We have learned that President Trump is the same person as Candidate Trump – he says all the things some of us want to hear but his promises of jobs and health care are empty. He builds himself up by denigrating others that seem to present a threat to him. Republicans and cabinet members who continue to support him are not spared his scorn and criticism.

We have learned that President Trump along with a Republican congress cannot work together to get anything done. The Democrats have even volunteered to help them strengthen and make Obamacare work but they will not even listen to more moderate members of their own party and the issue appears to be dead.

We have learned that President Trump has been successful in his executive actions by canceling those of President Obama – made because Congress failed to act. And he was able to nominate a Supreme Court Justice because Congress refused to follow the constitution while Obama was president.

We have learned that we have a president that does not believe in the science of climate change as he is taking us out of the Paris Agreement that nearly every country on earth has embraced. Failure to do all we can to make our planet more habitable will result in more horrific hurricanes like Harvey and Irma and cost us not only in lives but in treasure. Perhaps now he will not cut funding to FEMA as he had planned to do.

We keep learning that there was a definite “relationship” between President Trump and the Russian government before the election. We know that Russia interfered with our election and that they bought over 3,000 political ads on Facebook that were believed and reposted. The possibility that Russia may have changed the outcome of our presidential election should be abhorrent to every American and totally unacceptable. The investigation must continue to learn the truth. We also need to know what President Trump’s tax returns will reveal.

We have learned that President Trump has no compassion for DACA – Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – those immigrants brought here as children that are contributing members of our society. Of course, he doesn’t seem to realize that we have always welcomed immigrants – like why we have the Statue of Liberty. Our diversity makes our country unique and strong.

However, we have not learned that the welfare of our people is the responsibility of both Democrats and Republicans and we need to work together. Somehow we have to learn to respect ethnicity and individual differences so that everyone gets a chance to succeed.

Congress needs to work for us instead of giving tax breaks and further enriching those that put them in office. With a “law and order” mentality, we continue to incarcerate more people than any other country in the world spending too much on prisons and not enough on education. And last but not least, we need to learn who is telling us the truth and who isn’t.

Carol Lazear Mitchell

Marietta