Randi Kreiss

Keep troops safe with a strong, savvy leader

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A shocking front-page story in last Friday’s New York Times caught my eye. Its title was, “Experts Find Flaws in Trump Plan for Wall.” That seemed the understatement of the year.

The shock, for me, was that a newspaper like The Times was taking the idea seriously enough to discuss. The paper took the time, the ink and the money to explore Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall across America’s southern border as if it were a viable proposal. The story reflected an editorial decision to take the idea seriously, when it is patently absurd, racist and xenophobic. Experts “find flaws”? I suppose there are “flaws” as well in Trump’s plan to ban Muslims, or to “crush” ISIS, or to round up millions of undocumented residents and throw them out of the country.

The more the man speaks, and the more details he offers of his so-called foreign policy and his domestic agenda, the deeper the hole he digs for himself. I do think we (citizens, journalists and politicians) need to call out bigotry where we see it, but to entertain his ideas as if they might be credible is to tumble right down the rabbit hole.

He makes stuff up as he goes along. According to Timothy Egan, a Times columnist, “Like any good authoritarian — Soviet or banana republic — Trump concocts plots and dark doings to scare the quivering masses. And no one on the public stage is better at the Big Lie this year than Trump. PolitiFact found that 75 percent of his so-called factual statements are ‘mostly or entirely false.’ The other 25 percent were ‘half true’ or ‘mostly true.’ His score in the flat-out ‘true’ column was zero . . .”

So, to debate his so- called facts does a disservice to the public. We need to focus on his basic unsuitability for public office.

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