A girl waves a U.S. flag as thousands gather outside to protest President Donald Trump's speech March 15 at the Nashville Municipal Auditorium in Tennessee. (CNS/Tennessee Register/Theresa Laurence)
by Mario T. García
It is very hard to keep up with all of Donald Trump's outrageous and dangerous comments and actions. This may be deliberate on his part, in order not to allow a particular opposition to form on any one of his comments or actions. This is not happening in all cases, such as the connection between the Trump campaign and the Russians and the growing opposition to the so-called health care bill he is endorsing. I want to comment on just a few of these.
First is the unprecedented and unwarranted false accusation that Trump made that President Barack Obama had ordered a wiretapping of Trump Tower. Trump did this by tweeting with no evidence to back up this accusation. As president, he can very easily ask the FBI if this were true or not, which he obviously did not since he seems not to trust it or any of the intelligence agencies.
This is simply one of many of his lies. We have to remember that it was Trump who lied and kept lying that Obama was not born in the United States.
Someone mentioned recently that of course Trump lies because he is a salesman, and salesman and advertisers lie all the time and so Trump is part of this practice. The only problem is that Trump's lies have dire consequences as president.
It seems to me that Trump needs to be censured for his unproven attack on a former president and this should come from the U.S. Congress. Since the Republicans control the Congress, this is not going to happen, but I propose that the Democrats introduce a censure resolution and take it as far as possible.
Americans who see the lie should also demand that Trump be censured. Instead of "Lock her up", we should shout out, "Censure him!"
What House Speaker Paul Ryan and Trump are proposing to do in, if not fully eliminating Obamacare, radically changing it is mean-spirited and callous. We now know through the Congressional Budget Office that millions of Americans will lose health coverage that they had received through the Affordable Care Act. Medicare will be severely cut and not allow many other poor working people to join it for health coverage.
At the same time, the richest people in the country will gain an enormous tax cut, since the taxes imposed on them to help pay for Obamacare will be eliminated. In many ways, this is really the intent of what Ryan and Trump want to do.
This is unjust and inhumane. Where is their humanity? They seem to care little if people have health insurance or not. Both claim they are Christian, and in Ryan's case Catholic, but where is their Christian charity? Where is Catholic social doctrine?
Those Christians and Catholics who voted for Trump largely based on his opposition to abortion should now also voice their opposition to the harm to human life by the elimination of health care to fellow Americans. Are our Catholic clergy speaking out on this in their Sunday homilies?
Finally, Trump's announced budget is also inhumane and un-American. It will slash or eliminate federal funding for many needed social services, such as food stamps and other anti-poverty measures. It will defund environmental agencies and practices. It will cut educational support.
To challenge facts that he does not care for, Trump calls for press and cultural censorship by eliminating funding for the Public Broadcasting Service, National Public Radio, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.
These are a reactionary attempts to hurt the poor and to silence opposing voices. This has to be opposed and Americans need to pressure their congressional representatives to do so.
These are hard times, perhaps unprecedented hard times. We cannot become discouraged or complacent. True Americans have to oppose Trump and his anti-American supporters. We want our country back!
