Editor, The Smithfield Times:

President Joseph Biden is 81 years old. He turns 82 Nov. 20. Former President Donald Trump turns 78 June 14. Chronological age is just a number. Character is everything. 

I would rather have an 82-year-old president with wisdom and many years experience working with Congress and world leaders than a 78-year-old president facing 91 felony charges ranging from business fraud to conspiring to subvert the results of the 2020 election. 

I would rather have a president in his 80s who honors his oath to protect and defend our Constitution than a 78-year-old man who violated that oath, lied that he won the 2020 election, and used that lie to incite a murderous insurrection to overturn the government, the first president in our history to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. 

I would rather have four more years of a president who supports women’s bodily autonomy than a misogynist convicted of sexually abusing a woman.

I support a president who stood on the picket line with American workers rather than a man who stands with corporations.

I would rather have four more years of Biden’s policies improving the lives of the American people than another four years of Trump which will be consumed with his court cases rather than governing. The “actual goal of the Trump coalition is not to govern the country but to rule over others” and exact revenge on his critics, wrote Jamelle Bouie, New York Times columnist.

I would rather have an 82-year-old president who has revived our economy, creating 14 million jobs in less than three years, than the former president, whose tax cuts to billionaires and corporations added $7.8 trillion to the national debt, the third-biggest increase, relative to the size of the economy, of any U.S. presidential administration, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

I would rather have an 82-year-old president who loves our country than an incoherent, delusional, fear-mongering 78-year-old man who rejects democracy, praises dictators like Putin and loves only himself.

 

Mary Batten

Smithfield