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Sundin column: Nov. 3, 2020 — Time to trump Trump

Hal Sundin
As I See It
Hal Sundin

There are so many reasons to vote Donald J. Trump out of office, there’s no way to list them all in one, or even two, columns. Here are just some of the ways he has mismanaged the office of POTUS.

First and foremost is his abysmal mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic, making him personally responsible for most of the 185,000 American deaths. While nearly every other country has the pandemic under control, in the U.S. it is still not under control.

The U.S., with only 4 percent of the world’s population, has a quarter of the cases and deaths. He tries to blame testing for these statistics and tells us that we have the best testing in the world. Wrong on both counts. If testing didn’t show up all these cases, would they just go away? He has tried to lay the blame on China and on the states. But this is not a state responsibility, it is a nationwide problem.



He also has set a bad example by not wearing a mask, when masks are the best way of containing the virus. He has been in complete denial, telling us it was “going to be over by April, it’s no problem, we’re OK, it’s under control, and will disappear.”

He labeled Dr. Fauci “an alarmist,” but the explosive increase in the number of cases and deaths racking the country is exactly what Fauci predicted. Trump’s “science” is “ignore it, maybe it will go away.” He has recommended hydroxychloroquine and injecting disinfectants, which have no effect on the COVID-19 virus, and can be harmful. This is a nationwide problem that should have been dealt with by him, the way other nations have.



Trump is also willing to risk the lives of untold numbers of children and teachers by reopening schools, hoping that will gain him votes in the upcoming election. Just about all of his actions are decided on whether they will enhance his re-election chances instead of what is good for the country. His reluctance to initiate a strategy to counter the pandemic, as all other countries (except Brazil, whose president is a carbon-copy of Trump), is because he is afraid it would adversely affect the economy and his re-election chances, but it has done just that. Anyone who was not a fool could have seen that result.

The Donald has surrounded himself with a coterie of lackeys, many of questionable ethics, who lavish him with praise and campaign money, both of which he loves. When they come on board, he calls them the cream of the crop, but if they disagree with him, like a grade-school bully he fires them and labels them as incompetent idiots. Then he bestows pardons, commits sentences or interferes in the trials of shady characters like Michael Flynn, who had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, and Roger Stone, who got caught for lying under oath on seven felony charges.

Trump still can’t get over the fact that Obama had a larger inauguration crowd than he had, and has been exacting vendettas on Obama’s accomplishments, such as the ACA (Obamacare) and the Paris Accords, disregarding the resulting adverse consequences. He has also rolled back numerous environmental regulations intended to reduce global warming and protect endangered species, such as supporting mining and burning of coal, opening the Arctic to mining activities, and relaxing emission standards on methane and for automobiles and trucks.

He just doesn’t give a damn for the affects these actions are going to have on the future livability of our planet.

Donald Trump is a confirmed liar (more than 20,000 verified lies to date) unable to distinguish between what comes out of his mouth and his multiple tweets (as many as 200-300 per day), and the truth. Between the tweets and golf, it’s no wonder he hasn’t taken time to do anything to protect the American people from the coronavirus pandemic.

In recent books by John Bolton, a former National Security Advisor to Trump, and his niece, Mary, a PhD and clinical psychologist, have labeled him a fraud and a bully with a short attention span, uninformed and disinterested in becoming informed, totally incompetent, and mentally and emotionally unfit to be president.

To be continued next month. In the meantime, face the fact that the coming election is between Joe Biden for president and Donald Trump for dictator. The choice is yours.

“As I See It” appears on occasion in the Post Independent and at postindependent.com. Hal Sundin lives in Glenwood Springs and is a retired environmental and structural engineer. Contact him at asicit1@hotmail.com.


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