I recently had an exchange with our Republican representative over Trump. His canned response was, "I need someone who can lead, not someone to teach Sunday school." Nothing describes the problem better.
To the GOP, ethics and morality are a "nice-to-have" on certain occasions. The absence of ethics and morality with Trump and his GOP is leaving a legacy of corruption that will follow their family names for generations to come.
Trump's foreign policy is based on what it can do for him personally. This is what you would expect from someone with 34 criminal convictions. Ethics and morality are requirements and expectations of the president of the United States. It should not be out of line to expect that a president could credibly lead Sunday school.
I am thankful that our Joint Chiefs of Staff are willing to call Trump and Hegseth out on plans and actions that would violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice that prohibits members of our armed forces from following illegal orders. It is good to see the Joint Chiefs call Trump and Hegseth out on amateur moves that put our armed forces at high risk. Trump and Hegseth's responses are not surprising from someone who had Roy Cohn as a family attorney.
One day soon, someone will use Joseph Welch's comments that brought an end to Senator McCarthy's Red Scare: "You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" With Trump and his GOP, there are so many opportunities to apply this statement: Erwin, GA, the Epstein Files, numerous abuses of power, the Mar-a-Lago stash of classified documents, and much, much more.
Doug Kimzey, Farragut, 37934
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Why shouldn't president be qualified to teach Sunday school? | Letter
