Dear Editor:

When contemplating the life, career, and political train wreck of Donald John Trump, the constant refrain is, “You can’t make this stuff up.”

The catalogue of scams, lies, slanders, corruption, and crimes is too numerous to list here, but some simple fact checking (kryptonite for our ex-Superman) reveals two pathetically absurd attempts to elevate the Trump brand and his properties.

The first is the gilded and plagiarized “coat of arms” that hangs behind the podium at Mar-a-Lago and its faux variant, adorning Trump’s golf club in Turnberry, Scotland. Not only does it belong rightfully and exclusively to the Davies family, but it has been tastelessly altered by replacing the original motto ‘Integritas’ with ‘Trump.’ The Davies family would like to sue him for the heist, but they know how expensive that would be and how long Trump’s lawyers could
stonewall the process.

His narcissism and pitiful attemps to raise his status go beyond falsifying British heraldry; they reach into the record of American history.

Between the 14th and 15th holes of one of the courses at The Trump National Golf Club, a plaque bearing the Trump “coat of arms” commemorates “The River of Blood,” where, according to the Donald, “Many great American soldiers, both of the North and the South, died at this spot, ‘The Rapids,’ of the Potomic River.” So great were the casualties, he would have us believe, that the river ran red.

Big surprise, Civil War historians aver that no one was shot there. When challenged about this fake battle on his golf course, Trump (“a big history fan”) countered by asking how historians would know that: “Were they there?” Besides, “numerous historians” (unnamed, of course) had told not him, but “my people” — therefore it must be true.

So the candidate who brags about grabbing women’s privates and threatens Americans with “blood baths” if he loses another election has counter-factualized Civil War history and cobbled together a fake Scottish family crest with “a double-sided eagle clutching [Trump’s] golf balls.”

Bill Hammond

Boothbay