DES MOINES – State Representative Bruce Bearinger from Oelwein shared some of his thoughts on the President Donald Trump’s inauguration speech.

“Thank you for contacting me on this inauguration day.  As I listened to President Trumps speech, there were several things that I felt were good.  I was glad to see that for the first time he did not use the word “I”, but rather used the word we.  I was also glad to hear him talk about making this country inclusive for people no matter what their skin color.

All that said, I thought his speech was a bit gloomy.  Talking about drug use, poverty and death rather than a message of hope and promise.  In addition, I felt that his speech had very little new information and was mostly the same as the campaign speeches that he has given in the past.  

I do not see how his speech and his inaugural activities will do much to improve his poor poll numbers, nor did I hear or see enough to allow me to believe that he has made any major strives to unify our country.

If I were in Washington I would be very interested in working with him to help build our failing infrastructure which is one of his major campaign promises.  I have yet to see how this can be accomplished without increasing our national debt, but it is something I will encourage our elected federal officials to pursue.

President Trump is my president and all our president and it is now our duty to assist him in any way possible while calling him out when we see that he is not making solid decisions.  Andrew Carnegie once said, “As I get older, I pay less attention to what people say, I just watch what they do.”  I plan to follow that premise as we move through the next four years.