<p><strong>To the editor:</strong></p>
<p>What will it take for decency and humanity to reassert themselves among members and especially leaders of the Republican Party?</p>
<p>President Trump recently added former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman to a growing list of African-Americans he has publicly denigrated, calling her “that dog” and a “crazed, crying lowlife” in the wake of her allegations against him of mental deterioration and racism.</p>
<p>In recent weeks, the president called CNN anchor Don Lemon, who is black, “the dumbest man on television.” He questioned the intelligence of LeBron James, the star basketball player for the Los Angeles Lakers who recently helped found and endow a school in his hometown of Akron, Ohio. He has repeatedly said Maxine Waters, an African-American member of Congress, has a “low I.Q.” He called LaVar Ball, the African-American father of another famous Lakers player, a “poor man’s version of Don King.”</p>
<p>These comments cannot be written off as casual, unimportant and unconnected. Under any circumstance they would speak to a mindset that should have no place in normal discourse. But when they come from the most prominent voice in the land and the representative of our government, the comments and the bigoted pattern they represent are reprehensible.</p>
<p>It is long past the time when responsible leaders denounce this pattern of behavior and speak up for true American values of compassion and equality.</p>
<p>The office of the president has often been described as the nation’s bully pulpit. What we are hearing from this White House is pure bully with no pulpit, and it needs to stop.</p>
<p><p style="text-align: right"><strong>Richard Gotshall</strong></p>
<p><p style="text-align: right"><strong>Franklin</strong></p>
