Letter: We Must Hold President Trump Accountable

To the editor:

Twitter messages from our president have the effect of obscuring the important issues that are taking place under President Trump's tenure. With just a few keystrokes on his account. he manages to divert the media's attention from real issues to mostly nonsense. Even some early morning misspelled foolishness will make the news cycle for days.

Meanwhile the Dodd-Frank Act, which required banks to have yearly auditing is now history. Press conferences are now not allowed to be recorded. Visitor lists to the White House are now no longer public information. Deals made with the Chinese leadership benefited the first lady by millions. When President Trump visited Saudi Arabia, millions of dollars were donated to Ivanka Trump's charity.

Now comes the charade about his health care. The president had promised that all Americans would be covered, that it would cost less and be a better health plan. Instead of public discussion, his health plan was rushed through the house and luckily, as of this writing, he can not get enough votes from his own party. It lowers taxes to the wealthiest 400 families and promises an earlier death to the millions that will lose their insurance and are ill.

Governing in secret seems to be the modus operandi for this administration. He knocks the press as if the press shouldn’t be doing investigative reporting when that is exactly their job. There’s no fake news, just fake politicians. But no matter what set of talking heads you like, it’s we, not the press, who have the primary responsibility as citizens to hold our elected officials accountable. His twitter messages are a distraction. The press may occasionally lose its focus, but it’s up to us not to lose ours.

Stephen Palmino,
President, Wayne Democratic Club