I read Stephen Siemsen’s letter in the latest edition of New Times, “An open letter to the secretary of state” (Aug. 31).
His use of a quote he attributes to President Trump caught my eye. It seemed too outrageous not to have been covered by mainstream media, especially as media these days are driven by click-bait headlines and blatant toxic partisanship. If President Trump had said this, had dismissed the Constitution as “a waste of paper” and something he did “not support,” surely I would have heard about it?
Curiosity took over.
So I did some research. It didn’t take me long, a 10-second Google search and a quick call to a passionate local Republican, to discover that President Trump said no such thing. The quote Mr. Siemsen used to justify his demand “to disqualify Donald John Trump as a candidate for any local, state, or federal office, or to appear on any ballot anywhere within the state of California” was taken from the well-known parody/satire account known as The Borowitz Report, a regular feature in The New Yorker!
I am no supporter of President Trump, nor for that matter President Biden.
I am however a passionate advocate for the campaign against the politicization of media and the toxic partisanship that media bias creates in our communities.
We all make mistakes. We are all entitled to our own opinions. We are not entitled to our own facts. Mr. Siemsen may have many reasons why he believes President Trump is not fit for office. I may even agree with him on some. However, the biggest mistake of all is allowing cognitive dissonance to cloud our judgement and, if we are voters, to cloud our responsibility to democracy.
That is why we need curious, impartial editors who aspire to Bob Woodward’s admonition that the media reliably acts “as the Fourth Estate,” not as a propaganda machine for one party or another.
I trust that the New Times publisher and editorial team will print a prominent retraction, or at the very least The Shredder will show some editorial equity by holding Mr. Siemsen to account, just as he derides Moms For Liberty (“Something to the outcry,” Aug. 31).
I also hope that the chief warrant officer (retd.) will honor his commitment to “defend the Constitution of the United States” by writing to the secretary of state to acknowledge his error and withdraw his petition.
As Alexander Pope wrote: “To err is human; to forgive, divine.” We need some more of that in our political discourse! Δ
Clive Pinder, host of CeaseFire on KVEC 920AM/96.5FM Radio, writes to New Times from Templeton. Send a letter for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Sep 7-17, 2023.
The fact is that last December, the former President DID call for TERMINATION of the Constitution in order to retain power – and as the Federal and Georgia state indictments both indicate, he led a massive conspiracy to launch an insurrection to violently interfere with the orderly processing of the Electoral College votes by the Congress on January 6. He surely violated his oath of office and it is increasingly evident that he violated both State and Federal law. We’ll let a jury decide – actually, several juries – but already, Federal courts have meted out sentences that amount to a total of 721 years to defendants in over 1,000 courtrooms as we try to heal the damage this man has already inflicted on the Constitution and on our democracy.
Oh please! Trump routinely used the Constitution in the privy after eating McDonald’s cheeseburgers.
As the old saying goes, “in war, the first casualty is the truth”.
I whole heartedly agree with Mr. Pinder’s passion about getting our facts straight before quoting anything on public forums and I can appreciate his comment that he is “no supporter of President Trump” and that he shares a strong “responsibility to democracy”. That aside, the premise behind Mr. Siemsen’s original Op-Ed has tremendous merit. The former President never intended to read or uphold the Constitution, ever. And never will. It should be interesting to see how many States (if any) can get his name removed from the ballot in Nov. 2024, assuming he wins the nomination next year.
CLIVE PINDER
“Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump wrote in a post on the social network Truth Social and accused “Big Tech” of working closely with Democrats. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/03/politics/tr…