Dear Editor:

A few weeks ago, Donald Trump “spoke” with Theodore Roosevelt in North Dakota and boasted of their commonality.

OK … both were sons of wealthy New York fathers and both attended Ivy League universities. TR sent the Great White Fleet on a world cruise; DT dreams of a Golden Fleet of Trump-class battleships. TR has his head on Mt. Rushmore; DT wants his own there.

And yet…

TR experienced unthinkable grief and loss as a young man, when his 22-year-old wife died on the same day as his beloved mother. (Trump recently told a crowd, “Wife was very young; mother was older, but she was getting by.”) Refusing to surrender to this double tragedy, TR headed west for two years and did the hard work of a rancher in North Dakota.

DT lost two wives (Oscar Wilde would call it carelessness) in divorce court but needed no rehabilitation; he was “back on the horse” and wrangling girlfriends and a third wife over the next five years. Needless to say, he didn’t do any physical labor after the failure of these marriages.

TR was a lieutenant colonel who led his men courageously during the Spanish-American War and received the Medal of Honor posthumously for his valor.

DT, as everyone knows, avoided military duty during the Vietnam War by using college deferments and a family friend’s diagnosis of “bone spurs” to duck the draft.

TR wrote 35 books on subjects ranging from history to hunting. A hundred years later, they are still being read and studied. DT’s ghostwritten books about sales and himself have already passed their shelf life.

TR was a passionate environmentalist who created five national parks and 18 national monuments; DT, on the other hand, has done more than all of his predecessors to reverse this legacy, gutting the EPA and opening up huge tracts of federal land for drilling oil, mining coal, and running cattle.

Finally, TR was a trust-busting Progressive; DT, his wannabe, shills for and monetizes his collaboration with corporate monopolies and digital swindlers.

Mr. President, you’re no Teddy Roosevelt.

Bill Hammond

Boothbay