Opinion: Trump supporters offer their advice to the L.A. Times’ new leaders. These other readers are not amused

To the editor: Three letter writers state the Los Angeles Times needs to be kinder to President Trump. (“Fewer anti-Trump pieces, more balanced reporting: What conservative readers want from the L.A. Times’ new leaders,” Readers React, Aug. 26)

On the page preceding these letters in the print edition was a report on Trump’s pardon of Joe Arpaio, the convicted former sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz. In that report it was mentioned that both Arpaio and Trump were of the “birther movement,” that loosely-knit group of folks who hold that President Obama was born in Kenya, despite unimpeachable evidence he was not. (Talk about racial profiling.)

Just what is it that the president’s supporters want a newspaper to say when Trump takes to the podium as intellectually naked as a jaybird? Are The Times and other publications supposed to write, “Today, President Trump, clad in another new suit of rhetorical brilliance, referred to the North Korean leader as a ‘really bad guy’ and reminded America once again that Hillary Clinton is ‘crooked’”?

Tom Brayton, Long Beach

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To the editor: I certainly hope The Times will continue its balanced and honest coverage. And I certainly think balanced and honest coverage will deliver scathing reports on Trump, who cares not a whit for left or right, but only for himself.

Lyla Fadali, Los Angeles

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To the editor: I was born in L.A. in 1950 and lived there for the first 30 years of my life. It is and always will be “home” to me, and the L.A. Times was my first and is still my favorite newspaper.

Thus, I was alarmed by the piece on advice from readers who support the president. Is this The Times announcing its own move to the right?

Contrary to what Trump says, the major newspapers in this country are not “fake news” but actual news — actually reporting on the shocking and devastating things he is doing to America. Only journalists can save us by reporting the truth.

Please uphold the highest standards of journalism and keep watch over our democracy from those who would move it into an autocracy or worse.

Anne Farrell, Del Mar

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