliance, and thus European self-reliance in terms of mutual defense must be enhanced to the point that Russia's version of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, cannot invade Europe with impunity. The NATO countries are not willing to jeopardize their collective sovereignty by ignoring the increasingly tepid commitment of our country to mutual, "Article 5" protection of all of the members of the alliance. Similarly, Europe may well begin to shun Americans who want to come to Europe as tourists. And the European demand for American products like cars and wheat will probably wane, and American products in general will likely no longer to be relied upon by the continent, nor will the American market be as important to maintain as Europe weans itself from reliance upon it for continental prosperity. To be more concise, a new age of isolation will likely descend upon the United States, and it will be thanks to the solipsistic conceit of Donald Trump. Over the next three years, and maybe sooner, the realization that this new world order, no longer queued up behind the United States, will emerge as the next world order, and our nation will still be a part of it, but a nation without friends willing to come to its aid and comfort under any circumstances. World War II might have gone the other way had the United States not have intervened, but similarly, our revolution might have gone the other way in the absence of Lafayette and the French. The NATO alliance is a two-way street that serves both us and them, but even without us NATO will survive. Whether we will or not will depend on what other countries like Russia, and don't forget the Chinese, decide they want to do about the thorn in their collective side constituted by the United States.

My point is that the western world is stable not only by dint of American auspices, but because The West is an actual entity identifiable as democratic. In The East, dictatorship masquerading as democracy is the rule, and the combined military force of the principals in that world, armed with nuclear weapons as well as various other means of large scale destruction and a unified will to inflict it on us, may well be too large a unified assailing threat for the United States to repel alone.
For that reason if for no other, the 2026 elections are more than consequential. They may be a preliminary factor in the continuation of American prominence and the fealty of other nations to it in crucial circumstances. In fact, those elections may determine the future of our nation as a viable entity. I may be overreacting to the impact of the Trump censoriousness toward our European friends and allies, but I really don't think so. Someone had better prevail on Trump to change his ways out of self-interest, if not patriotism, both of which are essentially his primary policy determinants nationally and personally. Hitler opined autocratically that the Third Reich would last a thousand years, which is probably what Trump would predict for us. It didn't work out so well for Hitler...or for Germany for that matter.

Your friend,

Mike

]]> Letter 2 America for January 28, 2026 tag:letters2america.com,2026://1.1049 2026-01-28T17:44:50Z 2026-01-28T17:51:26Z

Michael Wolf http://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge
It seems that Trump is trying to retreat--we know he will never recant a statement because he is never wrong--from the positions he has taken on some subjects, the innocence of the immigration officers who have now shot two American citizens to death over the past three weeks being two examples. As to the latter of the two, he has now even conceded that he, Alex Pretti, was not a terrorist out to assassinate someone, and has instead vowed to oversee the investigation into Pretti's shooting and death, which he has now insisted be thorough and fair. As to Pretti's predecessor on the ICE Minneapolis victims list, Rene Good, Trump now regards it as a tragedy over which he is mournful, if you feel you can take his word for anything and you think him capable of mournfulness, and he has ordered that Minnesota officials be included with regard to the federal investigation, that presumably entailing sharing the evidence relevant to what seem to obviously have been capital crimes. We will see if those investigations result in accountability. Trump has relieved the former official running the ICE campaign in Minnesota, Gregory Bovino, and replaced him with his "immigration czar," Tom Homan, who carries baggage of his own, but who has jumped off on the right foot by meeting with Governor Tim Walz and the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, recently made famous by his profane exhortation to ICE to get out of the city. Once the video of Pretti being murdered was made public, Trump had no choice as the excessive nature of the force used against the victim was overt and obvious to anyone who saw the video. However, he has stood by Christy Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security (you know who she is: the one wearing the cute little macho-female outfits and the heavy makeup on television whenever there is an ICE contretemps) despite her insistence that this ICU nurse at the local VA hospital was a domestic terrorist assassin before any investigation at all. Trump claims she is doing a terrific job despite the vow of the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, vowing to see her impeached.

Apparently, someone has gotten to Trump and explained to him that the dawn has broken and in the light of day, most of what he has pontificated over the past year is looking pretty dubious. As a Republican president, Trump is now basically campaigning, yesterday in predominantly Republican Iowa where a Democratic governor was elected last year, to try to convince the nation that what they are experiencing is basically an illusion because everything is great in consequence of the things he has done. Unfortunately for Republicans, with the mid-term elections coming up in ten months they are dependent on Trump's coattails, which are now on fire like his pants. Add to all this--high utility bills, food prices, the cost of new homes and cars on the rise, etc.--the fact that no matter what Trump says, the nation isn't thriving in the households of most Americans because money is tight in most of them, and money talks. If anyone should know that, it's Donald Trump. And then there's the administrations largess toward the farmers who insist on growing crops like soy beans that are more in demand in China than in their own country because China used to pay well for them. Trump imposed the tariffs that drove the China market elsewhere, and now he wants to bribe the farmers to forget that with $17 billion so he can keep their votes rather than telling them that they should grow something we need here instead of shaking the money tree abroad. Sooner or later, the voters...even the Trump voters...will realize that this is nothing but the face of political corruption wearing heavy make-up. Trump is buying votes, which to me is tantamount to fixing an election, a thing that he eagerly accuses the Democrats of without any evidence while flagrantly using federal money...our money...to keep his party in power so that hopefully, he won't get impeached...again!

But this is all an uphill battle, and though Trump never admits that he faces adversity, some members of his party are pushing him to do more to save their asses. Word has it that Republicans have been importuning the White House to get out into the sticks and tules to solicit support for them among the die-hard Trumpies at least. My guess is that they see the futility of Trump's 747-stop tour, but they haven't got any other cards to play, which I can almost guaranty is making some of them re-examine their decisions to give Trump their blind support. It seems probable that everyone on the inside knows that the magic has stopped working, and self-interest is about to rear its ugly head.

We'll see if self-preservation outweighs blind loyalty over the coming months. With Republicans, it's hard to predict. But as to the Republicans in congress, what choice do they have but to reconsider. If they lose their jobs... I mean, would you hire a Republican politician?

Your friend,

Mike

]]> Letter 2 America for January 19, 2026 tag:letters2america.com,2026://1.1048 2026-01-19T14:03:07Z 2026-01-19T14:11:56Z

Michael Wolf http://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge

Let me come straight to the point. Trump's delusion about having settled eight wars has become a threat to the American relationships to the other nations of the western world. The last thing the United States and the world need is a delusional American president, and thus, since Trump's megalomania has lurched from neurosis to psychosis, it disqualifies him from leadership of the most powerful nation in the world. He is not a broker of world peace, he is rather a threat to it. In assessing Trump's mental health, it is important to recognize why he is obsessed with the Nobel Prize: it is because Barrack Obama won it, and Trump feels a compulsion to be seen as surpassing other presidents. That is also the reason that he derides Joe Biden at every opportunity: Biden beat him in the 2020 election, and that defeat, Trump feels, demeans him. By tearing down Biden, in his mind Trump elevates himself, just as winning the Nobel Prize would have put him in a state of parity with Obama. That's also why Trump has posited his rambling thoughts about reform of our healthcare system, which he in the future will no doubt refer to as "Trumpcare," as the successor to "Obamacare" and why the Monroe Doctrine has now become the "Donroe Doctrine," at least in Trump's mind. Then there's his determination to get his face on Mount Rushmore, a new dollar coin and anything else he can expropriate. Most importantly, this isn't all about egotism: it's about an inferiority complex, and his parents probably had a lot to do with it. If what has been written or depicted on one screen or another is true, neither one of them thought much of his self-proclaimed grandiosity.

Trump's inarticulate letter to the prime minister of Norway bemoaning the failure to award him the Nobel Peace Prize and basing his policy regarding Greenland on that decision tears it. To be concise, it is not time for impeachment. It is time to invoke the 25th amendment.

Your friend,

Mike

]]> Letter 2 America for January 14, 2026 tag:letters2america.com,2026://1.1047 2026-01-14T20:55:50Z 2026-01-14T20:56:22Z

Michael Wolf http://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge
I learned a new word last weekend: Kakistocracy. It means "government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens." As to the Trump administration, what more needs to be said. But the real problem Trump and his cronies constitute isn't that simple. The real problem is that people all over the world believe his shameless, self-aggrandizing lies. While listening to the news today I heard the president of Poland, Karol Nawrocki, speaking about Trump, and he said that he has high regard for our president because he is the only person in the world who can handle Vladimir Putin. Setting aside the issue of who is the handler and who is the handlee, why would Nawrocki believe that? If it were true, why does Nawrocki think Trump isn't handling Putin into ending the war in Ukraine? When it comes to Trump, does Nawrocki think at all? Can Nawrocki, the president of an entire European nation, even know how to think? That's the problem. Trump bloviates and people all over the world on the conservative end of the political spectrum gobble up Trump's baloney between slices of white bread. And then there's this nonsense about the eight wars he claims to have ended.

Let's start with Gaza. Israel is still dropping bombs on the Palestinians there, and even children are still dying. That doesn't sound like a war that has ended to me, and I'm sure the Palestinians are under no illusions on that point either. That leaves seven. Israel and Iran have been exchanging bombs and missiles for decades, the last twelve day example being only one of many, and they are still threatening to go at it again in the future. Two down, six to go. Rwanda and Congo are still fighting, so that's another one down, and then there is the Thai/Cambodian conflict, which is also flaring up regularly. Two more down, four to go. And then there is another class of "wars" that Trump claims to have pacified: the wars that were never wars. Serbia and Kosovo were never really at war, nor were Egypt and Ethiopia, the only issue for the latter two "combatants" being, and it continues to be, a dam that effects the flow of the Nile; no war, just pissing and moaning. Two more down leaving only two. Pakistan says that Trump ended its skirmish with India, but India says Trump had nothing to do with the ceasefire that is at least temporarily in effect, the umteenth I might add, so we can give Trump half there, leaving one and a half to go. He deserves no credit for India's role in the settlement, now leaving only one to verify: Armenia and Azerbaijan. That one is sort of like China and Taiwan. It will never end, so if you want to give Trump that one, I can't stop you, but I don't buy it. So much for the Nobel Peace Prize, and that's not the end of Trump's embroidery of the truth.

Of course there is the big one: the "stolen election" lie. There were 62 law suits filed for the purpose of reifying that lie, and the Trumpists won only one point in one of the 62 suits...and that was a technical finding against the Pennsylvania legislature for changing an election rule purportedly too late in the process. No fraud anywhere, and certainly no evidence of one, but then there are the subordinate lies that go with the big one. For example, I recently heard him characterize his victory in the popular election of 2024 as a "landslide." He won by fewer votes than Hilary Clinton beat him by in 2016, and she didn't even get to be president. Doesn't sound like any landslide I ever saw. And of course he has claimed that he won in 2020 and 2016, neither of which popular vote did he even win. And in 2020, there was a landslide, but he got buried by it in Joe Biden's win, which is why Biden's name comes up all the Time when Trump wants to blame someone for something. No fraud, just millions of ballots piled up on the other side. And of course there are more: at least one organization calculated that he has told over 30,000 lies in office or in pursuit of one, but I digress. The issue I am getting at is the credence given his lies, by conservatives at least and perhaps some independents. Why do they give that credence? I think it is because they want to believe what Trump believes...that we are being bled as a nation by people in need and freeloaders. Here's what I have to say about that.

We pay half again as much as the next most expensive nation pays for health care as a portion of our GDP. We are the only one of the thirty most advanced and wealthy nations that doesn't have socialized medicine, so health care isn't something that the needy are getting for free, in fact, some of them are dieing for want of it. And as to the welfare benefits some Americans get--and no, non-citizens don't get any significant amount of those benefits contrary to conservative mantras--who would want to trade places with those recipients given the quality of their lives. Besides, Trump's father gave him, total in life and death, over $500 million. If that isn't the ultimate welfare payment...

Your friend,

Mike

]]> Letter 2 America for January 5, 2026 tag:letters2america.com,2026://1.1046 2026-01-05T17:22:22Z 2026-01-05T17:22:52Z

Michael Wolf http://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt.cge
The former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, was part of the cocaine smuggling business while he was in office, which was until 2022. He was extradited to the United States during the Biden administration and convicted of his cocaine related crimes in June 2024, then imprisoned on a 45 year sentence. But in November 2025, Donald Trump pardoned him and had him released from prison on December 1 alleging that the Biden administration had trumped up (excuse the expression) the charges against him. Meanwhile, an election took place in Honduras that was within hundreds of votes of victory for either candidate, one of which was a former opponent of Hernandez's when he last stood for election. At last count on December 2, Salvadore Nasralla, who had challenged Hernandez in his last election, was ahead of his opponent by 550 votes, which Trump pronounced to be fraudulent, and ultimately, Nasralla's opponent was declared the winner by less than 1%. That candidate, Nasry Asfura, had been endorsed by Trump despite allegations of fraud and misappropriation of government funds to personal use. Trump and he were buddies, so much so that Trump threatened to cut off American aid to Honduras if Asfura wasn't elected president over Nasralla. Doesn't all that have a few familiar rings to it?

Speaking of familiar rings, Trump has now had Nikolas Maduro arrested in Venezuela so he can stand trial in the United States for, among other things, participating in the trafficking of drugs to the United States...reminiscent of the Hernandez case during the Biden administration, don't you think? If history rings true, Maduro will be convicted too, but Trump will grant him a pardon as well, as long as Maduro sucks up to him that is. And as for Trump himself and his stated intention to "run" Venezuela and reinstall American oil companies in the rich Venezuelan oil fields to reap the profits from the largest oil reserves in the world? Set aside the fact that the United States is already energy self-sufficient and that we export crude oil at this point thanks to repeal of a prohibition against doing so that was signed into law by Barrack Obama of all people and you have to ask why usurpation of Venezuelan oil is advantageous for our nation...or is it just advantageous for the big oil companies who supported Trump's campaign financially in large proportions.

And as to Trump himself, starting with his lap dog performance with Vladimir Putin at their press conference in 2017 at which Trump credited Putin with being "strong and powerful" in denying the findings of our intelligence agencies that he had interfered with our presidential election process through manipulation of popular opinion, Trump has turned the other American cheek when it comes to Putin and Ukraine. Oh, he talks a good game...sometimes...but he does nothing. For example, Ukraine asks for weapons with which to retaliate against, and thus deter, Russia from its drone and missile attacks, but Trump refuses to oblige Ukrainian president Zalenskyy. And he chastises Putin with a shake of his finger scolding him...'naughty naughty'...but he does nothing to deter Putin much less stop him or even give him pause before persisting in his imperialistic adventure.
So thousands die while Trump implies that he is doing all he can to end that war as well as the Gaza war, which also continues to cost innocent lives daily while Trump fraudulently brags about having brought peace to the middle east. Meanwhile, the Poltroonican Party continues to do nothing with its constitutional powers to induce honestly in our fearless leader, allowing him to spend lives and treasure in battles like he avoided when he was young.

I know that the irony of all this will be lost on the Trumpian plurality, but it has to be said. Our president is a hypocrite and a liar, and he does it all with his bare face hanging out: shamelessly and without regret. If for no reason other than his deplorable lack of character, he should be impeached for invading another country without a declaration of war from congress, or at least an authorization for use of military force (AUMF) like the one "W" got before invading Afghanistan and Iraq.

As I have often said, on election day, the plurality of the American people get what they deserve. Unfortunately, the rest of us get it too.

Your friend,

Mike

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