Editor,

After reading letters from Mr. Wilferth and Ferrer, I realize my tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the Whidbey News-Times and South Whidbey Record no longer print letters from Trump supporters was misinterpreted by some readers. I apologize for my curmudgeonly attempt at levity.

However, I haven’t changed my opinion of the boorishness of the letters submitted by Trump supporters by the writers’ enduring adulation of a narcissist who hasn’t a care for the well-being of his supporters and wouldn’t know what to do or how to do it if he did know.

Witness his tariff chaos, supposedly a bargaining strategy (because he’s such a wily businessman), but in reality just a way to cause financial chaos so he and his rich supporters, and the right-wing loons behind Project 2025, can vacuum up stock profits and our earned benefits (e.g., Social Security). I suppose his supporters can justify his actions; I’d like to hear from them on that topic.

I’d also like to point out (and later read a fact-based rebuttal) that the inflation the nation went through while Biden was president was modestly contributed to but not caused by his policies. If you look at the rate of inflation here and abroad, and the levels of government spending (by other countries) to counter the Covid Crunch, you see that U.S. inflation was lower and shorter lasting than elsewhere. We spent; did we cause the even worse world-wide inflation? If you think so, please explain.

Also, there was a no-win choice: a major recession, or some inflation. Which is less worse? I recall the housing crisis of 2008 onward and find inflation a much smaller price for us to pay. Jobs were lost during COVID, but most of us kept our homes and savings, and then better paying jobs came back. Democratic policies steadied the ship of state, and then set it aright and progressing again.

But look at what poor leadership got us in less than three months.

John Seyfried

Bayview