Regarding Jefferson County Republican chairman Steve Crosby’s recent comment in the Port Townsend Leader, “A stupefying delusion exists in the media echo chamber that Trump is a racist and white supremacist,” I would say that it is instead Mr. Crosby who is the one experiencing delusion. Somehow he is choosing with this statement to ignore months of hateful, demeaning, racist, misogynistic documented rhetoric from Donald Trump, who has consistently and relentlessly shown disrespect and antagonism to women, minorities and disabled people.

It’s tempting to include a list here of just a few of the awful statements, but I think it’s enough to encourage Mr. Crosby to either read a few of Trump’s own books (for example,“Trump: The Art of the Comeback”) or “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald” by Timothy O’Brien, or to look at his tweets over the months (a New York Times article from Oct. 23, 2016 has a good summary), or to read any one of the many articles published by reliable news sources such as the New York Times, The Guardian and yes, even the Wall Street Journal (Oct. 8, 2016 for example) for disturbing evidence of Trump’s views toward any number of groups or individuals. Additionally, there are the many Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, Sen. John McCain, and several other lawmakers from the GOP, who denounced Trump during the campaign for his racism and misogyny.

Unsurprisingly, some of these same conservative critics now seem to be wavering on their firm stances, but this doesn’t change the fact that the acknowledgement and criticism for Trump’s remarks and behavior have come from both the conservative and liberal sides, and that all have been responding to words and actions from the man himself.

BETSY HOWELL

Port Townsend