County Republican Chairman Doug Roulstones’ letter to the editor (“Democrats have a long history of racism,” The Heald, May 25) offers a clue of what is wrong with the Republican Party today. It has changed over the years, as has the Democratic Party. The Democrats by way of President Truman started with the integration of the military and by the 1960s pushed for equal rights. They pushed so hard that they drove the southern racist Democrats into the present-day Republican Party, as evident by the supporters of the last Republican president. So his statement is partially true and partially false, making it totally false. “If only half of a statement is a lie, it is still a lie.”

Their ability to bend a true statement into a lie with a straight face is remarkable. Another Republican, Rep. Lauren Boebert claimed in an interview last Wednesday that there had been no coronavirus deaths in Texas since the state lifted its pandemic restrictions in March. She amended that to read “on May 16 there was no coronavirus deaths in Texas,” matching the Fox News report intent. All of the parties involved failed to say that this was a Sunday, a day in which several big Texas counties do not report deaths, reporting it Monday of Tuesday.

It was a lie, modified to be exactly the Fox News report wording or as it should have been, but was still half the truth (Deaths occurred that day but just not reported). The present Republican Party and its leader Trump, has made this an art form and it seems it is a characteristic of the party.

For shame.

Charles H. Best

Duvall