Christal
Cooper
The
Political Coin From Both Sides:
Guest
Blogger Anonymous:
Why
I am voting for Donald Trump
And
Guest Blogger Dan Benbow:
178
reasons Hillary Clinton is infinitely better than Donald Trump (even on her
worst day)
Anonymous
for Donald Trump:
I believe our country needs and
outsider to come in and shake the system up. For too long, our country has been
ruled by a political class that is out of touch with the people they serve and
are bought and paid for by special interests. This must change. Secretary
Clinton represents the entire elite political class that so many Americans
dislike and believe has sold them out. The Clintons have used their political
influence to enrich themselves beyond belief in a matter of years proving that
if you have enough money, you can buy influence. Everything Democrats say they
are against, Secretary Clinton represents. This is why so many Democrats voted
for Bernie Sanders yet ultimately, the system was rigged against him to install
in to power the person the elites of this country had pre-ordained.
I cannot in good conscious vote
to elect a candidate who is currently under criminal investigation by the FBI.
If she were to win, it would create a constitutional crisis unlike anything our
country has ever experienced. We would have a President-Elect who is under
criminal investigation by the FBI. If President-Elect Clinton was not given a
pardon by President Obama, then likely she would be arrested before her first
hundred days in office was finished if she did not pardon her own self. In
either case, this would completely erode any confidence or trust the American
people have left in our government or justice system.
Foreign
Policy:
I believe America needs to stay
out of foreign wars that have no immediate threat to the national security of
America. America should not get militarily involved in the Syrian civil war.
This conflict is now being actively fought by Iran and Russia. To get involved
now, would mean America would be siding with the rebels against both Russia,
Iran and the Syrian government. This is not a war of escalation that we should
pursue. America should also not look to transplant portions of the Syrian
people to America. These people want to go back to their homes and America’s
arming of rebels and insurgents, many of whom have ties to terrorism, has only
prolonged this bloody civil war. This is an Arab problem and Arab countries
should be forced or made to handle it, not America. These are their fellow
Muslims, not Christians, they should be willing to aid them, not rely on a
Christian nation to do so.
I also believe that America
should work to de-escalate tensions with Russia. America should not continue to
view Russia as an adversary and look for ways to work together on areas of
commonality. We do not need to start another Cold War with Russia which does
not benefit anyone.
America can also not afford to
defend 30+ nations who have the capability to defend themselves but choose not
to fund it and rely on the American tax payers to do it for them. America has
strategic alliances that do need to be honored, but that also means our allies
need to honor their part of the agreement by doing what is necessary to defend
themselves. America spends more than $630 Billion on defense, we cannot
continue to afford to do this. Secretary Clinton has a track record of military
engagements spanning from Iraq, to her venture in to Libya, Egypt, Syria and
Ukraine. In each situation, Secretary Clinton advocated for military action and
regime change. There is no reason to believe that she will suddenly have a
change of heart or view from her past actions with military force.
Jobs:
I firmly believe in foreign
trade, but it needs to be fair trade that provides a benefit to America and our
workers. For too long, our trade policies have favored offshoring and
re-domiciling of organizations abroad in search of cheaper labor and tax
havens. This has harmed the environment immensely as these countries do not
have environmental laws or regulations. We need someone who is going to work to
bring jobs for our working-class people, not the wealthy and political elites.
We need to create a tax environment that encourages businesses to invest at
home and not horde their money abroad. America has the highest corporate tax in
the world, this needs to be fixed. These are not policies that Secretary
Clinton wants to pursue; she wants more regulations and taxes on corporations
which will only drive more of them overseas or shelter more of their money
abroad.
Immigration:
America is a land of immigrants
and it will remain that under Trump. What it will not allow is for anyone and
everyone to skip the legal process and just walk across the border or overstay
their visas. The American worker is being crushed under the mass of 10+ million
illegal immigrants who work for less wages than a legal American would because
they are here illegally. This undermines the job opportunities for low skilled
Americans and poorer Americans because why would an employer want to hire a
legal American and pay taxes and healthcare for them when they could hire an
illegal immigrant and not have to pay any of that and pay them less. Trumps
tough talk is nothing more than a starting point in a series of negotiations.
In either case, sticking our heads in the sand or letting 10+ million people
become citizens just encourages 10 million more to come across the border.
Again, immigration is important, but unregulated immigration is extremely
harmful to our economy and to our working poor who never stand a chance against
millions of people who are willing to undercut their wages.
The
Supreme Court:
This is perhaps the second most
important reason I am voting for Trump. The next President will appoint at
least one, and potentially up to three Supreme Court judges. We need someone
who will appoint justices that believe in, and support the Constitution as it
was written. Too often justices want to view the Constitution as a living
document that evolves and changes over time. This is a dangerous course and
reasoning to take. The Constitution gives clear guidelines for how laws and
processes are to work in our country. If we start to imply our own
interpretations of it, and not follow the actual letter of what it says, but
look to find intent which changes from person to person, then we risk
destroying the very foundation our country was built upon. We may not always
like or agree with something in the Constitution, but it is the foundation for
our Republic and it has held our country together for over 200 years.
These are the cumulative
reasons why I am voting for Donald Trump and not for Secretary Clinton
Guest Blogger Dan Benbow:
178
reasons Hillary Clinton is infinitely better than Donald Trump (even on her
worst day)
"...on
her worst day, Hillary Clinton will be an infinitely better candidate and
president than the Republican candidate on his best day."
-Bernie
Sanders
Hillary Clinton is the Rodney Dangerfield of American
politics—no matter how much she accomplishes, she gets no respect.
Over the past year, I have encountered one person after another
who dissed Hillary for purely subjective reasons. There was the ex who said on
a long-distance call that establishment candidate Hillary would be a servant of
the wealthy, while Donald Trump would be independent because he was so rich
that he couldn't be bought. The client who told me between puffs of his
cigarette that he couldn’t stand Hillary because he hated her fake smile. The
online acquaintance who dismissed how significant Hillary’s election would be
to women worldwide because Hillary had stayed with a philanderer and gotten
this far by simply “riding her husband’s coattails.” The feminist who said over
coffee that she wanted a female president, but not Hillary, because I don’t
trust her. The former co-worker who referred to Hillary's "trail of
corruption" on a Facebook feed but couldn't cite any real, actual scandals
when pressed.
And these people are all quite happy with Barack Obama, whose
center-left agenda and technocratic orientation are virtually indistinguishable
from Hillary’s.
What gives?
Clearly, the Republican Party has done such a masterful job
demonizing Hillary for the past 25 years that many otherwise intelligent people
have a visceral dislike of her.
But far more relevant than surface-level perceptions is the
weighty matter of how a Clinton presidency would differ from a Trump
presidency. To answer this, we need to ask a few simple questions. Where have
the candidates been (how much governing experience do they have)? Where are
they going (what are their policy proposals)? Do they have the temperament to
take on the toughest job in the world? Everything else is just noise.
The answer to the first question is a no-brainer. The presidency
is not an entry level job, and when it comes to governing experience, there is
no comparison between the two candidates.
Donald Trump has never held public office (1) or shown a remote
interest in public service of any kind (2). Trump’s sole claim to being
qualified for president is his business experience, but he is not self-made (he
began with a million-dollar lone from his father), he had to be bailed out by
his father in 1980 (3), he claimed losses of almost a billion dollars losses of
almost a billion dollars in 1995 alone losses of almost a billion dollars (4)
in order to dodge his taxes (5), and he has left a trail of wreckage behind
him, including thousands of frivolous lawsuits (6), jilted clients (7) and
contractors (8), and multiple bankruptcies (9).
Even Trump’s foundation, one of the few reflections of concern for other
human beings, was used as a piggy bank to fund a contribution to the Florida
attorney general, in a flagrant and illegal attempt to make charges against
Trump University go away (10).
Setting aside the fact that no businessman, ever, has been a
good president, if Trump is so sure he can “run government like a business,” why
is he the first presidential candidate in the modern era to refuse to release
his tax returns (11), which presumably would reflect his business acumen? Could
it be because Trump's business “performance has been mediocre compared with the
stock market and property in New York,” according to The Economist? We may never
know. By contrast, Hillary has a more impressive
public service resume than anyone who has run for president in several decades,
or perhaps ever.
As a teenager, Clinton set up a babysitting service for migrant
workers (12). During her undergraduate
years, around the time future war hawk Donald Trump was avoiding military
service in Vietnam, Hillary became class president at Wellesley (13), where she
was the first student to deliver a commencement speech (14), which address she
used to advocate for radical change (15).
While in law school, Hillary volunteered at Yale's Child Study
Center (16), served as a state coordinator for George McGovern, arguably the
most progressive general election candidate in American history (17), and went
undercover to investigate discrimination in Alabama schools for the Children’s
Defense Fund (18).
In 1973, the same year Trump was sued for refusing to rent to
blacks in his rental apartments (which would happen more than once, 19),
Hillary was one of just 27 women in the Yale Law School class of 235 (20).
Rather than making a money grab—as Trump did by going into real estate out of
college—Hillary chose to be the only woman on the team of lawyers tasked with
impeaching Richard Nixon (21).
When Bill Clinton moved back to Arkansas to pursue a political
career in 1974, Hillary had a choice. She could stay in D.C. and pursue her own
sizable ambitions, or go with Bill. She chose Arkansas, and marriage, but she
was no simple political wife, entirely beholden to her husband's career.
While in Arkansas, Hillary taught law (22) and served as Bill’s
top consultant in his two years as attorney general and twelve as governor
(23). She took on the major project of reforming Arkansas’ sub-par public
education system (24), co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and
Families organization (25), chaired the Arkansas Educational Standards
Committee (26), and served on the boards of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital
(27), Legal Services (where she was the first female to chair the board, 28) and
the Children’s Defense Fund (29). Hillary
also juggled a career as a lawyer at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, where
she was the first full-time female partner (30); she excelled in this role,
making the National Law Journal list of most influential lawyers in 1988
and 1991 (31).
In the '90s, while Donald cheated on his first model/wife,
divorced her, married and divorced another model, made and lost boatloads of
money, and began trolling beauty pageants, Hillary further beefed up her policy
credentials by becoming the most active lady since Eleanor Roosevelt. She valiantly led the fight for universal
healthcare (32), but was stopped by the GOP and their parasitic allies in the
insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
Picking up pieces afterward, she played a role in passing both the Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability law HIPPA) which allowed people to keep
their coverage when they switched jobs (33), and later the Child Health
Insurance Program (CHIP) law, which extended coverage to eight million
disadvantaged children (34). She also
had a hand in crafting a bipartisan measure that helped foster children (35)
and used her clout as first lady to deliver a forceful speech on behalf of
women’s right sin China (36).
And instead of bragging about herself non-stop, as Trump did in
his most famous (ghostwritten) book, The Art of the Deal, Hillary wrote
about the importance of society banding together to help children reach their full
potential in It Takes a Village (37), the audio version of which
netted her a Grammy Award.
In the '00s, during which time Trump made and lost more money,
married a trophy wife, continued to troll beauty pageants, and hosted a reality
TV show, Hillary ran against Republican (and future Trump supporter) Rudy
Giuliani for an open Senate seat in New York. When his poll numbers tanked in
the wake of a divorce scandal, trash-talking Giuliani dropped out of the race
rather than face the ignominy of losing to Hillary. Hillary beat the fallback
Republican, Rick Lazio, by double digits, becoming the first woman to be
elected senator of New York (38).
In 2001, the Clinton Foundation was founded. It would go on to
provide AIDS medications to nine million third world people in need (39), raise
life expectancy for poor women in developing nations (40), and received a
cherished A rating from Charity Watch (41).
In that same year, Hillary began her Senate career. As a senator
from New York, among many other things, Hillary would secure $21 billion to
rebuild Manhattan after 9/11 (42) and help get benefits for reservists and
National Guard members deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan (43).
Halfway through her Senate career, in 2005, Hillary was named to
the National Women’s Hall of Fame (44).
In 2006, Hillary received the overwhelming confidence of her New
York constituents, winning re-election to the Senate by more than a 2-to-1
margin (45)
Not content to be a popular and accomplished senator, Hillary
ran for president in 2007. Despite getting more vot4es than Barack Obama (46),
she lost the primary. Rather than mope
around or cast blame, she campaigned for Obama in the fall of 2008 and accepted
his offer to become secretary of state (47) the following year, after first
co-sponsoring the Lily Ledbetter Fair Play Act (48), which amended
arbitrary timelines placed on lawsuits related to gender discrimination in
employment.
Lily Ledbetter and President Barack Obama
As a secretary of state, Hillary helped push the Pediatric Research Equity Act, which
forced pharmaceutical companies to be more careful about the drugs they market
to children (49).
She was also involved in the Women in Public Service Project
(50) a State Department partnership with all-female colleges geared to bringing
more women into the public sector.
In 2012, just before stepping down as secretary of state,
Hillary created the “Saving Mothers, Giving Life “initiative” to fight infant
mortality in sub-Saharan Africa (51). That
same year, right after it was announced that Barack Obama had won the second
term, Trump claimed that Obama’s five-million vote landslide was “rigged.”
(52).
Now that we know where the candidates have been, let's examine
where they plan to go. It's no secret that presidents wield immense power,
making thousands of decisions that impact not only 320,000,000 living
Americans, but future generations, not to mention billions of people abroad.
Hillary Clinton’s governing agenda forms one decision tree and set of human
consequences, Trump’s forms another; more than any other criteria, rational,
informed adults will base their vote on the contrasting results of these two
decision trees.
To justify not voting for the Democratic candidate this fall,
some on the left have peddled the notion that there is a major policy chasm
between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. In this framing, Hillary is
"Republican light," closer to Trump than she is to Bernie
Sanders.
As Bernie himself has said many times, this contention is wildly
false. While they were both in the Senate, Hilary and Bernie voted together 93%
of the time (53). Far from being
“Republican light,” Hillary was the 11th most liberal senator (54),
placing her to the left of three-fourths of the Democratic caucus and all of
the Republicans.
Clinton now leads a Democratic Party that put up its most
liberal platform ever last summer (55).
With some exceptions, Clinton promises an extension of the center-left
direction of Barrack Obama, and she might fight harder for some progressive
priorities.
On the other side of the aisle, Trump heads a GOP that appears
to be hurtling backward, a party further to the right on many issues than
previous Republican leaders who were considered extreme at the time, such as
Ronald Reagan and George W Bush (56).
Over the course of the campaign, Clinton has released a long
list of progressive proposals that offer a stark contrast to her Republican
rival, including policies dealing with the reform of drug laws (57), assistance
to caregivers for the elderly and disabled (580, prescription drug imports from
Canada (59), autism (60), drug and alcohol addiction (61), Alzheimer’s disease
(62), and healthcare for veterans (63).
Clinton plans to protect and build on Obama’s major achievement
, the Affordable Care Act (64), which has brought healthcare to 20 million
Americans who would otherwise not have it.
Trump wants to repeat the act, and with it coverage for millions of
Americans (65). He promises to replace
the law, but has provided few specifics about what he would replace it with.
While Clinton has rolled out workable education reform proposals
for both K-12 and college students (66), Trump has offered the state Republican
orthodoxy of tax write-offs and “school choice” (privatization) which would in
many instances violate the separation of church and state by using public funds
for religious organizations (67).
The candidates' positions on taxation are radically different.
Clinton would pay for her targeted social investments with tax increases on the
wealthy, including a steep tax on real estate interests (68). Trump has proposed a tax plan that could add
ten trillion dollars to the debt in its first decade (69) and further increase
America’s sky-high income inequality by slashing taxes on corporations and
multi-millionaires (70), including Trump himself, who would gain a a massive
windfall if his proposal became a reality (71).
Clinton, who presciently advocated stronger oversight of Wall
Street before the crash of 2008 (72), has vowed to enforce Dodd-Frank, Barack Obama’s
bill to reign in Big Finance (73), and proposed further regulations of
financial interests, a plan endorsed by Elizabeth Warren. Trump, who routine foams at the mouth about
the evils of regulation—even food safety regulations- would follow the
long-time GOP playbook of letting Wall Street police itself that gave us The
Great Depression and the Great Recession of 2008. (74)
The candidates diverge sharply on environmental issues. Clinton,
who has received the endorsements of the Sierra Club and the League of
Conservation Voters (75), would continue Obama’s impressive green legacy by
supporting investments in clean energy (76), strong environmental regulations
(77), both national and international efforts to combat climate change (78),
and the creation of national monuments (79). Trump, whose energy policies were
created by extraction industry lobbyists (80), has claimed climate change was a
“Chinese hoax” (81), attacked the Obama Administration repeatedly for steering
the U.S. away from dirty, dirty coal (82), and said he would get rid of Obama’s
plan to force utilities to use cleaner fuels (83), a policy Clinton supports
(84). And, like Republican predecessors
Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, Trump would most likely appease GOP allies
and campaign contributors by underfunding the Environmental Protection Agency,
appointing staff with hostility to the environment to key posts, and gutting
environmental regulations (85).
More than anything, Trump owes his candidacy to his promises to
get tough on illegal immigrants, inflammatory and dishonest words which have
particular resonance with uninformed white people who are geographically remote
from he Mexican border (86). If we are to take him at his word, Trump would
deport immigrants at will (87) and initiate the construction of an enormously
expensive wall (88) that would alienate us from our neighbors. Hillary Clinton supports a much more
balanced, comprehensive immigration reform plan (88) which would enhance border
security, help bring people out of the shadows and into society (and the tax
base), allow families to stay intact, and require far less in the way of
government resources (taxpayer money).
Mexican-Americans aren't the only people of color who would be
harmed by a Trump presidency. While Hillary has met with the mothers of black
victims of police violence (89), Trump has exploited white privilege (and
ignorance, 90) with the constant dog whistle statements about “law and order,”
just as Richard Nixon did in 1968 when leveraging white Southern anger over the
Civil Rights Act. Among Trump’s policy
ideas to restore order is to support for stop-and-risk laws (91) which were
ruled unconstitutional, as they inordinately impact black and Latino
Americans.
Though claiming to support law and order, and frequently
referring to inner cities as hellish, Trump has offered nothing of substance to
deal with America’s epidemic of gun violence.
Where Clinton has suggested limited, common sense gun control proposals
(92), Trump has bragged about his NRA endorsement and demagogued the issue
(93), at various points saying he would sign a law allowing guns in school
zones on his first day in office (94),
ludicrously claiming that Clinton wants to “end the Second Amendment” (95), and
implying assassination by saying that “Second Amendment people could act
against Hillary Clinton (96).”
And where Clinton would use her Justice Department to challenge
Republican voter ID laws (97) passed with the sole intention of
disenfranchising people of color (laws Clinton’s lawyers have already sued to
overturn in court, 98), Trump supports
these bills (99), and the lies that underpin them. Trump repeatedly claims that
we should be on the watch for voter fraud on November 8 (100), when in fact the
infinitely greater (and only real) problem will be voter suppression, which may
disenfranchise 1.3 million voters in the swing states alone. Changing the
composition of the federal courts could kill these pernicious measure outright,
particularly if Clinton was allowed to choose one or two Supreme Court judges.
Trump would also try to codify bigotry by treating gay and
lesbian Americans as second-class citizens. While Clinton has received the
endorsement of the Human Rights Campaign for supporting marriage equality and other
priorities of the LGBT community (101), Trump has vowed to rescind Obama’s
pro-LGBT orders (102) and sign legislation allowing discrimination against the
LGBT community (103) very similar to the “religious freedom” bill his running
mate Mike Pence signed as governor of Indiana (104). (Governor Pence also backed conversion
therapy intended to convince LGBT individuals that they should be straight
(105) and opposed needle exchange, which exacerbated an HIV outbreak that later
occurred in Indiana (106).]
Trump has embraced an eleventh-hour pro-life stance (107), and
even spoken of the need to punish women who exercise their reproductive rights
(108). Clinton, on the other hand, would
protect a woman’s right to choose through Justice Department enforcement of
clinic access laws (109), lawsuits against states that try to limit choice
(110), and the appointment of judges—to both the Supreme Court and the lower
federal courts—who would protect Roe v. Wade (111).
Trump has expressed a wish to kill funding for Planned
Parenthood, an organization that Hillary has always backed 100% (112), for
which she received their endorsement during the Democratic primary (113).
Remarkably, Trump’s running mate Mike Pence may be even worse than Trump on
women’s issues. While still in Congress,
Pence introduced the first measures to de-fund Planned Parenthood (114), which
he brought up on several occasions (115); as governor, his wish came true
(116). Governor Pence also signed a bill that required funerals to be held for
aborted fetuses. (117).
In addition to appointing reactionary right-wing judges who
would take us back 50 or 60 years (or more), a President Trump would appoint a
host of noxious Republicans to government positions, just as George W Bush
did. Trump suggested he would name New
Jersey governor Chris Christie (best known for causing a major traffic jam on
the George Washington Bridge out of political spite) chief of staff (118) and
Trey Gowdy, the hyperpartisan lightweight who helmed the kangaroo-court
Benghazi hearings, to be the attorney general of the United States (119).
As an added bonus, Trump would like to name Rudy Giuliani, the quasi-Fascist
former mayor of New York City who implemented stop and frisk (see numbers 38
and 91), the head of the Homeland Security Department (120). By contrast,
Hillary could be counted on to fill most appointments with seasoned
professionals who would take the historic missions of their agencies seriously
(121).
Amazingly, Trump may pose more danger to U.S. foreign policy
than he does to American domestic policy, where he would at least be checked by
Democrats in Congress.
His opponent, Hillary Clinton, spent eight years traveling
abroad as first lady (122) and logged more miles than any secretary of state in
U.S. history (123). As secretary of state, her diplomatic skills
contributed to many successful policies, including but not limited to the international
sanctions that coaxed Iran to the negotiating table (124), the deal itself
(125), in which Iran gave up their nuclear aspirations, the normalization of relations
with Cuba (126), the START Treaty with Russia (127), and the climate change
agreement in Copenhagen (128). Trump, called “the worst major-party candidate
this republic has ever produced” by the
non-partisan magazine Foreign Policy (129), is so ill-suited to being
commander-in-chief that 50 Republican national security officials said Trump
"would be the most reckless president in American history” and endorsed
Hillary Clinton (130).
Clinton being sworn in as Secretary of State
Based on his steady stream of bellicose rhetoric, Trump
threatens to return us to the policies of George W Bush that eroded our alliances
and lowered America’s standing in the world (131). Trump has frequently
attacked the Iran peace deal in hyperbolic terms, and while Clinton has
promised not to send troops to Iraq or Syria, Trump the Draft Dodger (see
number 13) has delivered one saber-rattling line after another, continually
referring to Barack Obama’s caution about sending other peoples' sons and
daughters into harm's way as “weakness” (132). In addition to talking tough
about ISIS non-stop, Trump said he won’t
protect NATAO allies who don’t “pay us.” (133)
While Barack Obama, like other presidents before him -including
conservative Republican Ronald Reagan—has worked to reduce nuclear stockpiles
around the world, Trump suggested that Japan and South Korea should join the
nuclear club (134).
Where Hillary Clinton has promised to follow the Geneva Accords
with regard to captured enemy combatants, Trump said that we should go back to
waterboarding (135) and even killing the families of suspected terrorists (136)
and suggested that the United States should expand the prison at Guantanamo Bay
which has been an international disgrace to the U.S. (137).
Trump, like many seemingly straight Republican males, has
demonstrated a bizarre man crush on Russian president Vladimir Putin,
supporting the Russian government's hacking of
Democratic
officials (138), praising Putin's leadership (139), and
claiming
Russia wasn’t in the Ukraine, even though they had annexed Crimea (140).
Aggressive military actions, thumbing our nose at allies and
international human rights norms, and palling around with Putin are unlikely to
maintain the international good will Barack Obama has spent eight years
patiently restoring in the wake of George W. Bush's cowboy unilateralism. The
best we can hope for if Trump gets elected is that we find out he was kidding
this whole time in order to appeal to his paleoconservative base.
"I
don't like to analyze myself because I might not like what I see"
-Donald
Trump
Years ago, Theodore Roosevelt was described as having “a
second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament.” The implication was
that though there had been smarter men in the
Oval
Office, Roosevelt’s cool head more than made up for it. Exhibiting grace under
pressure (i.e. having a strong character) is a prerequisite for a successful presidency.
To distract the American public from the issues that matter, the
Republican Party has spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars (and hundreds
of hours of taxpayer-funded congressional investigations) trying to
attack Hillary Clinton's character with half-baked claims that she is
corrupt, dishonest, untrustworthy.
The allegations of corruption are brazenly hypocritical,
as Clinton is a Girl Scout next to Richard Nixon (Watergate), Ronald
Reagan (Iran-Contra) and George W Bush (WMD lies), and Trump has a sizeable
record of corruption himself.
The rap on Hillary's honesty is equally dubious. Clinton, a
record 20-time winner of Gallup’s most admired woman award (141), has high
marks among fact checkers, getting the same ratings for honesty as Bernie
Sanders (142), while Trump is shown to lie more often than he tells the truth
(143). Trump is so dishonest that his
bankruptcy lawyers claimed they met with him in pairs so that he wouldn’t be
able to twist their words afterwards (144).
As to character, Hillary Clinton has consistently maintained her
composure in high profile, high pressure roles as first lady, senator,
secretary of state, and as a presidential candidate, where she took a scalpel
to Trump in three successive debates (145).
Despite decades of very personal and often unfair attacks from the left
and right, Hillary has not broken (146). By contrast, Donald Trump has
repeatedly blown up at the smallest personal slights (147) and revealed the
personality of an adolescent who views women as little more than sex objects.
Long before Trump re-posted classy Tweets such as “mplefty67:
If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband what makes her think she can
satisfy America?,” (148), or questioned Hillary Clinton’s “stamina” (149), or
had his surrogate Rudy Giuliani (see numbers 38, 91, and 120) level ageist
insinuations about Hillary Clinton’s physical health (150), he made multiple
appearances on Howard Stern’s show, where he received the sobriquet “Donald the
Douchebag.” In his role as Donald the Douchebag, Trump showed no objection when
Howard Stern referred to his daughter as “a piece of ass” (151) and when asked
if his daughter had gotten breast implants, Trump said, “She’s actually always
been voluptuous.” (152) In another interview with Stern, Trump said it was
“check out time” for women once they turn 35 (153).
Long before the video revelation that a 59-year-old Trump had
bragged about being able to grab women’s pussies because he was a star (154),
Trump called Miss Universe “an eating machine,” (155) said it was hard for a
flat-chested women to be a 10 (156), claimed he could have “gotten” Princess Di
not long after her untimely death (157), and told an attractive contestant on
his reality TV show, “That must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your
knees.”
Long before 12, 13, 14, 15-and-counting women came forward with
accusations against Trump of improper physical advances (158), his hostility
toward women spilled over into public feuds (159) with Rosie O’Donnell (whom he
called “a fat pig”) and Fox News host Megyn Kelly.
Trump’s prejudices have not been limited to women. He first
dipped his toes in murky political waters when he played to the racist
Republican right by questioning the location of Barack Obama’s birth (160), a
conspiracy theory that had been thoroughly debunked years earlier, than later
“took credit” for getting Obama to release his long-form birth certificate
(161).
Trump went from a novelty candidate to the Republican
frontrunner by referring to Mexicans as “rapists” (see number 86). He later
extended his nativist-baiting to Muslims, opposing the immigration of refugees
from Syria’s civil war to the United States (162), even supporting an outright
ban on Muslims (163). At other times he
proposed an ideological litmus test for new immigrants (164) and racial
profiling based on religion (165).
Lest anyone wonder if these were just short-term campaign stunts
geared to stirring up the primitive emotions that dominate Republican
primaries, Trump doubled down on prejudice with two of the most suicidal moves
of the general election campaign: questioning the integrity of a
Mexican-American judge (166) who was presiding over a case related to Trump
University (see number 10) and engaging in a series of Twitter attacks on the
Gold Star family of a Muslim war hero (167)
Judge Gonzalo Curiel
Sadly, Trump's bigotry is not limited to Mexicans, Muslims, or
women.
In February, Trump refused to condemn the former Imperial Wizard
of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke (168), an enthusiastic supporter. In July of this
year, Trump tweeted an image of a six-pointed star next to a pile of money for
Hillary Clinton (169), afterward denying the clear anti-semitic intent of the
Tweet (170).
David Duke
In September of this year, the former spouse of Trump’s campaign
manager, Steve Bannon—an accused wife-beater (171) - said that Bannon had kept his daughters out
of school because there were too many “whiny” Jewish brats there (172). Nor surprisingly, Trump who has re-tweeted
posts from white power groups (173), has
the backing of White supremacists (174).
Steve Bannon
In addition to insulting Mexicans, Muslims, women, and
Jewish-Americans, Trump famously mocked a disabled reporter (175) who had the
gall to point out that Trump had lied about New Jersey Muslims celebrating
the events of 9/11 (176), then later claimed he hadn't been aware that the
reporter was disabled, though they had known each other for years (177).
Women, Mexicans, Muslims, Jewish-Americans, and the disabled are
far from alone, as Trump has issued hundreds of petty insults on Twitter (178).
In sum, if you want the lowest common denominator in the White
House, an emotionally-stunted narcissist and braggart with serious anger
management problems and racist, sexist, and Islamophobic tendencies, an
entitled, right-wing demagogue with backward, mean-spirited, and dangerous
ideas and no government experience, whose policy knowledge could fit on the
head of a pin, Donald Trump is your man.
If you prefer inclusion, decades of hands-on experience, a steady
temperament, a first-class mind, and forward-thinking policies, pull the lever
for Hillary Clinton.
For Americans who care about the future, the choice could not be
clearer.
