My genuine condolences to all those devastated by the Trump victory. Having Trump win is as disturbing to the left as Al Sharpton winning would be for the right. Those of us on the right need to realize that and show the true compassion that it will take to heal such a wound.
I am a Republican who was squarely in the never Trump camp but also in the never Hillary camp. I believe that put me with the majority of Americans. But in the end most felt they had to choose and as always the independents decided the race and chose Trump. Never has the country had a nominee of a major party with such high negatives and in this election we had two.
It was sad that someone had to win. I was hoping for a miracle and that Evan McMullin would win it in the House. I am a John Kasich supporter and I believe that the nation needs a true uniter not someone who is a bigot or someone who calls people that don’t vote for her deplorables.
I believe that this election was our democracy hitting rock bottom but I am encouraged that we are now able to ascend. I blame much of the decline on the media. You cannot find a TV station and probably no newspapers left in the country that just report the news.
Fox News pushes the agenda for the right and all the others push the agenda of the left. Over 90 percent of people in the media donate to the democratic party. I long for the days of Walter Cronkite, when he said “and that’s the way it is June 10, 1990” or whatever date it was you knew what happened without any bias. I do not know how to get back there.
When a party knows that the media will not hold it accountable for its actions very bad things start to happen. Never before has the senate majority leader used what is called the “nuclear option” to pass legislation that could not be passed using the parameters allowed by the constitution. Never before has all but one of the media outlets intentionally taken a statement out of context to get the results they wanted in a Presidential election. I am talking about Mitt Romney’s 47 percent comment that the main stream media portrayed to mean that he did not care about 47 percent of the country.
When, if you listened to the paragraph and not just the sentence, it was crystal clear he was saying that 47 percent were going to vote for him and 47 percent were going to vote for Obama and that the time and assets of the campaign needed to be spent convincing the majority of the other 6 percent to vote for him. Nothing offensive at all and the media knew it but it decided to report otherwise.
Never before has a President turned the IRS and many other agencies loose on his political opponents to silence them. Never before has a President tried to go around the constitution with so much regularity. I believe it was seven times Obama’s actions were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court by 9-0.
If these things are new to you then you do not watch Fox News. I am not supporting Fox News. I am only saying that they are the only ones that would report these things. They are not any better than the others, just the only one on that side. These things create anger and distrust and the result is a campaign like the one we just had and a Trump Presidency, unthinkable, but then so is the media not fairly reporting the news and a constitutional lawyer doing all he can do to skirt the constitution.
I am disgusted but I have high hopes that we will sink no deeper. As divisive as Trump was during the campaign he surprised by being absolutely gracious and unifying in victory. Hopefully it is not just words. Conservatives now have control at the national level that they have not had since the 1950s.
We were long overdue for a correction and conservatives, by definition, move more slowly and thoughtfully than their counterparts. It is impossible for Trump to do the things that he campaigned on that are so scary. I believe that Paul Ryan will be calling most of the shots and that the country could not be in better hands.
I predict that eightyears from now the country will be very happy and/or very surprised at the success of the Trump administration. Not because of Trump but in spite of him. It is sad that Trump, perhaps the most vile nominee in history, will get the credit and be regarded as a successful President. But then Bill Clinton had a successful Presidency because of welfare reform, a balanced budget and resulting economic success, all things that he resisted for years until the persistence of Newt Gingrich and John Kasich made it impossible for him to resist them any longer. History is not always fair. 
Rest easy America, we will be okay, democracy works.
Bryan Jones
Salisbury