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Letters to the Editor| The Columbus Dispatch

The Sept. 30 column, "Ryan's recent remarks brand Republicans as enemies of state," by Donald Trump Jr. turns my stomach.He touts a false equivalency between left and right extremists.

More:Donald Trump Jr: Tim Ryan's kill, confront movement remark makes MAGA 'enemy of the state'

The death of the 18-year-old in North Dakota is absolutely wrong and should not be used as cover for the rights far more extreme words and actions, i.e., the Jan. 6 seditious attack on the Capitol, packing the Supreme Court with religious extremists, Charlottesville, Kyle Rittenhouse, separating children from their parents, calling human beings at the border vermin, and on and on.

The column twisted Tim Ryans words into a lie and the Dispatch printed it.

Lawrence Roush, New Albany

Our president and vice president have represented us well the past couple of days.

First, our president, in a speech on Sept. 27, was asking for a deceased congresswoman to come on stage with him. Then, on Sept. 28, our vice president stated, "The United States shares a very important relationship, which is an alliance with the Republic of North Korea."

Think wisely as you consider your vote this Nov. 8.

Stan Fulk, Dublin

More:Vice President Harris mistakenly touts US 'alliance with the Republic of North Korea'

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In the Sept. 22 column, "EPA must tackleLakeErietoxicalgaecrisis," Janean Weber presents many valid points we need to tackle immediately.

I want to add the reminder that as the water sources in the western U.S. are drying up at unprecedented and unpredictable rates, they will be looking for new water sources.

More:You can't fish through an 'algal bloom.' Threat about more than drinking water| Opinion

We need to have clear and strong laws in place to govern the use of the lakes and input into them, now, before we are also waging this battle with other states and possibly other countries.

Susan Klun, Columbus

We are writing to express our support for Justice Sharon L. Kennedy for chief justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio.

Justice Kennedys judicial philosophy is based on the Constitution, not personal feelings or political views. She says what the law says rather than what the law should be and decides only what is necessary to resolve the legal question before the court.

With our support, she will continue to honor the Constitution by upholding the law, not creating it or legislating from the bench.

More:Up for grabs: Poll shows close races for 3 Ohio Supreme Court seats

Justice Kennedy has over 37 years of service in the judicial system as a police officer, trial court judge, and justice. She has garnered the solid foundation needed to serve our great state.

She is trusted and fair and will work hard for Ohio. As small business owners in Allen County, we see a need for a chief justice we can count on to create and maintain a predictable environment for Ohio.

Please join us in voting for the Ohio Republican Partys endorsed candidate, Sharon Kennedy.

Ken and Linda Rumbaugh, Lima

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Letters: Donald Trump Jr. column twisted meaning of Tim Ryan's words - The Columbus Dispatch

Donald Trump is privately raging at fellow Republican Ron DeSantis over the governors decision to authorise flights carrying roughly 50 migrants last week from the southern border to Marthas Vineyard, Rolling Stone reported.

The Florida governor patted himself on the back over the weekend while delivering a speech in Wisconsin to stump for GOP candidates, announcing that he intended to tap every penny from the $12m Freedom First budget allocated to the Florida Department of Transportations efforts to transport unauthorised aliens.

And though both Mr DeSantis and anti-immigration sympathisers on Fox News and within the Republican party celebrated the firebrand politicians actions with Texas Senator Ted Cruz even calling for governors to increase their controversial relocation programs and send half a million undocumented migrants on to Washington DC not everyone in right-wing circles was happy with last weeks headlines.

Namely, former president Donald Trump found himself scowling at how his potential rival for the Republican ticket in the 2024 presidential election was dominating the headlines and drawing attention away from his own antics.

Rolling Stone reported that two inside sources close to the twice-impeached president had heard him vent about the Republican governor taking the limelight off Trump and accused him of using the migrant flights to prop up his national profile ahead of a potential bid for the White House.

Neither Mr DeSantis nor Mr Trump have made public commitments to run in 2024, though both men are considered to be frontrunners to challenge President Joe Biden for the Oval Office.

Mr Trump also reportedly raged at his aides in the wake of Mr DeSantiss highly publicised stunt, noting that the Florida governor had taken a page from his own playbook as he contended that flying migrants on planes from the southern border was his idea.

Rolling Stones report on Mr Trump privately seething at Mr DeSantiss rising star is just the latest slight in an ongoing Cold War between two of the most outspoken and divisive figures in US politics.

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When polls last summer began to point to the Florida governors potential to outpace the man who had once endorsed his campaign, Mr Trump seemed to begin to walk back his full-throated support for the Republican he credits himself as being responsible for landing in the governors office.

In June, the University of New Hampshire shared the results of a survey which showed a shocking change of fortune for the former president who for the first time began to trail the Florida governor among likely primary voters in the state.

On the same day those results were shared, the former president took to his own social media platform Truth Social to post the results of a separate poll from the right-leaning pollster Zogby. In those results, unlike the University of New Hampshires, it indicated that he was the clear favourite for winning the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, 42 points ahead of Mr DeSantis in a survey of GOP voters nationally.

The former president has even struck out at his once-avowed network of preference, Fox News, for airing what he viewed as inaccurate polling results during one of their morning news programs.

@foxandfriends just botched my poll numbers, no doubt on purpose, the one-term president wrote on Truth Social back in July, calling out a segment where hosts had presented the findings from both the University of New Hampshire survey and Blueprint in Florida that showed Mr DeSantis being the favourite of the two. That show has been terrible gone to the dark side, he added.

One of the pillars of Trumps 2016 platform zeroed in on the countrys southern border policies, with his build the wall tagline becoming nearly as synonymous with his campaign as the make America great again slogan.

Though he pledged on the campaign trail that he would build a great, great wall on our southern border that the Mexican government would pay for, by the end of his presidency his administration had constructed 452 miles in total, according to the latest US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Most of those 452 miles, however, were reinforcing walls that had been built during previous US administrations as only 80 miles of new structures were erected where there had previously been nothing.

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Donald Trump rages that Ron DeSantiss Marthas Vineyard stunt was his ...

But even this was just part of the buildup to what ended up being a full QAnon passion play, as the rally culminated with Trump fulminatingreciting a series of grievances over swelling strings. His followers, commanded to raise their fingers in salute, did soresulting in a scene that looked like it was freshly plucked from Leni Riefenstahls back catalog. The swelling music over which he ranted was eerily similar to the QAnon anthem Wwg1wgaa reference to the conspiracy theorys slogan, Where we go one, we go all. The one-finger salute was also a nod to the title of that song. Two other speakers at the rally, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, have promoted QAnon over the last several years. Trump himself has recently posted or reposted several QAnon-linked images on his Truth Social platform.

Now we are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation, Trump said, riffing on what has become a familiar theme in his speechesreferencing high inflation and energy costs and the need for more domestic energy production. It was very much akin to traditional fascist mythmaking: Only one man can restore the glory and wealth and prestige of the motherland, and that person is a real estate developercon man turned insurrectionist.

Though Trumps eventual embrace of QAnon was pretty much foreordained, its still disturbing. The conspiracy theory is propped up by his most devoted followers, who believe, among other things, that he will be reinstated as president of the United States and that the Democratic Party is run by a cabal of child sex traffickers. That combination of extreme loyalty to himself and an extraordinary antipathy to his rivals is what he has always promoted among his supporters. As Trump has become more and more obsessed with the investigations engulfing himinto the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, into his apparent theft of hundreds of classified documents, into his corrupt businessesit only grows more necessary to play more directly to those most willing to believe his claims of victimhood.

More:
Donald Trump Is More Deranged Than Ever - The New Republic

Former President Donald Trump and Hope Hicks on March 29, 2018.MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

Longtime Trump aide Hope Hicks didn't buy into his false claims that he won the 2020 election.

She told him to move on, according to the book "The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021."

"Trump responded bitterly. "Well, Hope doesn't believe in me," he'd say in meetings," they wrote.

After the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump's longtime aide Hope Hicks told him what he didn't want to hear: He lost.

The close aide was preparing to leave the White House and stayed away from Trump's 2020 election challenges, even as he brooded and "talked of little else" in the aftermath of the race being called for President Joe Biden, wrote New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker and New Yorker staff writer and CNN global affairs analyst Susan Glasser in their new book "The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021."

Hicks told Trump it was time to move on, according to the book set to publish Tuesday.

"Trump responded bitterly. 'Well, Hope doesn't believe in me,' he would say in meetings," they wrote. "'No, I don't,' she would reply. 'Nobody's convinced me otherwise.' She concluded any further efforts to try to steer Trump would simply be, as she told an associate, 'a waste of time.'"

Hicks worked for the Trump Organization and campaign before serving on the White House communications team and then, after some time at Fox Corporation, as counselor to Trump. But she was "marginalized" after telling Trump his election challenge was wrong and "did not even bother to go into the office" on January 6, 2021, the day of the Capitol insurrection, according to the authors.

Some advisors thought Trump "wavered" on the big lie in the first few days after his loss and that he understood he had come up short. Once, the authors wrote, when seeing Biden on television, he said, "'Can you believe I lost to this fucking guy?'"

"But the kind of advisers who might have steered him toward acceptance were no longer around the brooding president, who remained cloistered for days after the election and talked of little else," the authors wrote.

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Alyssa Farah, Trump's strategic communications director, soon resigned "out of disgust."

Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner "surrendered the field" when they saw the outgoing president was empowering his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who they blamed for his first impeachment, the authors wrote.

"'Obviously, I support you, but I can't help you on that,'" Kushner told Trump, as he related the story to another Republican at the time," the authors wrote.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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Hope Hicks told Donald Trump he lost the 2020 election and that 'nobody's convinced me otherwise," book says - Yahoo News

The Truth Social network logo is seen on a smartphone in front of a display of former U.S. President Donald Trump in this picture illustration taken February 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

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NEW YORK, Sept 20 (Reuters) - Individual investors like Tony Alvarado have been a blessing and a curse for Donald Trump's social media company.

Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) - which operates the Truth Social app co-founded by the former U.S. president after he was banned from Twitter - reached a valuation of as much as $15 billion in October 2021 thanks to Alvarado and hundreds of thousands of other investors.

Those investors scrambled to buy shares in Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC.O), the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that signed a deal in October to take TMTG public. Digital World's shares rallied as much as 1,650% that month, making it the most valuable SPAC of all time.

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A year later, Digital World shares have shed most of the gains as regulatory and potentially criminal investigations weigh on the prospects of its deal with TMTG, now valued at just over $2 billion. read more

"To be perfectly honest, I treat it like a casino," said Alvarado, a 44-year-old call center customer service manager from Orange County, California.

Individual investors, which comprise about 90% of Digital World's shareholder base, have suddenly become an obstacle to the deal with TMTG being completed.

Digital World has not been able to get enough of them to vote for an extension of its life by 12 months, which it says it needs as it waits for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to complete a review of the transaction.

The challenge has been to get shareholders to cast their votes rather than convincing them to vote in favor. Digital World's shares, which closed at $22.40 on Monday, will each return $10.30 to shareholders if the SPAC liquidates, so a 'no' vote would go against their financial interests.

But while individual investors are adept at using apps like Robinhood to buy shares, many are not as accustomed to voting their shares.

Alvarado said he had not heard about the shareholder vote before a Sept. 6 deadline. He added he had become disillusioned with the stock after he was left with only $200 of his original $872 investment. "Once you've already lost 77% of your investment, it's easy to lose interest," Alvarado said.

Digital World and TMTG representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

The deal's woes have rattled Trump's supporters who bought into Digital World because of him. Many have said in social media posts they will stick with the stock.

"I've lost $154,000 this year ... and I'm down 85% on my remaining life savings. I'm still not giving up but it hurts really, really, badly," one Reddit user describing themselves as an "honorable disabled veteran" posted on the platform.

Despite the missed deadline, the vote on the extension of Digital World is still on.

When the SPAC realized on Sept. 6 it did not have enough votes to reach the required 65% threshold of shareholders backing the extension, it pushed the deadline to Sept. 8.

When it still fell short, Digital World delayed the vote again, first until later that day and then to Oct. 10. It could extend the vote further if chooses.

Digital World can tap into the $293 million in its trust to pay for its campaign to reach shareholders, but SPAC managers must reimburse it if the merger with TMTG does not happen - a significant risk given the probes into the deal.

The SPAC has already spent $12 million for the deal so far, according to a regulatory filing.

The SPAC managers handed over $2.85 million to Digital World's trust this month - in a move that allowed them to unilaterally extend the SPAC's life, without shareholder backing, to Dec. 8. They borrowed that money, according to a person familiar with the arrangement.

A $1 billion private placement that Digital World raised for the TMTG deal last December allows investors who participated to terminate their commitment on Tuesday. It is unclear how many investors will do so and whether Digital World will seek new investors to replace them.

The private placement constituted most of the $1.3 billion cash infusion that TMTG was set to receive as part of the deal.

When the vote failed on Sept. 6, Digital World's proxy solicitor, Saratoga Proxy Consulting, pushed a call center of 100 people plus 40 of its employees into overdrive to contact shareholders and help them vote, the sources said.

Between Sept. 6-8, the team tracked down investors, phoned and emailed them and assisted with voting, fueled by coffee, pizza and donuts, one of the sources added. They got about 40% of Digital World shareholders to vote in favor of the extension, sources told Reuters at the time. read more

Saratoga sent Digital World Chief Executive Patrick Orlando an invoice for $200,000 last week for its services and informed him that getting to the required threshold would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars more, a person familiar with the matter said. Orlando told Saratoga he could not afford to pay the invoice and any future bill, the source added.

Saratoga and Orlando declined to comment.

Digital World disclosed last Friday it hired a new proxy solicitor, Alliance Advisors LLC, which it agreed to pay a fee of $10,000 plus additional expenses on a pre-approved basis.

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Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss, Echo Wang and Krystal Hu in New York; Editing by Greg Roumeliotis and Himani Sarkar

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Analysis: Behind Trump's media deal, a vote where only yes will do - Reuters