Editorial on Trump ignored the obvious

Your editorial on President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial defense is nothing but sour grapes and served with a glass of whining [“Trump defense indefensible,” Jan. 31].

I ask you to follow your own advice and “lay down your partisan arms.” The impeachment was nothing short of a political weapon by the Democratic National Committee. The DNC wanted to impeach and repeatedly threatened our president with this throughout his term and also harassed his then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

If you really believe that Trump’s team has lowered the bar, then you have nobody else to point the finger at than the inept and biased House of Representatives’ team. I believe House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler and all presented a weak case and received partisan votes to pass it.

Once it went to the Senate, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tried to get four Republican votes and showed his true colors as a hypocrite. Instead of allowing the people to decide Trump’s fate in nine months, the DNC tried to take it into its own hands. That is the real lowering of the bar in my unbiased opinion.

Simon Klarides,

Port Washington 

Your editorial board has chutzpah, lecturing its readers “to put aside your political orientation,” and “Stop talking. And listen.”[“Trump defense indefensible,” Editorial, Jan. 31]

The board’s emphasis on “campaign finance law” violations as being so sacrosanct, so immutable that a president cannot investigate what I believe is evidence of a then-serving vice president’s corruption of his office because he might be a political rival, stretches common sense.

And, the board chose to further compromise its partisan progressive preferences by arguing the canard that President Donald Trump somehow “benefited” from the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee, another allegation that ignores the more disturbing thought that President Barack Obama’s administration tried to damage Trump.

The board then exceeds even its ideological zealotry by calling for a constitutional amendment to restrain presidents, rather then our entire dysfunctional, bloated government of self-interested politicians.

Incomprehensible and incoherent!

Stuart M. Klein,

Island Park  

In reading Wednesday’s letters [“The importance of impeachment case”], I was taken aback by one in which the writer stated, “If no one, other than the majority leader, has the privilege of calling witnesses, then how as a republic are we to mark the 21st century?”

Fact: During Rep. Adam Schiff’s House impeachment inquiry, Republicans were not allowed to call witnesses. Of 17 witnesses called, all were called by Democrats.

I do not recall the letter writer complaining about that.

Why didn’t Schiff call his own whistleblower to testify? And now, with a Republican Senate majority, this is just so unfair and, all of a sudden, this will damage how we mark the 21st century?

Give me a break.

Robert Kralick,

Glen Head