Letters

Donald Trump did not emerge in a vacuum. He is the product of a long line of teachers, each shaping his instincts, sharpening his worst impulses, and reinforcing a worldview where power matters more than truth, and notoriety is worth more than integrity.

His father taught him the basics: that people are assets or liabilities, and that whole communities — particularly Black families — were to be avoided because they were “bad for business.” That worldview didn’t make Trump a racist in the classic sense; it made him a calculator, someone who learned early that prejudice could be profitable. He absorbed it and amplified it.

His next great tutor was Roy Cohn, the ruthless lawyer who guided U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunts and helped tear the country apart during the red scare. From Cohn, Trump learned the only rule he has ever consistently followed: Never admit anything. Deny, deny, deny. Attack the accuser. Declare victory even when you are standing in the rubble.

And then came another teacher, one rarely mentioned except in whispers: Jeffrey Epstein. Not in the context of girls or scandals, but as a window into a darker world of influence, money and the seduction of notoriety. Epstein understood the game of power at its highest levels. He knew the currency of proximity, the value of being with the powerful, the art of placing yourself next to wealth and prestige so that your name stayed on the front page, no matter the tabloid, no matter the headline.

Trump watched. He learned, from Cohn and Epstein, that fame, any fame, is leverage, and that once your face is everywhere, you can bend the conversation, distort the truth, and survive scandals that would destroy anyone else.

This is the man America put in the Oval Office: a student of prejudice, a disciple of McCarthy’s chief enforcer, and an admirer of Epstein’s brand of elite notoriety. A man shaped more by the pursuit of power than by any sense of duty or truth.

Every morning, we watch the news and wonder: What will he say today? Whom will he insult? What truth will he twist?

We have normalized chaos, excused dishonesty, and indulged a leader who treats the presidency like the world’s most dramatic reality show.

Gerald Rosengarten

Southampton