Donald Trump
LOCAL Democrats interviewed by Variety offered mixed reactions to the election victory of Republican Donald Trump, who will become the nation’s 47th president in January.
Trump resoundingly defeated his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, while his party secured majorities in the U.S. Senate and, according to the latest projections, the U.S. House of Representatives.
Precinct 3 Rep. Denita K. Yangetmai, who was reelected last week, said, “I personally extend my congratulations to our President-elect Donald Trump on his victory, and I am confident that our CNMI relations with the federal government will be unabated, especially now that we will have a new CNMI Republican delegate to Congress.”
Yangetmai doesn’t see “any reason for our relations with the federal government to be any different.”
For her part, NMI Democratic Party Vice Chair Luella Marciano acknowledged that the election results “were a shock to all of us — it was in that moment when I knew that the next four years are going to be challenging for our country, but I remain hopeful that our Democrats will continue to fight the good fight, and work beyond party lines to deliver for our people.”
CNMI Labor Secretary Leila Staffler, who is an NMI Democratic Party official, said, “All my life I have been taught that character counts, decorum matters, and mutual respect is a corner stone of democracy. Today more than ever I see how important it is to uphold these values and be the example I hope to see in the world. We are not done fighting the good fight.”
Vicente Salas II, a party central committee member, said, “We live in a concerning, if not troubling, time where heavy dependency on social media technologies as the primary means of information has given rise and prominence to a greatly evolved ‘Age of Disinformation.’ ”
He added that the presidential election result “was extremely indicative of that. Political influencer grifters, think-tanks, and mouthpieces operating in an echo chamber of followers seeking affirmation of their own beliefs all worked in tandem to ‘normalize’ Trump’s behavior and that of his ilk, to the point that too many voters were readily willing to sacrifice basic civil ethics, morality, and human decency, if it meant pushing their ‘prized horse’ through to the finish line.”
He said, “If we do not proactively take caution and implement safeguards even more fervently than what was commenced in 2016 [when Trump was first elected], we stand in great danger of walking head first into an era of normalized fascism and disintegration of civil liberties.”
