President Trump is, and has been, pulling out every stop to hide information about himself, his tax records, bank and business dealings, etc. He calls it harassment and a coup attempt to be asked about such things. Well, the coup may have already taken place in 2016. Who can trust a president with 10,000 documented lies behind him to date?

We need to consider the words of Fisher Ames, a congressman during George Washington’s two terms. Ames helped with the final framing of the First Amendment. On Aug. 2, 1804, Ames wrote in the Boston Gazette:

“We have considered our elections as the result of enlightened and just discrimination; but if falsehood is thus to be secretly and systematically diffused, for the purpose of influencing suffrage (voting), our elections will be a mockery, a fair or market, in which the vilest of mankind will be the most successful dealers, and virtue a commodity … . Ought not their secrecy to create distrust?”

Will America end by going from a first president who could not tell a lie to a final president who cannot tell the truth? Have enlightened and just elections ended in America?

Bruce Braden

Carmel, Ind.

The writer is a Mt. Pleasant native.

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