To the Editor:

“Character is destiny.”

Madison Cawthorn hopes to continue to represent Western North Carolina in the U.S. Congress. He has shown himself to be a determined young man. He overcame a terrible car accident and has refused to give in to his medical challenges.

So why do I quote above the 2,500-year-old wisdom of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus? Because Mr. Cawthorn has a long way to go before I and many others can trust his words to be truthful.

It took until January 23, 2021 for Cawthorn to state — live on CNN —that “… now I would say Joe Biden is our President.” Yet he voted against forming a bi-partisan commission to investigate the truth of what happened on Jan. 6. Instead he irresponsibly blamed the violent insurrection at the Capitol on “Democrat agitators strategically placed inside the group.” A complete fabrication and he surely knows that.

In almost every speech and gathering, he continues to promote the “election was stolen” lie. This even after former Trump Attorney General William Barr admitted that the whole “election was stolen” story was complete “BULLSH….!”

Surely Cawthorn knows that the very conservative Heritage Foundation did a study of over one billion votes cast over the years. They found a minuscule rate of .00013 percent of votes were either fraudulent or even just honest mistakes. The study went back as far as 1948 to find “fraud.”

Ninety judges — many appointed by Donald Trump — heard 60 different election-related cases, and found no basis  for any claims of massive voter fraud in 2020.

And just recently, the Republican-led state Senate leadership in Michigan published a 55-page report on the 2020 election and found no fraud despite cries from Trump for more recounts.

Unfortunately, we must remember that during his campaign for Congress Cawthorn claimed that he didn’t get into the U.S. Naval Academy because of his tragic accident. But once under oath during his court case, he had to admit that he had been rejected before the accident ever happened.

He had claimed at a rally that his friend, Bradley Ledford, “left me for dead,” but under oath admitted that he had “no memory of the accident.”

He claimed that he had been admitted to Harvard college “online,” his exact word. Harvard doesn’t exist “online.”

He claimed that accusations of sexual harassment against him were lies. But over 150 former students at Patrick Henry College signed an open letter criticizing his improper sexual conduct. 

Mr. Cawthorn, show some character or you will be remembered for taking the easy way but not the honest way. Speak out against those still spouting the Big Lie that the election was stolen (if so, then how did you win?). We do not need any more violent uprisings against democracy like January 6, 2021. We need to get on as one people with running the country.

Steve Wall

Waynesville