Why You Should Vote for Trump

In a recent beer-influenced post, I bragged about understanding the case of my opponents so well that I could write their arguments far better than they could. I spent the Trump years, like many of us, criticizing and railing on about Trump constantly and sometimes arguing with a friend. That friend, having read my post, challenged me to write an article about why you should vote for Trump. I don’t necessarily believe this exactly. I can’t imagine pulling the lever for any of these clowns. But I don’t disagree with all of it either. A case can be made, so here goes. #wirescrossed

(The counter argument, for Biden is here )

First let’s start with the reasons why you shouldn’t vote for Trump. The reasons people give usually look something like this.

• He is a narcissist and really cares for no one but Trump
• He is not intelligent
• He has no morals. He cheats. He lies. He commits crimes.
• He is racist and sexist etc
• He can’t focus, and causes chaos where nothing productive gets done
• He is a national security risk, disloyal to the US and favors dictators who do him favors or give him compliments over our long term democratic allies
• He is a threat to democracy in the US

You can give plenty of other similar reasons, but note that nearly all the arguments against Trump are focused on his character. Trump supporters will argue against some of these criticisms of his character but not all of them. Perhaps you feel that focusing on character is fine because character is critical to being a good leader. But is it really?

Let’s consider this important issue of whether character is really as important as many people think. I will make the case against this and in doing so build the case for why voting for Trump is actually the better option.

Whoa boy! This is going to be an uphill battle for sure but bear with me and hear me out. Am I really going to argue that the character of our leaders is not important? Not exactly. Rather I will argue that:

1. Trump’s character, while bad, is not nearly as bad as he is made out to be
2. Trump has already demonstrated, as strange as it seems, that his poor character is not necessarily harmful to leading this country
3. Trump’s lying and corruption isn’t really much different than most other politicians including the ones he is running against

Once I have dispensed with the character issues I will turn our attention to what he actually accomplished while President, and how our country was actually doing behind the media circus. I’ll make the case that the country actually did amazingly well, perhaps better than under any President post World War. Then I’ll stake the argument for Trump on the idea that regardless of his character, having him as President again will actually be best for most people in the country.?

Is Trump’s character really that bad?

We all know who Trump is. Trump is an egomaniac, a bully, not particularly bright, and has always been focused on personal wealth and fame.? He is a loudmouth. He doesn’t have much class. He has thin skin. He is easily distracted and excessively focused on how he is perceived. These things are all true and there is little point arguing over any of them.

But these things while not positive character traits in general are not uncommon in politicians. They don’t necessarily prevent a politician from doing a good job. Let’s focus on the more severe criticisms of his character; that he is a liar and corrupt.

Trump the liar

News agencies made a cottage industry of cataloging Trump’s lies. The Washington Post tallied over 30,000 lies. “Independent fact checkers” have their own list and, if you wish, you can go read each claim. Many of these “lies” are questionable however. One can interpret statements in different ways and some lies are simply inaccuracies in minor details. But even if we concede that only a third of them are actual lies, we are forced to admit he is a prolific liar; easily the US politician who tells the most lies per sentence uttered.

But Trump supporters don’t really see it that way. First, most of Trump’s lies are about little things that don’t matter like his crowd size or whether someone really gave him a compliment. Trump doesn’t use truth the same way as most people. Trump is a storyteller. His supporters don’t judge him by the facts given in the story. They judge him on whether the story he is telling on the whole feels like a true story to them. To them, Trump not getting the facts right is more about his laziness or simple lack of concern for detail; like Bluto’s rousing speech in Animal House. They find it a little comical and even endearing especially when it makes the libs so damn mad. Fact checkers have a family to feed too.

If that alarms you consider this example. Imagine I made the case for Trump being a prolific and casual liar by picking out some of those cataloged lies that are actually not lies when seen in the right context. In other words, the evidence I would be giving are actually all facts that are not facts. They are false. But you’d still believe the story I am telling is correct. It feels correct to you and you are not going to change your opinion about that just because someone points out the problems with these particular facts. You’d feel confident that if those facts are not correct, you could easily replace them with equivalent ones that are correct; equivalent in the sense of making the same point in supporting the story.

Many people love Trump because they say he is the only honest politician. That statement might make some people spit out their coffee. It’s like saying that Stormy Daniels is the most chaste woman. But they don’t mean these little incorrect facts that he constantly throws around. They mean that he is the only one that tells the important truths that: politicians are corrupt, illegal immigration is harming America, American foreign policy is a scam for the good of the defense industry, globalists are getting US elites to sell out America to their agendas, we focus too much on race and political correctness and white people are now getting a raw deal.

You might not believe all these things. But his supporters do and they see him as the first politician willing to say them out loud. They see the other politicians who are far more averse to getting facts wrong that are actually the more dangerous liars. These other traditional politicians, on either side, are pretending to care about regular people’s problems but actually just saying whatever they need to say to get reelected. Trump is the one telling us that the emperor wears no clothes and they know that to be a true story.

Take the example of him denying the Stormy Daniels affair. His supporters don’t care and perhaps none of us should. We all know that Trump could easily have had that affair. It sounds like something he would do. He is a rich playboy and follows his impulses so why wouldn’t he go and cheat on his wife with a porn star? Isn’t that the kind of thing you’d expect of playboy billionaires? Do you really think Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, or Mohammed Bin Salman don’t do the same thing? They probably just do it more discreetly because they are smarter. And of course he is going to deny it. Wouldn’t they all? Wouldn’t you?

Trump the crime boss

Some people complain that Trump doesn’t act like a politician but rather acts like a crime boss. That may be true but guess what? American’s love crime bosses or at least the glamorized version of them. They love Tony Soprano. They love gangster movies. They love Bonnie and Clyde, gangster rap, the Godfather and Al Capone. Gangsters are glamorized in America as people who are fierce protectors of their community, enemies of the rigged system, follow a parallel but no less rigid ethical system and generally do what is right to make business go smoothly. If you gotta make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs.

When you reach the correct conclusion that the US political system is effectively one big pile of corruption, then simply being another criminal is not much of a distinction. It’s more about deciding which crime family best suits your needs.

Here is a quick list of the crimes Trump has been indicted for with accompanying? dismissals.

• Being a tax cheat - Who cares? We all do it.
• Lying about the porn star thing - Who cares? See above.
• Jan 6th insurrection - Overblown. Not a real insurrection. Some people got out of hand and that wasn’t on him. Suppose he could have done better.
• Georgia election interference - He wasn’t asking them to commit crimes, just investigate further. Other people with bad motives put bad ideas in his head. Not too bright, remember?
• Stealing our most precious secrets and refusing to give them back and then engaging in obstruction of Justice - Yadda, yadda. They are always trying to pin stuff on Trump.
• Maybe I forgot a couple and that’s because they have no effect on my actual life

The last one, the document case, is, in my opinion, the most serious and I don’t really believe it can be dismissed easily. It was a serious crime and incredibly irresponsible to take those documents. There is no excuse for obstruction of justice. The best case you can make here is that this was indeed a crime but that we should forgive him for it. They were indeed constantly trying to get Trump. Biden also had documents laying around his garage. In the end, perhaps no great damage was incurred. (Of course, we can’t be sure of that but let’s hope).

In the end, you must admit that Trump has probably committed some crimes but like any good crime boss, he meant well. His distractible mind often leads him to make bad decisions that cause him grief. He has some serious character flaws, sure, but then again, don’t we all?

The threat to democracy

One of the most dire accusations is that Trump is a wannabe dictator and, if he has his way, will turn America into something closer to Russia. He loves Putin because Putin is everything Trump wants to be. If Trump is President again, perhaps our country will lose our freedom too.

Here, I can be completely honest in saying that this is hogwash. Yes, I am sure that Trump fantasizes about being a dictator. But that doesn’t really matter. Our country has strong checks and balances and Trump wanting to be a dictator is not going to result in it actually happening. Trump tried to do dictator things several times and got smacked down by either Congress, the Courts, the military leaders and even his own cabinet members.

But the biggest reason this is hogwash is that the left is the one trying to take away our freedoms. They want our country to be more like Russia; Soviet Russia that is. Just look at California. That’s the ideal that the American left wants for America and when it gets that, it will just keep going. Disarm Americans. Get them used to letting the government tell them how to live their lives. Make it a hate crime to argue against various ideological ideas. Make the white people pay the black people back for what other long-dead white people did to their ancestors while their own were too busy getting oppressed by the British Empire or others in some far off country. Reign in free speech. Prepare the US to join into a global government led by forward thinking Progressive leaders like George Soros and Gavin Newsom.

The left is the threat to democracy or more accurately a threat to freedom which is more important. Trump is not going to become a dictator and that whole story is based on nonsense. The Democrat’s “voting rights” bills are really just about getting more Democratic party votes. If mail-in voting or voting without an ID actually bumped things in favor of Republicans, they wouldn’t be interested in these proposals in the least. It’s completely self-serving and has nothing to do with race. If anything, a major reason for voting for Trump is preserving the freedoms we have and if it takes a mob boss breaking some eggs, so be it.

Those who live in glass houses

So by now, I’ve dismissed the arguments about Trump’s character. I’m not saying that he doesn’t have character flaws. He clearly has plenty. But his flaws are mostly transparent to everyone and relatively harmless compared to the deep and better hidden dishonesty in the other mainstream politicians, particularly those on the sanctimonious and hypocritical left.

But isn’t this whataboutism? Sure I guess. But whataboutism is fair game when you have to decide between just a handful of politicians on election day. You are choosing the ones you think are best and, if necessary, the least worse. Trump at least does what he says he will do or at least tries. He is too much of a blabbermouth that he couldn’t be part of any dangerous conspiracy. You can’t say that about most politicians like Joe Biden or Obama and people find that very refreshing.

The final thing I’ll say about character is this. Realize that almost the entire world of media is against Trump. Imagine being a public figure and having dozens of billion dollar media companies and 10s of thousands of independent journalists all working in concert 24/7 to make you look as bad as possible to everyone else. Realize that your views on Trump’s character must be incredibly biased. How could they not be?

What really matters

I’m done with character. Yeah, Trump has some bad character traits but they are quite exaggerated and more harmless than most would assume. All politicians are dishonest crooks. Might as well pick the most effective crime boss for the job. Let’s focus less on character and consider what should really be of utmost importance. How will my life be affected directly by the actions and policies of the President?

Trump of course was already President and so we don’t need to imagine what it would be like. It would probably be similar to how it was then. Let’s however turn off our memories of Twitter battles, tabloid stories about porn stars and “many fine people on both sides”. Jan 6th was a rough day but it’s in the past and most importantly, it had zero effect on your actual life. Let’s look at Trump’s Presidency in terms of how the country actually did if it had simply refused to watch the news or social media and just looked around at what was happening to them.

The state of the economy

The US economy did extremely well under Trump. It was four years without a recession (besides the pandemic). The economy was strong. Unemployment reached a low of 3.5%; the lowest in a half-century. Median household income grew faster than anytime in 30 years with household income growing by $6,000, 5X more than 8 years under Obama. Overall employment peaked at 160 million. Incomes rose in every single metro area for the first time in 3 decades. The stock market made record highs.

Some statements from the Trump White House.

• Unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, veterans, individuals with disabilities, and those without a high school diploma all reached record lows. Unemployment for women hit its lowest rate in nearly 70 years. Lifted nearly 7 million people off of food stamps. Poverty rates for African Americans and Hispanic Americans reached record lows. Income inequality fell for two straight years, and by the largest amount in over a decade. The bottom 50 percent of American households saw a 40 percent increase in net worth. Wages rose fastest for low-income and blue collar workers – a 16 percent pay increase. African American homeownership increased from 41.7 percent to 46.4 percent.

Trump also passed some major and effective trade policies. For the first time in 70 years, America became a net energy exporter. He made a lot of progress with deregulation which led to booms in business and entrepreneurship. Inflation was very low.

Foreign policy

Trump is no war monger. Sure he likes to talk tough but in actuality, he is very hesitant to use American military might especially when it can escalate into a larger war that could actually endanger you or people you know. Foreign policy under Trump, while chaotic, was actually very effective. Palestine and Israel were as close as they had been to peace in some time. He expertly handled many problems that previous presidents Bush and Obama caused such as failures in Iraq and the creation of ISIS.

Trump’s weird fascination with Putin and Russia, while concerning, actually worked out fine. Russia was controlled and Putin was far less worried about NATO expansion. I think we can agree that if Trump was President rather than Biden that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine. The war wouldn’t have happened and all the trouble including the inflation that has crushed America would not have happened either. Sure, Russia is weaker now but we all are as well because of it.

We are closer to war with Russia, China and Iran now under Biden than under Trump. The World was actually quite stable then in comparison to both now and before. You might argue that this is luck more than Trump’s doing but that’s not a strong argument.

Minority groups under Trump

Many people can’t get past the idea that, in their opinion, Trump is racist. Racist people, being the worst of all people, can’t possibly be allowed in power because they will decimate the quality of living for people of color. I won’t even bother to debate whether Trump is racist. What matters is how people of color did in practical, measurable ways during his presidency. The facts say that they did extremely well economically. They did far better than under a black President and under all other Democrat Presidents and certainty under Biden where just paying the grocery bill is a major headache.

I won’t diminish how having Trump as President may have made minorities feel. I certainly can’t speak about their feelings. I’ll just say that black people are no stranger to having politicians in power who they sense as being racist. This is America afterall. We know the history of how black people have been treated. I think it unlikely that having to put up with Trump on Twitter and his occasional jaw dropper on race was more significant than the fact that they had jobs, were making more money, could afford groceries and that more of them were rising out of poverty.

Democrats have won the majority of the black vote for quite a while now. They do this by making promises of helping the black community in specific ways and usually fail to deliver. Usually they blame the failure on Republicans. Even if true, they are unrealistic and disingenuous promises.? Would Democrats actually go through with reparations for slavery if they could? Possibly. But they’d probably rather have Republicans stop them from having to make that choice. It works far better as a promise; like the rabbit they use in dog races to keep the dogs running. In reality, it is never coming; not nationally anyway and so it’s really just a lie. Forgiving college debt is another similar lie to attract the votes of young people. Both groups are wising up to this.

Democrats try to solve crime problems by taking away Second Amendment rights in urban areas. To make matters worse, they defund the police on the demonstrable false basis that police harm black communities. The result is that African Americans living there can’t protect themselves and have to suffer worse from violent crime. And those non-violent gun possession charges send their young men off to prison for victimless crimes that would not be a crime at all a few counties away where the white folk live.

Trump actually passed the First Step Act which was a major reform on prison and sentencing. This was partly to correct the disastrous Crime Bill passed under Clinton and the bipartisan War on Drugs which is largely credited with the massive increase in imprisonment of young black men in particular. 30,000 non-violent offenders were released from prison and only 12% have rescinded. This is an example of the racist orange guy actually doing something that dramatically helped the black community regardless of what he was saying on Twitter about Charlottesville.

Recently polls are showing a massive shift, a tripling, in black voters actually backing Trump over Biden. The reasons are not hard to imagine. If they ignored the social media and media circus and just focused on how they were actually doing, they would see that they were much better off under Trump. You can ignore Twitter. You can’t ignore your grocery bill or fact that you don’t have a job. What’s a worse lie? That Trump didn’t have sex with a porn star or that, if you vote Democrat, they are going to shower you with slavery reparations?

Summary: The case for Trump

The case for Trump is pretty simple actually. The country did amazingly well under his Presidency. The media created a circus around him and did everything they could do to bring him down but if you could ignore that mostly-false reality, his personal quirks, and an occasional crime or two, you’d see that he was actually extremely effective at leading America. The case to vote for Trump is that Biden’s America sucks and senile Joe Biden hasn’t any clue how to change it for the better. The policies of the Democrats suck overall. They have harmed America and will continue to do so. It’s not MAGA people but rather the media, on both the left and right, who are causing the rise of hatred and discomfort that we all feel. Their agenda is to increase fear and outrage because that drives engagement and ultimately advertisement revenue. Hatred also helps the propagandists on the left isolate their followers from reasonable discourse with non-believers who might debunk their nonsense. The media, the establishment and the elite hate Trump because they know he is the wrecking ball that might tear the whole corrupt system down; a system designed to benefit them not us. His chaos, while not always beneficial, is sometimes a useful tool for disrupting the system and creating the change we need. Trump despite his eccentricity and character issues was actually a great President and if you vote for him, he will be again.