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The vaccine to eradicate COVID-19 is being deployed. The challenge is to produce and administer the vaccine in two doses to the billions of people in the world and hundreds of millions of people in the United States. This will be a huge operation and will require detailed planning and execution in the United States and the world.

Trump’s active sabotaging of the transfer to President-Elect Biden will delay and complicate these life-saving vaccinations and result in more unnecessary American deaths. Trump’s selfishness and incompetence just keeps on giving more death.

These actions, as well as Trump’s refusal to accept the vote of the electorate, will be viewed by history as a betrayal on par or exceeding that of Benedict Arnold’s plot to surrender West Point to the British. Arnold’s betrayal occurred in 1780 before the Constitution was written in 1787. Arnold escaped to England but his British contact, Major John Andre, was caught and hanged.   

Arnold was just a disgruntled officer. Trump is the current president and swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. Trump is doing everything he can to steal an election and discredit our democracy. He believes if he keeps repeating the lies we will believe it is true. He is trashing the clear language of the Constitution. Arnold acted alone. In Trump’s case, sadly only a small minority of the Republican Congress have defended our free and fair election against Trump’s baseless attacks and lies. The majority of the Republican Congress have been silent or conspired with Trump.

I predict that history will judge Donald Trump and Benedict Arnold similarly. At least Arnold was exposed before he did any lasting damage to our country.          

Joe Pacovsky

Hayward