To the editor:

Many Adirondack Daily Enterprise readers have submitted insightful letters critical of NY-21 U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik for her defense of President Donald Trump.

Let’s face it — many congressional Republicans are easily misled by a demagogue like Trump. However, Elise Stefanik is a Harvard graduate. At age TWENTY-EIGHT, Stefanik “managed Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan’s debate preparation during the 2012 presidential election,” At that time, Ryan was 42 years old and chairman of the powerful House Budget Committee. For a young female staffer to be coaching such a powerful man at such a critical juncture was an extraordinary demonstration of Stefanik’s intelligence.

Stefanik surely saw that Trump’s effort to strongarm the president of Ukraine represented a perversion of U.S. foreign policy for personal political gain, but she was “honored” to serve as a very vocal member of Trump’s Impeachment Defense Team.

Stefanik saw Trump’s dozens of election-related lawsuits fail on the basis of their obvious absence of supporting evidence. Trump exhorted his supporters to go to the U.S. Capitol: “You will have an illegitimate president … and we can’t let that happen,” but Stefanik says she does not blame Trump for the seditious mob that endangered Vice President Pence, members of Congress and their staff, and caused the death of a Capitol policeman.

The U.S. leads major nations of the world in COVID rate, hobbling our economy, as a result of Trump’s failure. Like Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, both of whom also received Ivy League educations, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik has made a well-informed decision to side with a president who brings shame onto the United States. Rather than serving as the exemplar for representative government, we now are seen as a crumbling nation no longer fit to lead democratic nations of the World. Elise Stefanik is clearly INTELLIGENT, but that does not make her GOOD. Stefanik, Cruz and Hawley should resign from Congress in shame.

David Banks

Rockville, Maryland