OPINION: Trump Spells Disaster for United States
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With the campaign suspension of Republican presidential nomination candidates Governor John Kasich of Ohio, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Donald Trump unfortunately is now the only viable Republican nominee to snatch the GOP nomination.
It looks as if the future may be bleak. The current representative for the Republican Party, Donald Trump, is known to be a racist xenophobe who attempts to reconcile his mistakes through short outbursts of fake inclusion such as posting on multiple social media accounts “I love Hispanics!” as a caption to a picture in which he is eating a taco bowl.
In addition to his personality, his policies seem to also be contradictory. Trump mentioned having a foreign policy that would lessen foreign intervention, claiming that ISIS “all began with a dangerous idea that we could make western democracies out of countries that had no experience or interests in becoming a western democracy.” This seemed reasonable until he also stated his desire to “spend what we need to rebuild our military,” criticizing the post-2010 cuts in U.S. military spending trend that continues to this day. It is confusing to many why a president who would like to do less with the military around the world is supporting funding that would increase military size and power when there are currently no dramatically increased rates of domestic upheaval or unrest that require military intervention.
From his contradictory yet basic policies such as the one mentioned above, it can be seen that Trump is a simple man that constantly deviates from whatever point he’s making. He is a candidate that is simple yet surprisingly not straight to the point, qualities that are usually both present in people.
Furthermore, given that Trump has many supporters who back him due to his bravery in speaking his mind, it is important to consider the different types of “unafraid to speak one’s mind.” We shouldn’t take personal qualities at face value; there is more to the origin of a person’s character than what seems obvious to us. A speaker has to be confident to speak one’s mind clearly and outright. There are some people, however, as is the case with Trump, where confidence becomes arrogance. The reason Trump is unafraid to speak his mind is because he believes that he is exempt from the backlashes that racist and xenophobic speech produces due to his immense wealth. His net worth is around $4.5 billion, cumulated throughout years of real estate and television shows such as The Apprentice, an amount that dwarfs the individual net worths of other 2016 presidential candidates’ net worths by around $30 million such as Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and former Republican candidate and businesswoman Carly Fiorina. Along with his wealth, he degrades others, such as when he ridiculed a disabled reporter and called Clinton’s bathroom break “disgusting,” showing his childlike mindset.
There may be qualities that Trump’s supporters see in him that appeal to them, but for the leader of a nation, it is most important that they possess basic courtesy to others and knowledge of the political field. Not only does Trump have no experience in the political field, he also openly bashes multiple ethnicities and religions with little background knowledge of those groups. To elect someone like Trump into a leadership position that bears the responsibility for approximately 320 million Americans would be a disservice to most, if not all.