If it feels like you’re living in a different country today; you are. In seven months and six days Trump has changed our nation; and not for the better. We are a more divided, more angry, and a less moral nation under the illegitimate presidency of Donald Trump.

Just eight months ago our nation had a great president; a man who served all 320 million Americans. We were respected by our allies. Topics such as racism and bigotry were not in the daily news. There was no reference to the daily tweets of our President; he addressed the public in front of the television cameras when he had something of importance to offer the American people, like a mature, adult, and intelligent leader of the free world should do. We didn’t wake up each morning wondering what our president repealed or revoked while we were asleep. We didn’t read the internet to discover who was fired or who resigned on a daily basis. The American people didn’t live in fear of a mentally challenged man who possessed the nuclear launch codes.

Our country is far different today. Instead of making the world safer for minorities, the LGBTQ community, Muslims, and women, hate crimes have increased by 800 percent against these groups. Everyone in the world feels ill at ease; never able to predict what the illegitimate President of the United States will do today. Our leaders addressed the greatest danger to mankind; climate change. Renewable energy became popular and it was now conceivable that it would replace the use of fossil fuels in decades, not centuries. When President Obama spoke, he used complete sentences and did not lie continuously. Our relationship with China was improving, and a nuclear arms agreement had been reached with Iran. Vladimir Putin knew that he could not control our nation’s government with a simple telephone call.

President Obama gave us reasons to be proud that we were Americans, and offered us hope for the future. None of that exists today. Most Americans count the days until Trump ceases to defile the White House.

There has always been ‘two Americas;’ one for whites and one for minorities; but it has never been as obvious as today. Trump is the president of white, wealthy Americans; the rest of us do not have a leader in Washington who represents us.

Please re-post; thank you.

Op-ed by James Turnage

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