Dear Editor,

(In reference to a recent editorial by Dr. Bob Martin) Dr. Martin, Trump didn’t win the election — he stole it. He lost the popular vote by 2.9 million votes and won MI/WI/PA by a total of less than 73,000 votes. These states were heavily targeted by Russian trolls, Wikileaks, Cambridge Analytica and Republican disenfranchisement of likely Democratic voters.  

Additionally, Trump only received 63 million, or 46 percent, of the 137 million votes cast. Seventy-four million votes went to Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein, write-ins, or other fringe candidates. 

It is a fact that the 54 percent of Americans who voted did not vote for Trump. So in the eyes of many millions of Americans, including this one, Trump’s presidency has no legitimacy.

I do not think that Trump is evil simply because I disagree with him. I think he is evil because he does evil things. His first executive order was to allow coal companies to dump coal-mining wastes into streams and rivers which provide our drinking water. He withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords making us the only country in the world outside the strictures of the global plan to combat climate change. He is weakening the Endangered Species Act and allowing the murder of animals hibernating in their winter dens. I think these things are evil. He lies repeatedly — some 2,000 certified lies since he was sworn in. I think that lying is evil.

I would remind professor Martin that the very night of President Obama’s inauguration Mitch McConnell and the Republican leadership met and declared a scorched earth policy against the president declaring that they would not work with him on any matters, large or small. For eight years, Republicans tried to act as if Obama was not the duly elected president of the United States — even though he won the popular vote by over six million votes and the electoral college by over 200 in 2012!  

And Trump continued to bray that Obama was not a legitimate president because he was born in Kenya. This, of course, was a lie and Trump finally admitted it, although he never apologized.

“You can expect conservatives to adopt an all-out opposition to the next Democrat elected president.” Well Dr. Martin, if conservatives could do any more to thwart a Democratic president than they did President Obama, I can’t imagine what it would be. I suppose they could deny a Democratic president with a year left in his term the right to name a Supreme Court Justice. Oops! They already did that.

So don’t insist that now since your guy won Democrats play nice. For too long Democrats have played by the Marquis of Queensbury rules while for Republicans every dispute is a knife fight in a dark basement. Those days are over! Resist!

Jim Porter

Danville