To the editor:
You would think that Donald Trump was a perfect man. The way that he puts everyone else down, you would think that he was flawless. His biggest flaw seems to be his huge mouth!
From his badly positioned toupe, to his belly fat, he is a pathetic excuse for a human being.
His decision to take the bait and rehash his past attacks of a former Miss Universe for gaining too much weight is now dominating the conversation. And the controversy is helping the Clinton campaign galvanize Latinos and prevent undecided women from moving toward Trump.
Even as Trump proclaimed victory in New York, he allowed during a Fox News interview yesterday that he let himself get a little too irritated “at the end, maybe” when Clinton brought up Alicia Machado. Machado alleges that Trump called her names such as “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping” when she gained weight after winning the Miss Universe crown in 1996.
Trump could have brushed off the question and moved on the next morning, but instead he engaged. “She was the worst we ever had. The worst. The absolute worst. She was impossible,” Trump said of Machado on Fox. “She was the winner, and she gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem. We had a real problem.”
In 1997, Donald told Howard Stern that Machado was an “eating machine” who “ate a lot of everything.” “You whipped this fat slob into shape,” the radio host told Trump. “I don’t know how you did it. I see all these diet plans, everything else. God bless you.” When asked if Trump had “gotten her down to 118,” he said she is going to be there soon.
Around the same time, Trump told Newsweek: “We’ve tried diet, spa, a trainer, incentives. Forget it, the way she’s going, she’d eat the whole gymnasium.”
Say what?
The depressing reality is that many in our midst have told us — in no uncertain terms via bumper stickers, yard placards and primary votes — that they are not just casual, closeted bigots. They are politically motivated bigots who are cultivating genuine political power in the name of hateful authoritarianism. And, if they aren’t bigots — and some aren’t — they are far too content to travel among those who are.
At some point, you do not get a pass just because you yourself are not as bad as the company you keep. For a long time, many of us tolerated the more backwards, racist tendencies of our friends and loved ones, the proverbial racist uncle on Facebook or grandparents who don’t want gay people to marry. These were morally deficient positions, but not threatening or destabilizing. They were latent prejudices, not organized authoritarian racist political involvements. That is what a vote for Trump is.
Patti Almanza
Hamlet