To the Editor:

As a journalist and former member of the working press, I continue to be appalled and frankly disgusted at President Trump’s daily assault on the media. I began my career as a reporter for a Scripps-Howard newspaper in South Florida. My beat was politics. In addition to feature writing, I covered city, county, and special district meetings and the Florida Legislature.

My training (BA in Journalism), my city editor, and my personal integrity demanded the truth, the utmost accuracy, and as the old “Dragnet” character Joe Friday used to say, “The facts ma’am, just the facts.” My livelihood depended on it.

President Trump’s overblown ego, his obsession with ratings, and his personal attacks on anyone who happens to disagree with him do nothing to advance this nation’s substantial agenda. His CODL strategy (confuse, obfuscate, distract, and lie) doesn’t work (although it seems to work for him), won’t work, and only serves to bolster his questionable base of adoring lemmings.

 Sen. John McCain commented on Trump’s labeling of the media as “the enemy of the people.”

“This is how dictators get started,” McCain said. So if this is what Trump’s loyal cadre want, let’s then all ignore these enemies and believe only the pre-packaged drivel of Trump’s Svengali Steve Bannon. 

 Hopefully, the majority of educated, thinking, and independent Americans will see through the smokescreen and reject Trumpworld and the alternate universe in which this president lives.

Kurt J. Volker

Otto