To the editor:

In my letter published by The Independent on Wednesday (Feb. 19), I wrote “The Founders who wrote the U.S. Constitution had just liberated the Thirteen Colonies from the arbitrary acts of an unelected king and set up important checks on the chief executive to prevent a similar despot from rising in the United States.”

As serendipity would have it, that same day President Trump wrote of himself on Truth Social, “Long live the king,” while on X he reposted his own image wearing a crown. Trump does not want to be president; he wants to be emperor.

Trump posted last Saturday “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law”–which is not just unconstitutional, but anti-constitutional. Trump is openly saying that he is willing to arbitrarily break the law and attribute his actions to “saving the country,” as he defines it.

“Saving the country”— but from what, exactly? The right-wing media would have us believe that we have never been more challenged by “internal enemies” than we are today (and I concede that the left-wing media occasionally displays this attitude as well). More than the Civil War, the Jim Crow era, or either of the World Wars? Hardly. We are in a nonexistent “crisis” conjured up for profit by the right-wing media. Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters and the rest manipulate the honest patriotic sentiments of citizens like Mr. Baumann by promoting fear and rage of the “other” solely to maintain the attention of their audience. This business model began with talk radio in the 1980s, continued with Fox News in the 1990s, and is now raking in profits for social media. President Trump is the beneficiary of this, attacking non-existent “others” who are supposedly “destroying America.”

Mr. Baumann has written glowingly of our Constitution — but we now have a president who daily befouls that document through anti-constitutional executive actions that corrupt the founding principles of our republic. Trump wants to exercise absolute power. I again invite Mr. Baumann and all who voted for Trump to call for his impeachment.

Dr. Thomas J. Williford

Marshall