The opinions stated in this article are solely those of the author. 

Be prepared! This is the time – 600 days away from the next presidential election – you will receive countless pleas from candidates and their election committees. Their mailers will request a donation along with messages like “There is no time to waste!”

I received my first mailer this week. It was auto-signed by Donald J. Trump asking me for a small monetary contribution (from $35 to $5,000) to help his “heroic efforts” to save America. Once again, he promised to “drain the swamp,” letting me know that he is already Utah’s favorite candidate to win the Republican nomination.

His request for money contained the same assertions he made in 2016. And there lies the problem. 

Sorry, Mr. Trump. You have a right to your own opinions, but not your own facts. Sure, Joe Biden is weak, has flip-flopped on several issues since his election, seriously mismanaged our military exit from Afghanistan, and wasn’t timely in explaining the Chinese balloon incident. But Trump’s letter skirts the truth.

He claims without explanation that Pres. Biden is “corrupt.” This is ironic considering it comes from a man who, among other shenanigans, paid hush money for sex and then deducted it from his taxes as a legal expense.

He claims inflation was caused by government spending and puts the blame on Democrats. If he is referring to the pandemic payments to individuals and businesses, he was the president who signed the bill, and those payments halted long ago. Our current inflation is caused by spending, a “you can’t take it with you” attitude since the pandemic. It’s not Joe Biden who is spending money on travel and restaurants and entertainment and autos; it’s you and me!  Inflation rates have actually decreased in the past few months, and, as any reputable economist will tell you, the chairman of the Federal Reserve has a much larger impact on inflation than any elected official.

Trump incorrectly says the “Biden Democrats want to defund the police.” Actually only a small sliver of Democrats support defunding and Pres. Biden’s budget has large increases for law enforcement.

He claims that violent crime is so bad “killings are taking place like nobody has ever seen, right in Manhattan!”  Wrong! The murder rate in New York is at its lowest since 2019 – when Trump was president.

He blames Biden for his support of the “Green New Deal.” Funny, just last night the “green” environmentalists were criticizing Biden’s support of Arctic oil drilling.

And Trump’s letter concluding that the news media, Washington-based employees and “education bureaucrats” are enemies of America is ludicrous. Just because a majority of newspaper editors disagree with you, doesn’t make them an enemy of this country.  And in all my years I’ve yet to see any public school bureaucrat (principal, school board member, etc.) hating America – or assaulting a U.S. Capitol policeman!

What will I do with his letter? Since he enclosed a postage-paid envelope, I will mail it back empty.  At least the U.S. Postal Service will benefit and Trump can foot the bill.