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Ralph Nader > In the Public Interest > Trump: Making America Dread Again!

January 14, 2019

President Donald Trump
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Trump:

The disabling and dismantling of the federal health and safety agencies under your cruel command has been leaving a trail of American fatalities, injuries, and property destruction without precedent even among past Republican Administrations. Your criminal negligence toward federal agencies like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is an impeachable offense. You are obsessed with corporate profits, obeisant to the corporate CEOs funding your campaigns. You deliberately selected corrupt henchmen to run these lifesaving agencies into the ground, under the guise of “deregulation.”

Constitutional law scholars declare that refusing to “faithfully execute laws” was seen by our Founders to be a major impeachable violation, sufficient for removal from office by the Senate. Your failure to appoint capable leaders, for required Senate confirmation, to head life-saving federal agencies is abhorrent and violates the appointments clause of the Constitution, Article II: Section 2, Clause 2.

Nonetheless, the media has not caught up with the full scope of your lawless commercial drive to “Make America Dread Again.”

Consider a recent address at Used Car Week 2019 in Las Vegas last November by Jerry Cox, a consultant to many businesses in trouble. Here is an excerpt from his remarks, elaborated in greater details in his forthcoming book, Killer Airbags:

Your government will do almost anything to protect the industry and nothing to protect you. At the start of 2020 – the final year of the first Trump Administration – NHTSA still had no Administrator. Instead, President Trump installed Takata’s lawyer [Steven Bradbury] as general counsel of the Transportation Department in 2017 and as Acting Deputy Secretary in 2019. Unbelievably, the guy who negotiated the sweetheart deals that allowed Takata executives to keep selling defective airbags and avoid criminal prosecution was put in charge of every government employee responsible for enforcing auto safety laws.

Shame and guilt on you, Donald Trump! You were willing to start an undeclared war with Iran last week, had their missile attack taken one American soldier’s life, but when American lives are threatened by crony capitalism, you do nothing. It is the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s duty to save American lives on the highways from vehicle design and construction defects, yet under you the agency becomes even more toothless. You are leaving tens of millions of American motorists defenseless. Some will lose their lives if more Takata airbags disintegrate and hurl lethal shrapnel into their bodies. American drivers and passengers must receive protection by your Administration.

Will you stop your time-wasting 24/7 tweeting, and your prevaricatory assaults on the truth and reputations of innocent Americans? Will you pay attention to the Takata horrors and name a safety advocate to reinvigorate the enfeebled NHTSA?  Will you start doing your job?

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader