Letters

Phil Keith’s recent column “Base Instincts” [Mostly Right, Opinion, December 5] first takes us through a basic civics lesson to display his fundamental knowledge of how our government works and thus establish his creds to lecture both our congressman and his readers of his superior understanding of today’s political rancor, and how terrible and wrongheaded our president is at every decision Trump makes. Another biased screed signifying his righteous yet flawed analysis infected by our present national epidemic of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).

So, let us review:

We are now experiencing a booming economy, with the lowest unemployment in 50 years. Victims of TDS attribute this to the policies of his predecessor, leader of the longest and slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression. TDS talking heads and economists predicted economic Armageddon under Trump — yet the economy is on fire, despite a non-accommodative Federal Reserve.

Trump has just delivered his long-promised USMCA trade agreement to replace NAFTA, now hailed by all sides.

Trump campaigned on ending our endless wars and so far has managed to keep us out of any new military conflicts abroad. Meanwhile, he is the only sitting president to have met with North Korean leadership to possibly bring an official end to the Korean War. Most talking heads predicted he would start a war somewhere, and Obama told him North Korea was his greatest threat and that he would be at war with them during his presidency. Trump is effectively working toward reducing that threat.

Trump called out NATO for not contributing their agreed-upon share of expenditures, freeloading on American taxpayers to pay for their social programs. NATO is now stepping up, something no other president has accomplished.

Trump campaigned on stanching the flow of illegal immigrants over our borders and has accomplished that by pressuring Mexico and Guatemala to stop the caravan express and detain them on their side of the border, effectively cutting border crossings by tens of thousands and allowing our agents to do their jobs protecting our border instead of being overwhelmed with people to process and nowhere to put them, only to be released and never appear again for their court dates. Bear in mind, the pictures of people in “cages” among the liberal rent-a-mob protesters were actually the fenced-in holding pens that were installed under Obama to detain these hordes.

Trump has freed 22 hostages, all without payment, through diplomacy, political pressure or onerous financial sanctions — hostages that sat withering in foreign jails, many since the last administration. He did not exchange terrorists for an American deserter, like his predecessor.

Not bad results for the president who Phil Keith believes has no idea what he is doing.

John Porta

Westhampton