Choosing Trump In 2016 Wasn’t A Tough Call, But My 2020 Decision Was Much Easier
I’ve said before that neither of the presidential candidates in 2016 were great options, and that I even considered voting for a third party candidate. However, as a swing state voter, I felt obligated to eventually chose a side. While it would’ve been novel to see our first female president, I felt like Hillary Clinton was too corrupt and too entrenched in the Washington muck: she didn’t seem trustworthy. Donald Trump was not the first person I would’ve chosen to be president, nor would he have been the first pick for the vast majority of people when he announced his candidacy, but I did end up choosing him (fairly enthusiastically, I might add), and I felt surprised and vindicated when he pulled off an upset that nobody saw coming.
There were a multitude of reasons that I ultimately chose to vote for Donald Trump in 2016. He was a political newcomer who clearly wasn’t going to use the typical Washington playbook, and it seemed like he may have been able to shake things up. He was irreverent and spoke his mind, and while he was often rude or uncouth, it was a breath of fresh air to hear a political candidate tell you what they really thought. There was also the allure of his business background: we’ve had decades worth of career politician presidents, so perhaps giving the reigns to someone whose successful career was based on savvy business dealings could give the economy a revitalization and make things better for the middle and working classes. There was also the issue of the open Supreme Court seat in 2016 following the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, which would be filled by whoever was elected president and swing the court to the right or the left.
If I’m being honest though, there were also some unsavory aspects of Donald Trump that appealed to me. The fact that most politicians on both sides of the aisle seemed to strongly dislike him made me want to play devil’s advocate, and it seemed to indicate that while he may screw up some of the systems ingrained in American government, he could bring real change to our politics. I believed (and still do believe) that the U.S. needs to do something major to overhaul our immigration system. Donald Trump’s proposal of a wall spoke to me on multiple levels, some practical, some silly, some subtly cruel. On the one hand, a large physical barrier seemed remarkably effective at reducing illegal immigration from Mexico. I was also just a fan of large, government projects in general; I saw them as monuments to a country’s power (think something like the massive, dystopian concrete walls and other structures from the “Hunger Games” movies), and I wanted the U.S. to have something cool like that (not just one wall though, I also wanted one on our northern border because the asymmetry of only having one massive wall separating our country from the rest of the continent bugged me in a sort of OCD-ish way). But there was also an aspect of the wall proposal that was subtly race based, and fell back on the notion that immigrants from Central America were second class people who didn’t necessarily deserve to live in the United States. I don’t think this was ever a conscious thought I had, but it certainly provided the bedrock for some of my isolationist, pro-wall views. While I did support the idea of a wall, I also wanted the legal immigration system to be updated to make it easier for people to come here legally, but that wasn’t as enticing for potential voters as the wall was, so Trump didn’t really spend a lot of time talking about that.
All in all, my vote for Donald Trump was a devil’s advocate vote. To borrow a quote, it was a vote to burn the house down and start over, in many regards. Perhaps I was a bit of an anarchist.
If you’ve always considered yourself a Republican or a conservative and feel repulsed by the idea of voting for a Democrat no matter how much you dislike the Republican, I know where you’re coming from. I was raised in a staunchly conservative Christian household, and for a long time, nothing made me question any of my positions. But like most Republicans, the past few years have probably left you feeling at least a little bit of internal conflict. You’ve seen our president and the leaders of the Republican Party make arguments in bad faith, you’ve seen them flip flop and change their “beliefs”, and you’ve seen them support positions that don’t reflect the views they claimed to hold when you voted for them. It’s okay to be concerned, and it’s okay to admit that voting for someone wasn’t a great choice. I voted for Donald Trump in 2016, and in hindsight, I can admit that I made a mistake.
If you’re a Republican or a conservative and you don’t have ANY qualms with how your leaders have been behaving lately — even deep down, secret things you’ve never told anyone because you don’t want to risk being painted as a liberal snowflake — there’s a decent chance that your beliefs are founded on racism, homophobia, xenophobia, general bigotry, or a perverted and oppressive theological doctrine which you likely call “Christianity” but which doesn’t actually resemble the teachings of Jesus Christ. If you are in that camp and you see no issues with the behavior of Donald Trump and his “Republican” allies, you need to take a long hard look in the mirror. If that’s you, then stop reading, because this article is not for the close minded. But my guess is that if you’ve read this far, you have had at least some doubts about Donald Trump.
Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t like Hillary Clinton, but the last four years have shown me that voting for Trump and encouraging others to do so may have been one of the most destructive decisions of my life. That said, it took me a long time to reach that conclusion, and it was not a comfortable journey. I spent a long time trying to justify my vote for Donald Trump. I convinced myself that even though he was unconventional, America could use someone who would turn over a new leaf and shake things up in Washington. “Drain the swamp” was a remarkably appealing message. Allowing Donald Trump to burn the house down doesn’t sound like the worst option until you realize that he doesn’t have a plan to get you out of the house before he sets it ablaze.
By 2018, I was beginning to seriously question my decision. There was no progress being made on any of the issues I’d cared about when I cast my ballot for him. On top of that, while I still appreciated his candor and unfiltered thoughts, I couldn’t justify some of the things he said or did, like his remarks about “very fine people” who happened to be torch-carrying white supremacists and Nazis. He was beginning to cross red lines, striking matches and pouring gasoline as he went.
Another point of inflection for me was when I found out how exactly he had managed to pull off his 2016 upset. I’m not talking about Russian interference (though I do now believe that they did try to influence voters), I’m talking about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, wherein the Trump campaign used personal data from millions of Americans to target individual voters in specific counties in specific states to help them win an electoral college majority without trying to win the popular vote. They understood the weaknesses of the Electoral College, and they used modern technology and unethically collected personal data to influence only the voters they needed with disinformation, and they also used that data to conduct racist voter suppression, showing ads to black people to discourage them from voting. They gamed the system. They cheated.
Unflattering as that may have been, I could’ve looked the other way if he had been delivering on his policy promises. I could’ve told myself that he was technically playing within the rules, and that it was just an example of why the Electoral College was an outdated system that needed to be reformed or abolished. But he wasn’t delivering on anything, and he continued to cross red lines.
When I voted for Donald Trump, I expected him to be a champion of our military. I expected him to respect them and appreciate their sacrifices, but he’s shown time and time again that he simply does not care about them. He’s a draft dodger, and he’ll never understand or revere our troops the way a Commander in Chief should, and high ranking military leaders in his administration have condemned his actions that take advantage of our troops.
I’m a big believer in the second amendment, but Donald Trump is not doing what a responsible Republican president would do in this day and age. With the incredible frequency of mass shootings, it’s clear that something needs to be done: the curriculum for our children’s first day of school each year should not include where to hide in case of a shooting. Yet, Trump refuses to address this problem because of the overwhelming support he receives from big donors like the NRA. Respecting the second amendment means not only respecting the right of the people to bear arms, but also respecting the specific aspect of that same amendment that calls for thorough regulation.
Climate change is an issue that a lot of people — young people in particular — care a lot about. We are seeing the effects of climate change from wildfires decimating the landscapes of California and Australia to record numbers of hurricanes brutalizing the east coast. Yes, the earth goes through periods of warming, but the evidence that humans have accelerated global warming is incontrovertible. Donald Trump just refuses to acknowledge it because it’s unpopular among big donors whose businesses rely on lax environmental regulations. To those who don’t believe in climate change, I say this: let’s apply a common theological argument used by Christians to convert non-believers. If climate change is a hoax and we waste our time trying to prevent it by transitioning to clean energy and less harmful manufacturing processes, then no real harm will be done. But, if climate change is real and we do nothing to address it, the consequences will be dire. Even if you don’t believe the evidence, we can all agree that there is no harm in making our environment cleaner and less polluted. Donald Trump apparently can’t follow this logic, becasue he’s been rolling back environmental protections throughout his term.
In regards to immigration: it doesn’t take four years to build a wall, and it certainly doesn’t require eight years, but despite having Republican majorities in both chambers of congress, Donald Trump didn’t build a wall. In fact, he’s only put up a few miles of fencing (nothing like the “Hunger Games”-style wall I was imagining), and sections of it have been cut through, sections have blown over, and the people he tasked with building the wall actually tore parts of it down to sell the scrap rebar on craigslist. It flies in the face of what I wanted when I voted for him. And of course, there have been zero improvements to our legal immigration system.
Racism has been a hot topic this year, and Trump simply hasn’t met the moment. He’s stoked fires rather than trying to extinguish them because he knows that division is good for his re-election odds. What he clearly doesn’t realize is that America’s strength is in our diversity. We’ve always had issues with race in this country, but while he tells the Proud Boys to “stand by” and says that white supremacists are “very fine people”, real patriots recognize that this behavior is not the best America has to offer. The pursuit of justice and equality is not a zero sum game in the greatest country on earth, but Donald Trump would have us believe that it is.
Abortion is another important issue for a lot of people, and while there are tense disagreements, there are a few things that the majority of people do agree on. Most people believe abortion should be an option in cases where the mothers life is in danger, and most people also agree that the fewer abortions we collectively have, the better. Unfortunately, this is an issue that Trump has flip flopped on several times, so we don’t really know whether he agrees with those things or not. He’s described himself as pro-life and pro-choice, he’s said that he thinks partial birth abortion is terrible yet that it should be legal. It’s impossible to trust anything he says or does in regards to abortion at this point. Personally, I want the number of abortions in this country to go down, but Donald Trump has done nothing to make that happen. We know that better sex education and increased access to contraceptives and birth control can reduce the number of abortions: Trump has made no effort in any of those areas.
When it comes to healthcare, Trump has accomplished nothing at all, and he knows it. He’s tried and failed to undo Obamacare. He’s still trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act (which ensures coverage for people with preexisting conditions) but he has nothing to replace it with. He simply doesn’t have a plan, yet he’s trying to kick tens of millions of Americans off their current plans in the middle of a pandemic. It’s stupid and it’s cruel.
Speaking of the pandemic, yes, Trump banned travel from China and that was a smart move, but even that was too late. He didn’t ban travel from Europe until even later, which is where almost all of the United States’ cases came from. And what has he done since then? He’s pushed back against relief efforts, stalled stimulus checks so they could print his name on them (as if he were dispensing them from his own personal fortune), and suggested we ingest bleach. He’s undermined the scientists in his own administration because he thinks telling the truth is a bad look for him; he habitually avoids and discredits science and facts that are inconvenient for him. He’s been so reckless that not only has he allowed more than 8,000,000 people to contract COVID-19 and 220,000+ to die, he’s been so ridiculously stupid that he contracted it himself.
As far as the economy goes, Trump’s potential to make life better for middle and working class Americans was clearly just an illusion, because he drove the economy into the ground. Donald Trump is not a great business man, he’s a tax fraud. As was recently pointed out, he’s spent a great deal of his career exploiting tax laws in an attempt to hold on to the money he made as a result of other people’s successful business ventures. His tax records showed us that most of the business dealings he managed directly lost exorbitant amounts of money, and he’s personally in debt to the tune of $400M-$1.1B. The notion that he’s a successful businessman whose business acumen would benefit the greater American economy simply has not proven to be the case. After all, companies spend unbelievable amounts of money each year examining and mitigating various risks, and the greatest risk to the American economy, COVID-19, was by and large ignored by the Trump administration because the president found it unflattering. Ignoring your problems isn’t exactly a great business strategy or a good P.R. move.
Now, it’s not uncommon for a president not to accomplish everything they intended, but it’s not common for them to accomplish virtually nothing. The Trump administration accomplished so little that they aren’t even telling you what they would hope to do during a second term, if re-elected. For the first time in history, the Republican Party didn’t even put together a party platform, presumably because they know that Donald Trump is so erratic that anything they could possibly write down as their official agenda for the next four years would be swiftly and completely abandoned by the schizophrenic old man at the top of their ticket. Even Trump’s own website doesn’t list anything he hopes to accomplish if re-elected. They’re asking you to elect them without a plan.
You know who does have a plan? Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. They have a lot of good, moderate plans that are supported on substance by a majority of Americans. Do you want to elect someone who will respect the second amendment and pass common sense gun legislation to reduce mass shooting? Elect Joe Biden. Do you want to elect a president who has the resolve to stand up to white supremacy? Elect Joe Biden. Do you want a president who will empower and respect our military rather than denigrating and disrespecting their sacrifices? Elect Joe Biden. Do you want to elect someone who will put measures in place to allow greater access to contraceptives and birth control and subsequently reduce the number of abortions, while ensuring that it remains a safe option in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the mother’s life? Elect Joe Biden. Do you want to elect someone who will improve our immigration system in meaningful ways so that we know who’s entering our country? Elect Joe Biden. Do you want to elect someone who will create thousands of well paying clean energy jobs to get us out of Trump’s recession and turn the tide on climate change? Elect Joe Biden. Do you want to elect someone who will finally get the pandemic under control and get our economy firmly on the path to recovery? Elect Joe Biden. Do you want someone who will bring kindness, honesty, empathy, and strength back to the Oval Office? Elect Joe Biden.
You maybe thinking, “well I don’t really like Donald Trump, but isn’t Joe Biden a socialist?” Fortunately for America, the answer to that question is no, Joe Biden is not a socialist. In fact, the reason he won the primary and became the Democratic nominee is specifically because he was not a socialist. He ran against a socialist, Bernie Sanders, and he beat him. By a lot. Despite what you might hear on Facebook or Fox News, the vast majority of Democrats, including Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, do not want socialism. Many people are trying to paint this election as one where we’re having to chose the lesser of two evils, and while that was the case in 2016, it’s not the case now. Joe Biden is a good man — even many Republicans agree, including Lindsey Graham — and whether you like all of his plans or not, at least he has plans and he’s honest about them.
Again, regardless of what you think about the aforementioned policies, we should be able to agree that preserving our democracy should always be our top priority. However, in recent days, members of the Republican Party have begun to abandon even that foundational principle of our nation, seemingly preferring rule by the wealthy elite.
For a long time, people have been tempted to call Trump an authoritarian and a dictator, ready to dismantle our democracy at the first opportunity. He certainly has those autocratic, fascistic impulses, and he would love to be the strongman dictator of the United States for years to come, but the truth is that he isn’t strong enough or intelligent enough to follow through on those desires.
No, Donald Trump is not a dictator. He’s a weak, dumb, self conscious old man who stumbled into the presidency and whose only skill is taking advantage of the people around him. Unfortunately, the president’s ineptitude doesn’t mean that he isn’t still a fundamental threat: his haphazard abandonment of political norms, outright corruption and nepotism, and blatant disregard for the rule of law could very well be setting the stage for a true dictator in the United States. The most progress he’s made when it comes to tearing down our democracy was more or less a coincidence: since he announced his candidacy five years ago, he has been attacking the press and trying to discredit them when their coverage is critical, and he’s succeeded in creating an alternate reality with “alternate facts”. He’s also cracked down on peaceful protestors, authorizing force to be used against them without provocation. Even these fundamental threats to our freedom of the press and freedom to peaceful assembly were byproducts of his narcissism as opposed to deliberate attempts to undo the First Amendment. Imagine how much worse things could be if a real, competent dictator takes his place.
I noted earlier that the Trump administration has no plan, but it’s not entirely true that they have nothing they want to accomplish in a second term, it’s just that their aims are so corrupt that they can’t say them out loud. Following the leaked tax information from a few weeks ago, we learned that the president is in a massive amount of personal debt. The entire time he’s been in office, he’s refused to step away from his businesses, and has illegally exploited political relationships with domestic and foreign agencies and investors to make more money for himself and his family, ostensibly to reduce the burden of the personal debts from his many failed business ventures.
We were correct to assume that a businessman in the Oval Office could make a lot of money, but we were wrong to assume he would be interested in using those skills to the people’s benefit. Donald Trump’s business savvy served only himself and his family during his term, not the American people. From the start, this has been all about him, not us.
He sees his life as a tv show: he’s the main character, and the only thing that matters is how many people tune in to watch the show. He’s found a fan base in the Republican Party, a bloc of voters who were so fed up with politicians that they were willing to elect a reality television star.
Dont let a reality tv show host convince you that he’s a Republican president of the same caliber as Ronald Reagan. There’s a growing list of well-known Republicans who have denounced Trump, and while he has tried to label them as RINO’s (Republicans In Name Only), he’s the real RINO. He doesn’t actually value conservative ideas, he’s just playing the part—it’s a performance.
The scary thing is that not only is he not a true conservative, most of the officials in the Republican Party aren’t either, because he’s coopted their allegiance. There are instances where Republican congressional candidates have been required by the party to vocally support Trump despite not actually liking him. His presidency is destroying what’s left of the Republican Party: to be a Republican today, it’s not enough to simply have conservative beliefs, you have to be a vocal advocate for Donald Trump. There is no room for debate. You fall in line, or you aren’t a Republican. Group think like this — “herd mentality”, if you will — would be cancerous to any organization, but especially to one that prides itself on individual freedom.
In 2016, a vote for Donald Trump wasn’t just a vote for Donald Trump, it was also a vote for the future of the Supreme Court. This time, though another seat came open very soon before the election, the seat has already been filled, and the court now has a solid conservative majority of 6-3. The prospect of an open seat being filled by the winner of the election was a strong motivator for people; the high stakes in the court helped the vote for Trump go down a little more smoothly for conservatives who didn’t like him. The odds of Trump getting to replace another liberal justice in the next four years are exceedingly low, so the only reason one would vote for Donald Trump this time is if you like his personality or his literally nonexistent policies.
Furthermore, you shouldn’t want Trump to appoint any more justices. He’s slowly shifting the court away from a liberal or conservative tilt, and appointing justices whose loyalties will lie with him specifically. It’s corrupt, it’s not what the judicial branch was designed for, and it’s going to cost people their rights. In the next few weeks, the court will hear a case that could strip insurance coverage from millions of people with preexisting conditions, and they may potentially rule on the outcome of the election, should it be contested. The nonpartisanship of the judiciary branch is unraveling at the seams, and Trump continues to pull the loose strings because it benefits him personally.
My decision to vote for Donald Trump in 2016 wasn’t a difficult one, but it was a mistake. However, I believe it’s a mistake that history will judge as being a forgivable one. Nobody can be right 100% of the time, but the closest we can come is to acknowledge when we make mistakes and correct them. The time has come for America to correct one of our greatest wrongs, for the sake of our rights.
Voting for Donald Trump in 2020 will not be a mistake future generations are likely to forgive. It’s not a mistake that many people today will be likely to forgive either: in my view, anyone who has lived through the past four years and still decides that voting for Donald Trump is a good decision is a racist, a homophobe, and a xenophobe. Point blank.
That’s a strong statement, but I want to reiterate that while I have my own biases and discrete life experiences, as we all do, this isn’t about partisanship for me — I’m a registered independent and most of the candidates I’ve ever voted for have been Republicans — this is about preserving the foundations of American democracy for generations to come, and demonstrating to the world that the United States of America is truly the greatest nation on earth by rebuking hatred and division in favor of empathy and honor. The decision to choose Trump over Clinton was not very difficult for me. But the decision to choose Joe Biden over Donald Trump — to choose honor, truth, integrity, science, and democracy — that was a much easier choice.