Jan 2, 2025 By Oren Spiegler 3 min read

Most state and local elected officials do not publicly comment on their brethren at the federal level, likely concluding that expressing an opinion would offend some of their constituents. Republican Washington County Commissioner Nick Sherman is not a part of that group. He expresses his partisan views in a letter of Dec. 26 (“Pleased About Election Results”).

The commissioner expresses his approval of the election of Republicans in this year’s general election, including President-elect Donald Trump. I wonder which Trump statements and policies he agrees with, whether he believes that they will benefit our county, and how he would justify them.

In his Christmas address, Trump spoke a great deal about Jesus Christ. He asserted that we recognize “the sacred dignity of every person” and that “each one of us is a child of God.” He then went on to reference “radical left lunatics” and to assert that President Joe Biden “has absolutely no idea what he is doing.” He spoke of his desire to make Canada a part of the United States, mocked its leader, Justin Trudeau, and asserted that we should acquire Greenland and force American control of the Panama Canal.

What does the commissioner think of Trump’s:

– admiration for murderous dictators while expressing disdain for our allies;

– belief that man-made changes in the climate are not taking place and his plan to destroy all that Biden has done to address a crisis which is evident through more severe and frequent weather calamities that are costing us hundreds of billions of dollars;

– plan to round up every undocumented immigrant, to build detention camps at which they would reside until deported, all of this to be done with a price tag of hundreds of billions of dollars, throwing employers who are dependent on immigrant labor into a tailspin;

– plan to impose tariffs on multiple countries which would spark a trade war and reignite inflation;

– plan to provide tax cuts mostly targeted to the wealthy, and to eliminate the tax on tips and Social Security benefits, ballooning the federal debt which currently stands at an astronomical $36 trillion+ and hastening the day that the Social Security Trust Fund will become insolvent;

– appointment of unserious, unqualified individuals to prominent positions based solely upon their loyalty to him and/or large contributions to his campaign;

– desire to silence media organizations and individuals who do not report favorably about him, to revoke the broadcast licenses of television networks that he does not like;

– pledging the impossible, to have his “government efficiency” leaders, billionaires Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, find a means of cutting a whopping $2 trillion from an annual budget of about $6.7 trillion;

– pledge to protect women “whether they like it or not”;

– plan to use his term to get revenge against those who have crossed him, singling out former U. S. Rep. Liz Cheney for court-martial and imprisonment, and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, to be executed.

– desire to remove as many as 50,000 civil service employees and replace them with political appointees who are loyal to him;

– desire to weaken and starve the Internal Revenue Service of revenue that is needed for it to audit and pursue wealthy tax cheats and to offer satisfactory customer service.

It will be interesting to see how our county and country fare under a new Trump presidency. The outlook is not encouraging.

Oren Spiegler is a Peters Township resident.