Letters

Concerns of Trump administration authoritarianism were topics in a recent editorial in this paper [“Sounding the Alarm,” August 14], as well as in a “Viewpoint” by the local League of Women Voters.

No mention was made about the years of political harassment Donald Trump experienced since his first election. His supporters were endlessly harassed, and some arrested in the dead of night; jack-booting FBI agents hauled off friends, outspoken supporters and campaign operatives for having the temerity to disagree with the liberal narrative. The loyal media lapped it up, like a megaphone stirring the masses into blind disobedience and dissent.

Absent from these discussions are the failed Russian collusion narrative, cooked up and paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign, and put on accelerated priority schedule by a sitting president, Barack Obama. A complicit Department of Justice and the FBI later withheld highly incriminating evidence from Hunter Biden’s laptop to protect his father, Joe Biden, who went on to be elected president and served, arguably, the worst presidency since Jimmy Carter, and perhaps all time.

Using the judicial branch, DOJ and security agencies, CIA and FBI, to take down a political rival is the very essence of an authoritarian state. The compliant media has only served to accelerate the process rather than mitigate the problem.

It has been pointed out that Trump has had more suits, legal actions and stays than any other sitting president in history, combined. I question the accuracy of that statement, but it certainly reflects the unprecedented use of “lawfare” against a sitting president, utilized to countermand the will of the American people who elected Trump.

Trump has set out a path to do exactly what he campaigned for. He immediately slowed the ridiculous hordes of illegal immigrants crossing our border to a trickle using existing tools at his disposal. His methods may be heavy-handed, but the message is out there: We are no longer an open-border society. The status quo under Biden and Obama was unsustainable; we, as a nation, cannot feed and house the planet at large. Undocumented immigrants, sad as their story may be, are here illegally. Euphemism does not change the fact that they are criminally ignoring our laws, and we need to get back on track instead of turning a blind eye.

Surely there will be sad and heartbreaking stories, but the situation was created and accelerated by liberal policies that are economically and socially unsustainable. Fix the border problem, then resolve to make legal immigration manageable and possible with an eventual path toward citizenship for those here legally. It is essential that we have a sustainable and manageable pathway to legal entry.

John Porta

Westhampton