DEAR EDITOR:

Now that Mr. Trump, our national Master of Misdirection, has launched an illegal and unconstitutional war in the Middle East, killing thousands of civilians, not soldiers, all noncombatants, he believes America will put its concerns about inflation and our economy aside. Not gonna happen!

As a result of enduring Trump’s painful State of the Union address, more voters are coming to the realization that the man seems to be living in some alternate universe. Several national polls conducted after the address actually showed his popularity, even among Republicans, decreased primarily because they disagreed with his misrepresentation of the state of our economy and, as such, delivered no new plans to improve it. The saddest and most disappointing part of the event was seeing our Republican representatives, either out of fear or mindless blind loyalty, actually applauding his misinformation and self-aggrandizing remarks. Since I’m pretty sure Mr. Trump doesn’t do his own grocery shopping or pay his utility bills, he has had to rely on someone in his circle of sycophants advising him that “prices are plummeting”.

His Bureau of Labor Statistics has told him that food prices in general have increased only 3% in the last year. That would mean that the same bag of groceries purchased in January, 2025, for $100, would cost $103 today. Absolutely everybody that does grocery shopping knows that that statistic is a blatant lie.

I have only to compare some of my bills from last January to this January to see that my natural gas supplier rate increased 24%, heath care and drug plan premiums increased 20%, cable is up 15%, electric rates are up 19%, phone/internet is up 9%, and gasoline, as I write this, has increased 80 cents/gallon in the last three weeks. He has done absolutely nothing to curb the rate of inflation; the unemployment rate is stagnant or growing, despite his claims to the contrary, and the rate of wage increases is almost exactly the same as when Biden was in office.

In dozens of speeches over the last year, Trump claimed that inflation was “beaten” and “prices are falling fast.” The sad reality is the only thing that’s falling fast is the credibility of this president and his administration and the pride we once shared to be Americans.

THOMAS BRENT

Struthers