Letters

There’s a saying about putting lipstick on a pig, that it’s still a pig regardless. The lipstick changes nothing.

We hear a lot about Project 2025, an extensive program of regressive measures developed by the Heritage Foundation, a deeply conservative outfit. It contains things like privatizing Medicare, ending drug price negotiations, imposing an effective national abortion ban, eliminating the departments of Homeland Security and Education, repealing the Inflation Reduction Act, gutting the federal workforce, pardoning the January 6 insurrectionists, and ending student debt relief.

Whew! And that’s not nearly the whole list. These measures have given Project 2025 such a bad name that Donald Trump vigorously denies any connection with the thing — never read it, doesn’t know what’s in it, never heard of this stuff. But then, in the next minute, he pushes a half dozen things that are straight out of … what? Project 2025.

What’s going on here? It’s simple. The opposite maneuver from putting lipstick on a pig is washing the mud off a pig and claiming it’s not a pig anymore. That’s what Donald Trump is trying to do — wash the mud of Project 2025 off the pig of his program. He disavows the project while buying right into its craziness.

How dumb does he think we are?

Nick LaLota, our Republican congressman from outside the district, is trying to pull the same trick, but he takes it a step further, disavowing many of the things that Trump advocates and even implicitly disavowing Trump himself — he rarely mentions the man and would have us believe he’s a wholly independent thinker.

Nonsense. Look at LaLota’s voting record and you’ll see unwavering devotion to the Trump program, 100 percent. He can scrub that pig all he wants, but it’s still Trump, and it’s still Project 2025. LaLota is every bit as bound to the Heritage Foundation agenda as his boss. Come on, Nick, we know our pigs.

The alternatives, fortunately, are Kamala Harris and John Avlon. Harris, you know about. LaLota’s challenger, Avlon, is a respected historian, author and journalist, has written books about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and worked on The Daily Beast and, most recently, CNN.

A centrist rejecting extremes of the right or left, John Avlon shows brains, empathy and resolve, plus some very winning charm. The guy’s a great candidate, and he’ll make a great congressman.

So, don’t be fooled by the pigs. Vote for Kamala Harris and John Avlon on November 5.

George Lynch

Quiogue

Lynch is communications chair for the Southampton Town Democratic Committee — Ed.