Letter: Trump con­vic­tion leader ‘seems a little over the top’

After 30 years of read­ing the Fin­an­cial Times for a bal­anced, rational dis­cus­sion, I was quite taken aback by the hypo­crisy and hys­teria of your edit­or­ial “A con­vic­tion does not end the threat posed by Trump” (FT View, June 1). Please let me get something straight: I am not a sup­porter of Don­ald Trump. I am a volun­teer co-ordinator in Man­hat­tan for Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is run­ning for pres­id­ent as an inde­pend­ent.

For a paper that prides itself on detail and an avoid­ance of exag­ger­a­tion, the FT View that “the ver­dict does not remove the grave threat Trump poses to the Amer­ican repub­lic” seems a little over the top. Is this a sig­nal to the left that the FT stands firmly for regime change?

The fact that the jury found Trump guilty (would any Man­hat­tan court find oth­er­wise?) is small pota­toes given the way the case was laid out by a par­tisan pro­sec­utor and a par­tisan judge who donated money to Pres­id­ent Joe Biden and whose daugh­ter works as a polit­ical con­sult­ant to the Demo­crats. Sadly no men­tion of those tiny but key details.

The grand fromage of the edit­or­ial was that Trump had had the auda­city to chal­lenge the 2020 elec­tion. It sad­dens me to report that — just to name some recent elec­tion den­iers — vice-president Al Gore chal­lenged Pres­id­ent Bush, Hil­lary Clin­ton chal­lenged Trump’s elec­tion (repeatedly call­ing him an “ille­git­im­ate” pres­id­ent), and Sta­cey Abrams chal­lenged Brian Kemp for gov­ernor in Geor­gia. All three com­plained bit­terly, accus­ing the vic­tors of nefar­i­ous and dark actions. Finally, the edit­or­ial moves on to the US Supreme Court, accus­ing it of being — an out­rageous sug­ges­tion — “con­ser­vat­ive”. Pick­ing on the wives of two of the judges seems a tad sex­ist to my Amer­ican ears.

The creme de la creme is when the FT pleads for Amer­ica’s wealthy to stand up and use their zil­lions to stop Trump. Would they argue the same for the UK wealthy to stop Labour?

Please drop the ideo­logy and get back to being level-headed. I miss you!

Michael Duff
East Hamp­ton, NY, US