While Elon Musk has a long history of successful entrepreneurship, Trump has none of the same attributes, after his fathers death he inherited an estate realistically valued at $413 million, which, if invested in an index fund, would be worth nearly 13 billion today, much more than Trump ever made on his own.

Nearly every venture that Trump tried failed, so Trump was never really a successful businessman. His many bankruptcies hurt only his employees, his suppliers, and his other investors. He has a well documented history of undervaluing his properties for tax purposes and vastly overvaluing those same properties to secure loans against those properties. His love of vicious dictators has been obvious for years, when the president of China was declared president for life, his comment was, “Maybe we should do something like that in our country.”

He also stated when referring to Kim Jung Un that he thought they were in love. It has been clear for a very long time that he also feels favorable towards Putin and the way he runs his country, he is one of the most brutal dictators that exist today, stifling dissent in Russia and abroad by eliminating any one who stands up to him by killing them or imprisoning them. His unprovoked and brutal war against Ukraine is nothing more than his attempt to reestablish the former Soviet Union.

The student that Trump claimed was a Hamas agitator was nothing of the kind, he was simply advocating for the Palestinian civilians that are being killed in vast numbers by Israeli forces, not standing up for Hames.

The enormous fraud and waste in federal government should not be handled by mass firings of employees regardless of their perceived productivity, this is just a thinly vailed attempt to create the “Deep State” that is falsely claimed to currently exist by replacing them with employees loyal to Trump, thus creating that exact thing they claim exists now.

You don’t “negotiate” with a brutal dictator by giving him everything he wants up front and blaming the leader of the attacked country for starting the war and shaming him in public. What Jerome Loran calls evaluating the evidence and making reasoned judgements sounds more like the exact opposite of critical thinking. Just sayin’.

Larry Benson

Enumclaw