Dear Editor:

I would like to have had just one day since Jan. 20, 2017 when I did not learn of some new assault on our integrity as a people and our decency as a nation.

Two years ago, Paul LePage, that paragon of statemanship, stated publicly that “our Constitution is … broken, [and] we need a Donald Trump to show some authoritarian power in our country and bring back the rule of law.”

He was prophetic about the threat to our founding charter and has gotten the first of his two wishes; the second will have to wait until the current president is removed from office.

What has brought us to this shameful crisis? Trump’s “nuclear triad”: malice, ignorance, and dishonesty.

His reversal of President Obama’s policies protecting our healthcare, our safety, and our environment stems from his pathological hostility to his predecessor’s success and global prestige.

His denial of global warming, thanks to his scientific illiteracy and craven pandering to his sponsors, has forfeited American credibility and leadership in facing the greatest threat to global stability we face today.

A little over a month ago, Trump told his 2,001st public lie since taking the oath of office on two Bibles. During his first 10 months in the White House, he told six times as many lies as President Obama did in eight years. Of three tweets he has posted in the hour before I wrote this sentence, two contain lies (Democrats have forgotten DACA; Ivanka is the smartest person who could represent us at the Olympics).

I hope LePage’s yearning for authoritarian rule cooled a bit this week, when Amnesty International accused Trump of “callously undermining the rights of millions,” placing him in the same line-up as Rodrigo Duterte, Vladimir Putin, Nicolas Maduro, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and Xi Jinping.

When the Founding Fathers wrote Article II of our Constitution, they tried to prevent authoritarian rule by including clauses about the removal of the president and the prohibition against accepting emoluments – and they concluded it with Section IV, “on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

Bill Hammond

Trevett