Letters

Congressman Nick LaLota was elected in the 2022 midterm election, after Lee Zeldin gave up his congressional seat in his losing bid for governor. Zeldin is gone but LaLota is continuing the Zeldin shell game of embracing Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda but pretending to be bipartisan at election time.

LaLota brags about being one of the most bipartisan members of Congress, highlighting a letter he recently signed pledging to certify whoever wins the presidential election this year. But the truth is, he remains closely tied to Donald Trump, to his agenda and to his lies. He cannot have it both ways. He cannot be both bipartisan and a dedicated MAGA foot soldier.

LaLota was one of the first Republican members of the House to endorse Trump. In his endorsement, he said: “America needs a commander-in-chief who will keep us safe … President Trump’s policies made our nation stronger and had us on track to prosperity.”

We received the opposite from Donald Trump. Donald Trump made our country weaker, sicker, more vulnerable, more divided, more economically fragile and more violent.

A highlight reel of the Trump years: threatening our NATO allies; standing with the world’s most brutal dictators, especially Vladimir Putin; blackmailing the president of Ukraine while withholding needed aid; ripping children from their parents and putting them in cages; botching the COVID response so badly that it contributed to a million American deaths while it crashed the economy, causing the greatest economic disaster since the Great Depression; blowing up the deficit; trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act with no replacement; putting American women’s lives at risk by orchestrating the overturning of Roe vs. Wade; attempting to overthrow the government through an insurrection.

Just the lies alone should be disqualifying. Trump has never stopped spreading the “big lie” that he won the 2020 election and continues to demonize migrants with lies. LaLota dances around Trump’s lies when speaking to the press, but he openly repeats many of them on his social media platforms — most recently, the dangerous falsehood that FEMA money is being squandered on migrants.

Hundreds of Republican leaders and national security experts, many who served with Trump, have said he is dangerous, unfit for office and must never return to the presidency. For Nick LaLota to continue to stand with Trump and to spread his lies, rather than take a principled stand for the future of our country, makes him equally unfit to serve.

There is only one choice in this election that will keep our country safe, strong and on the path to prosperity: Make Kamala Harris our next president, Tim Walz our vice president and John Avlon our representative for District 1.

Barbara Weber-Floyd

Westhampton Beach