Dear Elector,
I write you as an American, a Texan, and a U.S. Army
veteran. Please consider casting your vote for Hillary Clinton on December 19th.
Allow me to explain why I make this request.
Hillary Clinton has received 63.7 million of the popular
vote. Donald Trump has received 62 million, making Mrs. Clinton the clear
choice of the majority of American voters.
Donald Trump’s campaign was built on impractical promises
designed to stir up racism and activate white nationalists. Among his more irresponsible
promises:
- To build a wall on our southern border and “make Mexico pay for it” – a plan that is not only fiscally irresponsible but also served to insult and alienate the Mexican government.
- To ban Muslims from entering the United States – a plan that violates human rights and our constitution would cause needless suffering to innocent refugees fleeing war.
- To impose tariffs on goods produced in China and Mexico – which violates international trade rules and could lead to a trade war which would cost thousands of Americans their jobs and have a detrimental effect on the world’s economy.
- To withdraw the U.S. from NAFTA – which would not increase American jobs and could result in the U.S. being unable to negotiate favorable trade deals in the future.
- To repeal the Affordable Care Act – The ACA has resulted in the lowest ever uninsured rate in the U.S., has ensured adequate health care coverage for all insured, and has saved Americans approximately $2.6 trillion in health care costs. Repealing the ACA would result in economic hardships and lost lives due to lack of healthcare.
- To renegotiate with Iran – The deal that President Obama struck with Iran resulted in Iran shipping 25,000 pounds of uranium out of the country, dismantling 2/3 of its centrifuges, filling its heavy water reactor with concrete, and providing unprecedented access to its nuclear facilities. It’s hard to see what Trump hopes to achieve by “renegotiating” but it seems very likely that the results will be an erosion of our relationship with Iran and further destabilization of the Middle East.
- To “bomb the shit out of ISIS” – Trump’s ignorance about the nature of international relations and his accusations that the U.S. military is “weak and ineffective” is deeply troubling and offensive. The U.S. has the largest, most modern, and most effective military in the world. “Bombing the shit” out of any place tends to further radicalize the survivors without accomplishing any positive military or political goal. Trump is a loose cannon on the international stage and likely to at best embarrass the country, at worst plunge us into deeply destructive and pointless wars.
Donald Trump’s proposed cabinet picks illustrate the kind of
president he will be and presents a clear threat to all non-whites and women in
the country:
- Attorney General – Jeff Sessions. Three decades ago Sessions was deemed too racist to be a federal judge, having once called a black lawyer “boy” and advising him to “be careful how you talk to white folks.” He has spent his career fighting against all advances for racial equality, women’s rights, due process, or voting rights. His appointment is a clear message that Trump’s America will provide justice only to white men. White supremacists are drooling.
- National Security Advisor – Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn. Mike Flynn is known for exaggerating his credentials and his accomplishments. He served in Iraq as General McChrystal’s yes man and was known to bully anyone who disagreed with him. His brief tenure at the DIA was a disaster, his attempts to “shake up” the organization drowned in his own naiveté and arrogance. Even more worrying, Flynn was paid to speak in Moscow to honor a pro-Putin propaganda outlet, RT.
- Director of the CIA – Mike Pompeo. Mike rose to fame as the congressman from Kansas who led the expensive and completely fallacious “Benghazi” attacks on Mrs. Clinton. He has also called for renewing the bulk collection of American’s domestic telecommunications records and advocates for the use of torture in interrogations, both illegal. He has close ties to Koch industries and has received large contributions from Koch employees. Pompeo would be the most blatantly partisan CIA director in that organization’s history.
- Has been accused by at least a dozen different women of sexual assault and has been recorded bragging about assaulting women.
- He has been accused by a victim and a witness of violently raping a 13-year-old child, who withdrew her charges after receiving an avalanche of death threats from Trump supporters.
- Donald Trump settled a lawsuit for his fraudulent Trump University for $25 million, then bragged on Twitter how it was a “small fraction of the potential award.”
- On 11/21, Trump held a meeting at Trump Tower with top media execs, and then proceeded to harangue and bully the attendees, saying that the media were a bunch of deceitful liars and that they got “everything wrong” in their coverage of him.
- He registered 8 companies in Saudi Arabia during the campaign, remaining today the president or director of 4 of them. He said of the Saudis during a campaign rally “They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
- Has been actively soliciting business from agents of foreign governments – a clear violation of the constitution that states “no person holding any office of profit or trust under the United States shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title of any kind whatever from any king, prince, or foreign state.”
- He has refused to put his business holdings in a true blind trust, insisting that his children would run his business and he “wouldn’t talk to them about it.” This creates a clear conflict of interest, especially where his heavily leveraged real estate holdings are concerned. How can he make disinterested decisions about economic policy?
- Only 15% of Trump’s statements during his campaign have been rated as true or mostly true by fact-checkers. The American people and our allies can have no assurance that he is speaking or will ever speak the truth in his role as the President.
- Trump has been sued over 3,500 times in the course of his career, often for “stiffing” contractors for work they have performed for his businesses. Even compared to other businesses of similar size and type, this is an exceptional number of lawsuits. Trump has settled in at least 100 of these cases, sometimes paying thousands of dollars in damages.
- Trump’s family’s decision to remain in New York means that the U.S. taxpayers will pay $1 million A DAY to provide security for them. Considering that some of that money is rent that the Secret Service will pay to Trump Tower, this is an unacceptable waste and ethically untenable.
For all of these reasons, I implore you to put the good of
your country ahead of partisan politics and cast your vote for Hillary Clinton,
the ethical, experienced candidate with the majority of votes in this election.
Thank you,
Geraldine Mongold
