Lenard W. Wahlert Letter to Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan Putting GOP on Notice-Correct Attribution!
Summary of eRumor:
A letter written by a man named Lenard W. Wahlert to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) about a lack of GOP congressional leadership has been circulating in forwarded emails and social media posts.
The Truth:
A letter taking Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan to task for failing to support President Trump and for failing to advance the GOP’s legislative agenda has been correctly attributed to a California man named Lenard W. Wahlert.
Lenard Wahlert does not appear to have public social media accounts, but Wahlert posted the letter to McConnel and Ryan on a discussion board called GaltsGulchOnline.com under the headline, “The Globetrotters & The Washington Generals,” on August 31, 2017. Wahlert describes himself as a Vietnam War veteran and former 3M executive who is on the verge of leaving the GOP due to a failure of leadership from congressional Republicans:
Yes, President Trump is not the typical political bureaucrat; but he is the President of the United States. It appears from where I sit you both have decided to lay down on the job you’ve been elected to serve. The 60 Million + people that voted this President into office made this decision based upon the absolute requirement to have someone outside the beltway to lead the nation.
As distasteful as this appears to be for not only the Democrats; it appears to be equally distasteful to the GOP leadership. Your lack of action on numerous legislative issues that this country desperately needs is visible to all. The electoral map of the U. S. is RED because President Trump mobilized the electorate. These same voters are going to clean house again in 2018 if you don’t start acting like leaders.
Lenard Wahlert goes on to compare Republicans to the Washington Generals and Democrats to the Harlem Globetrotters, questioning why Republicans can’t advance legislation despite holding control of the House, Senate and White House:
Why is zero legislation moving forward? We have the Presidency, we have the House, we have the Senate ! What’s wrong with this picture. We are wasting valuable time here Senator McConnell & Representative Ryan. The voters are not going to waste time in 2018. This is the last chance for the GOP before it morphs into something none of us recognize.
Wahlert warns that Trump turned the country red and that those voters would abandoned the GOP (or at least establishment GOP candidates) in the 2018 mid-term elections if congressional leadership doesn’t step up.
Wahlert has posted open letters to members of Congress in the past. In July 2016, Wahlert vented his frustrations over former FBI Director James Comey’s decision to not recommend charges against Hillary Clinton for using a private email server in a letter to U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (X-CA). Wahlert also posted a copy of Rohrabacher’s response to his letter. Those letters didn’t generate the same level of interest as Wahlert’s letter to McConnell and Ryan.