To the editor:

The July 2 Saturday Column says that “telling the truth” is essential in a candidate — and then attacks Hillary Clinton as a liar, without mentioning that Donald Trump has been caught over and over, by the most reputable sources, in misstatements, inventions and outright lies.

I’m not writing to defend Secretary Clinton, but to blame Mr. Simons for his blatantly one-sided critique of Clinton’s record. If truth is essential in a president, as he says, why did he not mention that Donald Trump has compiled a record (according to NBC, PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, the Guardian, and others) of saying what is not true much more often than any other presidential candidate, Democratic or Republican, in the course of this campaign? When Politico, for example, counted how many lies Trump told in a total 4.6 hours of speeches, they came up with an average of one lie every 5 minutes.

Not only that, but Trump uses the technique of the lie that is repeated so often that many people ultimately think it must be true. That was, for example, what he did in repeatedly asserting that he saw a video of thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheering as the towers came down on 9/11. Fact: There is no such video, but he continued to say many times that he had nevertheless seen it.

If a writer (Mr. Simons) deliberately leaves out facts that would compromise his statements, he is legitimately labeled “biased” and “misleading.” That Saturday Column is deliberately deceptive, and the J-W should — but won’t — be ashamed of it.