To the editor:

It breaks my heart to imagine some of my fellow retirees, friends of mine who voted for President Trump, taking 5 or 10 dollars out of their Social Security and sending it to Trump to support his futile attempt to find the thousands of non-existent fraudulent votes in the recent election. Apparently many are doing it because he has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for this purpose in the past few weeks. A small portion of this money will go to pay his woefully incompetent legal team, some of which might face sanctions, fines, and even disbarment for bringing such frivolous and meritless lawsuits to the court. It is hard to decide whether the Trump legal team is now approaching 50 courtroom losses because they are so bad or because there is just nothing there. Probably both.

But the worthless lawsuits and the appeals for helping to pay for them will continue as long as it is so profitable for the president. While a little of the contributions go to pay bad lawyers (I’ve read that’s about 5%), most goes into his “PAC” which is structured so that he can spend the money on whatever he wants — in other words, most of the retirement dollars his supporters send him goes straight into the pocket of this self-styled billionaire.

Our Republican state lawmakers can perform a real service for the good people they are supposed to represent and care about, especially the ones who voted for them, by protecting them from this grift. It would be easy. Simply say publicly and loudly what is obviously true: Joe Biden won this election fairly and decisively and will be our next president, so there is no longer any need to send more money to Trump. Save your retirement money or donate it to your local food bank where it can help people who actually need help.

Thomas Kuster

New Ulm