By Michael Woyton
You would think at some point the grifter-in-chief would take a break from trying to dominate every news second around the clock.
But no.
Where to start, when in the course of a weekend, he threatened to sue Trevor Noah for a joke at the Grammys, suggested going to war with Iran, declared the latest release of the Epstein files absolves him, had journalists arrested and continued badmouthing the VA ICU nurse who federal agents murdered?
Oh, and the man who bankrupted a casino has allowed a showcase for international culture to become an arts desert, and subsequently announced the closure of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for “renovations.”
I’m sure I am leaving something — lots of things — out, but that’s our convicted felon for ya.
There was some good news over the weekend though.
Little Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old who, with his father, was detained by our government and held in a Texas ICE facility, was released Saturday per a judge’s order.
Liam is the child photographed wearing a blue bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack as he was surrounded by immigration officers and used as bait to lure other people out of his home.
The image of the child spoke volumes about what this administration is really doing and how cruelly they are doing it.
According to the judge who ordered Liam and his father’s release, “The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”
While scrolling through social media, I ran across an open letter from a South Dakotan to her congressman — there’s only one for the entire state — and her two senators.
Sen. John Thune is the current majority leader for the Senate, so he presumably has some authority. He is joined in Washington, D.C., by Sen. Mike Rounds and Rep. Dustin “Dusty” Johnson. They are all Republicans.
The author of the open letter that appeared on the South Dakota Standard website is Kathy Gustafson, a retired, lifelong South Dakotan who is a mother and grandmother.
In her bio at the end of the letter, she said she was concerned about the “Balkanization” of America and that it “takes a lot for her to speak out, but she has reached that point.”
Gustafson begins the letter by saying, “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to comprehend.”
She questions if her state’s elected officials were raised the way she was: by good, hard-working, honest folk, who were taught to treat people as you would want to be treated.
Gustafson reminds the men that they are all descendants of immigrants. Her mother lived through the Nazi regime in Germany, coming to the United States after World War II.
“John and Mike, members of your family fought in that war against the barbaric cruelty of Hitler and the Japanese empire,” she wrote. “How can you think of them, and the millions of people of all nations who fought and died to vanquish autocratic rulers, and blindly acquiesce to imposing the same conditions here in our own country? No, more than acquiesce. You accommodate and enable.”
Then Gustafson cuts to the chase: “I have to question whether you have any morality, or even souls. The question of ‘Have you no decency?’ seems so trite.”
She asks the three politicians how they can watch what has been unfolding in Minneapolis “and not feel the urge to vomit or scream and weep in anguish?”
“How can you make excuses based on [DHS Secretary Kristi] Noem and Trump’s blatant lies?” Gustafson said.
Then she brings it all home: “When does it come to Sioux Falls and Brookings and Rapid City and Pierre? Are South Dakotans safe because we’re a red state? The international students at SDSU certainly don’t feel safe.”
After describing the president, his advisor Stephen Miller and Noem as having shown themselves to be “evil to the core,” Gustafson ends by asking the three elected officials if some shred of their shared upbringing allows them to rebel against what the administration is doing.
“Or are you too far gone?” she said. “Like them.”
Bravo, Kathy Gustafson, keep speaking out.
Here’s hoping others will as well.
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Lead art: Screen grab from KARE 11 via YouTube.
On Second Thought 