Recent events suggest that if Donald Trump is elected president in November, he will use the power of the U.S. government to reach into the lives of private Americans — citizens, businesses, news outlets, anyone — to inflict federal punishment on them over their personal views and actions.

In 2020, J.D. Vance, then a venture capitalist in Ohio, sent a Twitter message to Kevin Gallagher praising an essay Gallagher had written about Catholicism. Over the next year, these two private citizens corresponded over Twitter periodically about politics and current events. In his messages to Gallagher, Vance criticized Donald Trump’s achievements during his 2016-2020 presidency.

Last month, The Washington Post published a report about these exchanges without naming Mr. Gallagher. The Twitter messages proved that Vance has lied, repeatedly, when he claims he had criticized Trump in 2016 but changed his mind after seeing Trump’s achievements in office.

Donald Trump Jr. and the right-wing Breitbart website have now “outed” Mr. Gallagher, publishing his name, his picture, and identifying his job as a consultant with Deloitte, a big-four accounting firm, even though what he does for a living is unrelated to his 4-year-old essay about Catholicism. Trump Jr. suggested that Mr. Gallagher’s employer, Deloitte, should be punished by losing its government contracts.

Yes, even though Deloitte’s PAC has even-handedly funded both Republican and Democratic candidates for office, it should be punished — by the federal government — for the private actions of one of its employees.

This is the future that awaits us all if Trump, his family and his cronies return to office in 2025. The Republican Party is no more. Ironically, it has succumbed to the Great Replacement Theory — replaced by a Trump Party that is a morally bankrupt cartel, eager to seize public assets for itself and to separate American citizens from their money, their values, and their freedoms. A

nd if you are a Trump supporter now you still are not safe, because the Trump Party has no loyalty: One wrong action or statement — from you, a loved one, a family member, your business, or even your church — and you, too, can be punished.

Kerry Dumbaugh

Your Daily Puzzles

Cross|Word

Flipart

Typeshift

SpellTower

Really Bad Chess

Holyoke