By Andrew Jacobson

The writer got one thing right in the recent My Turn “Policies, not personalities” commentary on Sept. 1; as the title and text suggests, Kamala Harris clearly has the better “personality” than Donald Trump. Frankly, let’s compare anyone to a convicted sex offender who has bragged, in explicit detail, about sexually assaulting women, including underage women. Or to an “adult” who physically mocks the disabled. Or to an individual who instead of caring for the sick and lowly as Jesus would, is trumpeting a desire to rip millions of families apart through the largest mass deportation in American history. Or, perhaps most heinously, almost single-handedly undermining trust in our democracy and fueling a failed insurrection of our elected government on Jan. 6. 

Let’s remember that not a single Republican who won in November 2020 has suggested that their victory was tainted by the supposed “widespread fraud” that prevented Donald Trump from winning. After 4 years and countless recounts, the nonexistent “Kraken,” Mike Lindell paying $5 million to someone who did prove that his “election irregularities” were bogus, the hand-picked GOP firm Cyber Ninjas recount that proved again that Joe Biden won in Arizona, the near-billion dollar settlement between Fox News and Dominion voting systems, there is still no evidence to match the claims that fraud impacted Joe Biden’s victory in 2020. But, we do have plenty of evidence of Trump lying about numbers — from lying about his early 2016 primary losses to Ted Cruz, to lies about the loss of the popular vote in 2016 (tellingly, the number of “illegal” votes cast were just a bit more than the number he lost by), to of course 2020. I could go on. Trump’s personality is indeed not only an anchor to his candidacy but a reason why so many of his policies failed and why his term in office was chaotic and bad for America. 

Moreover, morals and ethics guide our behavior. Our behaviors help determine our actions and policies. Trump’s morals and behavior are abhorrent, as even the writer suggests, thus how can he ever build good policies? How can the American public trust someone with his morals to create policies that benefit all Americans? We can’t. 

Andrew Jacobson lives in Salisbury.