The way a candidate behaves before elections finish is usually a good way to tell what kind of president they will be, and what kind of presidency they will usher in. If a candidate is polite, honest and doesn’t keep changing their positions on current issues, you can usually guess that they’ll be a steady, dependable president. At least as far as not compromising their goals for politics. Most of you are probably going to read this as a not-so-subtle endorsement of Bernie Sanders, but you’d be wrong.
The other side of the stalwart coin of presidency is the caustic, toxic president. A candidate who revels in divisiveness and bullying. A president who prefers inflammatory rhetoric and rudeness, who insults their fellow candidates rather than out-debates them, a man or woman who takes the fears and misgivings of the voters and uses their fear to gain support should have no chance at leading the country.
And yet, we have Donald J. Trump.
A man who is empowered by jeering crowds. A man who discriminates against entire groups of people for votes. A man who wants to build literal walls to block progress and change from occurring.
Men who block progress and end freedom. The ability to do anything, be anything, and say anything, is guaranteed by the first amendment. Donald Trump will take away that freedom. He’s already begun to take away that freedom.
The point of freedom of the press is to serve as a final check and balance to the government. Journalists are the watchdogs, the last line of defense before everything falls and crumbles to dust. Sure, that may be melodramatic, but it’s true. When news can’t be reported, when the truth cannot be told, when a top candidate for the American presidency bullies, insults and blocks journalists from reporting, it serves as a warning and a prediction.
Donald Trump is a man afraid of truth. It seems that Trump would gladly sentence free speech to die. Controlling the media is never a good sign for a political campaign. Instances of reporters being removed from Trump rallies are now commonplace. “The Donald’s” one-sided feuds, even with conservative reporters like Fox’s Megyn Kelly, are simply an indicator, a pH test for the political world under his command.
If everyone watching isn’t frightened yet of what that means for the long term, a presidential term, they should be.
America under Trump would quickly devolve into chaos, racial tensions would spike and American freedom would suffer. A man like Trump is petty, narcissistic and unable to properly lead. If he can’t take the press merely asking questions, how will he take criticism? Already, he doesn’t. Reporters who don’t say positive things are blacklisted at his events. Even the publication itself becomes a target for him. Look at his interactions with The New York Times, CNN, NBC, the Des Moines Register, to name a few.
He attacks and attacks and attacks, belittling reporters and publications, ejecting journalists from events, banning them from others. There is no sign of this slowing down or stopping. What would that mean when he’s president?
For me, it means that he has things to hide. He has things to be suspicious of, and trusting him to be fair to a whole country when he can’t be fair to a few people just trying to ask a question does not inspire confidence.
A vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 election is a vote for ending democracy. If he’s elected, nothing good is going to come of it. Not one bit.
