Last week’s letter, “Show Some Respect,” purported to chide a Mr. Greenberg for showing a lack of respect to a sitting president by pointing to his “declining cognitive abilities.” In so doing, he has shown an even greater level of disrespect with his faux outrage at Donald Trump, who he says proposes to be a dictator on day one. Now, I will give the author his due respect as a rabbi and as a fellow Jew by assuming he has merely been brainwashed. I propose to deprogram the author’s hypnosis thusly:
- His claim obviously lacks context. In response to a question about being a dictator, Trump said, “No, no, no, other than day one. We’re closing the border, and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.” He wants to close the border and restore America’s energy independence; nothing about these issues is even slightly dictatorial, they are positions supported by a majority of Americans and are well within the bounds of powers granted to the executive branch.
- We already had four years of Donald Trump as president. He was not a dictator for any of that time.
- Finally, nobody would ever do what the author is suggesting, least of all a presidential candidate: Who would ever declare his own dictatorial aspirations? You don’t even need to know the context to know that Trump didn’t say it, that’s how obvious it is.
It seems to me that your claim reveals your lack of understanding of Republicans, and Orthodox Jews who largely lean to the right. Do you really think so little of us that you believe we cannot identify a dictator? Following the constitution is literally the thing we care about the most, and dictators are the people we like the least.
