A chara, – Niall O'Dowd ("Trump's silent majority the ultimate fake news story", Opinion & Analysis, January 17th) states that Trump "won with 46 per cent of the vote, the smallest electoral total in history" for a winning candidate. However his candidate's husband, Bill Clinton, won the 1992 election with 43 per cent of the vote, but I guess that can be ignored as it doesn't suit the Trump-bashing narrative.
Like many other Clinton supporters, he bemoans the fact that Hillary won the popular vote and still lost the election, but again he either doesn’t realise or chooses to ignore the fact that it wasn’t a popular vote election. You play the game not the player, and Mr Trump played it better, evidenced for example by his almost complete lack of campaigning in California, which has been been blue in all six presidential elections since 1992, while Hillary held multiple rallies and wasted precious time and resources there.
Niall O’Dowd tells us that Trump was “aided by Wikileaks” revelations. Does he mean “the truth”? He has a problem with this but no problem stating as fact that “the Russians” also aided Mr Trump, despite offering zero evidence of this. FBI director James Comey is “execrable” for plainly “tipping the scales” but I can’t find evidence of your columnist complaining when the Hillary camp was given debate questions in advance.
Then we come to the polls, the same ones that two weeks prior to the election in November gave Hillary Clinton a 12-point lead. He quotes a new Quinnipiac University poll that has Trump’s approval at just 37 per cent.
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While I'm struggling to find online the methodology applied by the pollsters there, I can locate the methodology applied by ABC/Washington Post and CNN in their latest polls which show similar results to Quinnipiac's.
For these samples, only 23 per cent and 24 cent respectively identified as Republican, while data shows 29 per cent of registered voters are Republican, not to mention 46 per cent of the voting population recently voted Republican.
It appears the pollsters have not learned their lessons, and Hillary supporters are still taking them at their word to support their argument.
Niall O’Dowd can vilify the legitimately elected president if he wants, he can call him and his team names, and predict Mr Trump will be “the worst president ever”, but he will eventually have to stop pointing fingers and accept that his candidate lost fair and square. Perhaps then we will see some examination of the faults and demerits of Hillary Clinton and her campaign. – Is mise,
SAM QUIRKE,
Houston,
Texas.
Sir, – “In God We Trust”. Is that still an option? – Yours, etc,
OLIVER McGRANE,
Rathfarnham,
Dublin 16.
A chara, – On the day of the inauguration of the 45th president of the US, it appears that some people would rather have Donald Trump inside the White House tweeting out rather than outside the White House tweeting in.
Let’s hope his inside tweets are more correct than political. – Yours, etc,
DERMOT O’ROURKE,
Lucan,
Co Dublin.
Sir, – His revenge was tweet! – Yours, etc,
PADRAIG J O’CONNOR,
Rathfarnham,
Dublin 14.
Sirs, – As everyone knows, The Donald is against immigration. Everybody is, of course wrong. He is not; he is, however, against illegal immigration, a rather different thing.
If he starts heaving illegals out, there is no reason for him to make an exception regarding the Irish illegals over there. In fact, there is every incentive for him to make an example of them. Consider the tsunami of personal abuse flowing his way from these shores, the constant anti-Americanism that pollutes all discourse, he may become the first American president to call a long overdue halt to Irish special pleading and wheedling. If he throws the whole 60,000 of them out, as he is fully entitled to do, what are we going to do should they all turn up here? It could be interesting indeed. – Yours, etc,
JOHN CULLY,
Killiney,
Co Dublin.