Early last month readers of Newport This Week were treated to one of the most insincere letters to the editor I’ve ever had the misfortune to read. The 230-word jumble was pure laziness. Mindless propaganda. Fearmongering. Embarrassing.

I was going to write my own letter to the editor in response, but decided to share the fairy tale with ecoRI News readers who may have missed it. You are welcome.

The letter’s authors, Mary Louise Sanborn, the Jamestown Republican Committee chair, and Mike Smith, the Newport Republican City Committee chair, are as shameless as their dear leader. They are either ignorant or liars, or perhaps just trapped in a Fox Propaganda bubble.

Their five-paragraph tall tale published Nov. 6 is worthy of some examination, as their virtual reality goggles are in need of adjustment.

Paragraph 1: “The recent ‘No Kings’ rallies are a further example of how out of touch the Democrat party is with most Americans.”

Reality: The Democratic Party, especially its leadership, is out of touch, but not in the way Sanborn and Smith imply. About 36% of registered voters (some 90 million people) didn’t go to the polls in 2024, and for many the reason was the mealy-mouthed, corporate-friendly ways of the Donkeys. The party long ago abandoned people of color and its progressive wing, if it ever truly appreciated them in the first place. It’s not difficult to see how empty promises, uninspiring candidates the past three presidential elections, the raging climate crisis, and exploding inequality would damper voting enthusiasm. (As someone who is labeled a “progressive” by family, friends, and foes, such as regular commenters Babs and Bev, I can attest Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris are not leftists.)

The Oct. 18 No Kings protests were held in about 2,700 communities in all 50 states, from rural Idaho to cosmopolitan New York City, and drew an estimated 7 million people. The inaugural No Kings protests, held June 14, drew an estimated 5 million people to some 2,100 rallies.

That’s a lot of people taking time out of their weekend to protest the White House’s vile policies and actions. Those two days of marching put all those Tea Party temper tantrums that interrupted town hall proceedings after the first Black president was elected look quaint.

Paragraph 2: “President Trump was elected in the popular and electoral college votes by wide margins. He also gained minority voters in most states. Republican voter registration is up over 30 percent in most states, including Rhode Island.”

Reality: Trump’s margins, both in raw votes and in percentages, were small by any standard. He won the popular vote by 1.5%, one of the tiniest in history. He didn’t even receive 50% of the overall vote (49.8%). He lost the popular votes in both 2016 (46.2%) and 2020 (46.9%). Trump won the electoral college by 16% in 2024 and 14.3% in 2016. For comparison, Barack Obama won the popular votes in 2008 (52.9%) and 2012 (51%) by 7.2% and 3.7%, respectively. He won the electoral college by 35.6% and 23.4%.

Trump won all seven swing states, but his 312 electoral votes were only a handful more than Biden’s in 2020 (306) and far less than Obama’s 365 in 2008 and 332 in 2012.

I don’t recall Obama claiming he should be anointed king, like Trump repeatedly has (see here, here, and here), with the power tear up the Constitution and ignore the rule of law.

More people of color did vote for Trump last year, but he’s still mostly underwater when it comes to their support.

Among Hispanic voters, Trump beat Kamala Harris 51% to 48%, after losing to Joe Biden 61% to 36% in 2020. He won 15% of Black voters — up from 8% four years earlier. While a majority of Asian voters (57%) backed Harris, 40% supported Trump. This was a narrower margin than Biden’s in 2020, 70% to 30%.

As of August, 189.5 million Americans were registered to vote — 44.1 million are registered as Democrats, 37.4 million are registered as Republicans, and 34.3 million are registered as Independents or unaffiliated.

In Rhode Island, there are 374,603 unaffiliated voters (49.5%), 272,229 registered Democrats (36%), and 109,270 registered Republicans (14.4%).

Paragraph 3: “This is not the result of a ‘king’ but rather a constitutional republic working as America has a leader that has a clear message and is effectively implementing the platform he ran on. Most Americans are in favor of this.”

Reality: It’s difficult to be a constitutional republic when all three branches of government ignore the document when it interferes with MAGA corruption. Also, most Americans aren’t in favor of what Trump promised to do and is doing. Some 155 million people voted for president last year — Trump didn’t even get half — and another 185 million people live here.

In a late November social media post, Trump wrote: “I have just gotten the highest poll numbers of my ‘political career.’” He’s either lying or can’t read, or perhaps both.

His January approval averaged 54.2% and his disapproval was at 40.8%. By late November those numbers had flipped, his average approval rating was 41.5% and his average disapproval was 56%.

By the end of last month, his approval ratings ranged from a high of 47% to a low of 35%. Trump had a final approval rating of 34% when he left office in 2021. His approval average during his first term was 41%.

(The fact he was elected again proved two things: The United States, at least its voting population, still believe women, especially those who are Black, are second-class citizens and the Democratic Party needs an infusion of youth, new leadership, and new ideas.)

On Nov. 6, when the trumped-up letter was published, his average approval rating, based on polling aggregators, was 43.3%. That’s nearly 7 percentage points less than breaking even.

Trump’s message is clear: lie, cheat, and steal; spread hate and fear; praise and enrich himself. Most Americans don’t favor this. The numbers don’t lie. That is why MAGA is desperately trying to rig the midterm elections. The regime’s Department of Justice recently sued 14 states, including 12 led by Democrats, to demand full unredacted voter files to supercharge its voter suppression plans.

Paragraph 4: “Instead of what most are viewing as temper tantrum protests that make no sense, it seems that the Democrat party needs to find a clear message and candidates that reflect the values of most Americans instead of being held hostage by extreme far left that are running its party. ‘Hating Trump’ is not a platform or a purpose, and the left keeps digging themselves into a bigger hole of unpopularity.”

Reality: As a former Democrat who switched to an Independent more than a decade ago, I agree with the disingenuous letter writers that the Democratic Party needs to find a clear message. Their allegation that the party is being held hostage by the extreme far left, though, is laughable. Claiming the extreme far left is running the party is moronic.

The Democratic Party has for decades either lied to or ignored its left flank, never mind the extreme wing of it. It is why I and many others have left.

The truth is the Democratic Party is lurching right, to occupy the conservative space most Republicans vacated to chase fascism. The D Party is now the R Party and the R Party is now a criminal enterprise devoted to placating the cruel whims of a lying, racist, misogynist, corrupt best friend of an infamous predator of teenage girls.

The left, at the national level, is represented by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jasmine Crockett, and a few dozen other progressives. They are the minority in Congress. A shortsighted combination of centrism, conservatism, and MAGAism rules, to the detriment of public and environmental health. The few are thriving at the expense of the many, the natural world is being trampled, and hate is the MAGA platform.

Universal health care, a first-class public education system, a robust social safety net, reliable public transit, social equity, livable wages, better gun safety laws, affordable housing, helping political and climate refugees, and environmental protections are not extreme. Woke and DEI are simply the idea of supporting each other and sharing the world in which we live.

Extreme is allowing armed, masked goons with little to no training to take over our streets and terrorize people by racially profiling them. It’s locking up a 15-year-old with an intellectual disability simply because his last name is Gonzalez and holding him for 48 days for no reason. It’s detaining a Babson College freshman while she was at Logan Airport on her way to surprise her family in Texas for Thanksgiving and then immediately deporting her to Honduras. It’s ignoring due process and quickly moving detained immigrants from “blue” states to “red” ones, because MAGAs crime together. It’s stopping and detaining an Indigenous woman who shows ICE thugs her federally recognized tribal ID and they call it fake.

(MAGA and ICE aren’t going after gang members and violent criminals like they claim, because [a] they don’t have the courage and [b] they want to be them. Instead, they pick on the powerless, voiceless, and marginalized. They protect rapists and human traffickers such as the Tate brothers and pardon convicted drug dealers.)

Extreme is murdering civilians at sea, and calling for the execution of Democratic lawmakers who served in the military because they asked military members to uphold the Constitution and defy “illegal orders.”

Extreme is voiding a stricter air pollution standard for soot and forgoing the standard environmental analysis for offshore drilling expansion. It’s no longer considering nursing as a professional degree, which means getting financial help to complete advanced degrees in nursing could become more difficult at a time when many states are facing a shortage of nurses.

Also, if you think the No Kings protests were a temper tantrum and made no sense, who might be a fascist?

Paragraph 5: “The Republicans of Newport and Jamestown continue to grow because we have a clear message. We are committed to good government and common sense politics that grow our economy so that all citizens can afford to live and work in Rhode Island without far left extreme politics that are continuing to erode Rhode Island into last in the nation in most economic categories.

Reality: Since economic growth is considered by many the be-all and end-all, let’s examine that narrow narrative.

“The U.S. economy has performed much better under Democratic presidents than Republican presidents in the modern era,” according to a 2024 report. “In almost every measure of the U.S. economy including total job growth, unemployment, economic growth, manufacturing job growth, manufacturing investment, small business creation, and contribution to the national debt, economic performance is stronger under Democrats.”

Looking at the last seven presidents, job growth totaled some 50 million under Democratic presidents compared to 17 million under Republican presidents. In Trump’s first term, for example, the country lost 2.7 million jobs. In Biden’s four years, the country added 16.2 million jobs.

Since the early 1980s, the unemployment rate tends to be lower at the end of Democratic presidencies and higher at the end of Republican presidencies. For instance, the unemployment rate rose from 4.7% at the start of Trump’s first term to 6.4% when he left office. (Don’t blame the pandemic, as the Mad King handled that crisis like the narcissist he is.)

Most U.S. recessions since World War II have begun under Republican presidents. Since 1945, Democrats have seen a job-creation average of 1.7% per year when in office versus 1% under Republicans. The U.S. gross domestic product, better known as GDP, has averaged a rate of growth of 4.23% per year during Democratic administrations versus 2.36% under Republicans.

The last five recessions all started while a Republican was in the White House — Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush (twice), and Trump. The odds of getting that outcome by chance is slim. If we go back further, nine of the last 10 recessions started when a Republican was president. The odds of that happening by chance are even more remote.

New data show foreclosure filings have risen 19% since October 2024 and 3% since September, extending an eight-month climb that reflects growing financial pressure amid record household debt ($18.6 trillion). This climb has occurred during Trump’s Second Reign.

(The stock market isn’t an indicator of overall economic health. Stock market wealth is heavily concentrated, unsurprisingly, with the wealthiest. The top 1% own half of all corporate equities and mutual funds in the United States. When factoring in the top 10% of Americans by wealth, ownership of the group rises to close to 90% of all stock market holdings. The bottom 50% of Americans own roughly 1% of stock market wealth.)

I agree with the junior-high scholars that Rhode Island is hurting, but it’s not because of “far left extreme politics” that housing is unaffordable, public transit is in ruins, wages are low, businesses are struggling, the unemployment rate is 4.6%, and the Ocean State’s coastline is eroding.

The Statehouse has long lacked vision. Leadership continues to protect the status quo and appease special interests. Center and right-side governance dominate Rhode Island’s landscape. Many of the state’s residents may be “blue,” but government is “purple.” Few progressive initiatives are supported and fewer are funded.

I respectfully ask Ms. Sanborn, Mr. Smith, and/or any local MAGA to note what far-left extreme politics are hampering Rhode Island and why. I’d also appreciate some examples of how MAGA is committed to good government and commonsense politics. Leave a comment below or email me at [email protected].

In Newport, there are 6,066 registered Democrats (43%), 1,756 registered Republicans (12%), and 6,642 who are unaffiliated (45%). In Jamestown, there are 1,893 registered Democrats (39%), 618 registered Republicans (13%), and 2,388 who are unaffiliated (49%).

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.