According to Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Cay Johnston in “The Making of Donald Trump,” in 1980, a wealthy businessman hired a window-washing firm employing illegal Polish aliens to tear down the Bonwit Teller Department Store. These people worked 12 hour shifts, seven days a week. Promised pay of $4 to $5 an hour (no overtime), working without hard hats or face masks (around asbestos) they were often not paid at all. Having no power tools, they took down the building with sledgehammers. They later sued, and he settled.

He hired, rented an apartment to and used for years a helicopter service run by a three-time felon drug-trafficker, Joseph Weichselbaum. For the purpose of inflating his worth, he claimed one of his properties was worth $50 million. For tax assessment purposes he listed its worth as $9 million. On another property which he also valued at $50 million, he manipulated property tax rules so that he paid under $1,100 a year in taxes. To escape paying sales taxes on jewelry costing $65,000 he bought in New York, he mailed empty jewelry boxes to his lawyer in Connecticut. He founded a charity he has used to pay off business fines, his son’s $7 Boy Scout dues and a $10,000 portrait of himself. I could go on and on. He does not release his taxes because if he did his dishonesty would be apparent to anyone who examines them.

This businessman is your president. For those of you who believe he is a Christian, imagine Jimmy Carter doing any of these things! Yet on the campaign trail, the man who I believe is the most dishonest and inept of all presidents had the gall to call Hillary (who has always released her taxes and whose charity does good work) “crooked Hillary.” His base cheered when his surrogates chanted “lock her up.” Just as they did when he denigrated a war hero, the disabled, Gold Star parents, women, blacks, Mexicans, Muslims, the press and our intelligence services. Even among his supporters, many are nervous that a man who I believe is ignorant, unstable and impulsive has the keys to the nuclear codes. James Clapper, former head of our intelligence agencies, is terrified of it. I have little confidence Trump would not start a war to take attention away from the Russia investigation. I believe he cares about nothing except his own (and his family’s) financial increase, which is why he cultivates a man, Putin, who has stolen $80 billion to $200 billion from his own people and who imprisons or kills journalists and opponents. Putin is the one person Trump will not denigrate because he hopes to use Putin to increase his own wealth. Remember, Trump’s son-in-law who desperately needs to refinance a $1.8 billion loan, met with a Russian banker during the transition and tried to open a back door to Russia through the Russian Embassy that our intelligence agencies would not be privy to. He did not, initially, mention any of these meetings (required) on his security clearance forms. I think Trump is a crook illegally using the office to enrich himself. Impeach and imprison! Now!

Lonna Gooden Van Horn

Northwood