This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Since the election, a number of friends have instructed me to "give Trump a chance" and dismissed my concerns as "fear-mongering." But I already have given Donald Trump multiple chances.
Like the rest of the electorate, I've been listening and watching for the past 18 months since he declared his candidacy.
I do not share any of Trump's values and condemn his comments about women, minorities, immigrants and the disabled, as well as the instigation of violence at his rallies.
I am troubled by the claims of fraud against his businesses (Trump University, etc.), the allegations of abuse against women, his failure to pay contractors, his bankruptcies, and his write-off of almost $1 billion that likely allowed him to avoid paying taxes for 18 years.
The endorsements by the KKK and other alt-right groups also are alarming, as is his recent appointment of Steve Bannon as his chief strategist — an anti-Semite whose Breitbart blog has promoted white supremacy. Trump's comments about veterans and verbal attacks against a Gold Star family and John McCain as a POW sicken me. These are facts, not "fear-mongering."
The people who are protesting have reason to be afraid, and I would hope that my fellow Utahns would have more compassion.
A lot of people, including myself, are feeling abandoned by those who preferred a racist, misogynistic, vengeful demagogue for president.
We thought our friends and neighbors, people we thought we knew, would stand against Trump's charged and abusive rhetoric and that reason and human decency would prevail.
We are questioning if the country we love is really the same place we thought it was — a place of liberty and justice for all.
Kim M. Horiuchi
Cottonwood Heights