Donald Trump has been dominating the news cycles in America for months now and continues to lead the polls as the Republican nominee for President. The question is what does this say about America? Donald Trump was born into a wealthy family and grew up to become a real estate mogul, a television personality and now an aspiring politician. I don’t think it would be much of a stretch to presume that many other countries around the world would struggle nominating a wealthy reality show host to become the leader of their respective nations. In our history we have elected one president who had no political or military experience, Mr. Herbert Hoover, and since the Great Depression we haven’t came close. America is so frustrated with its current form of government and its leaders that a man with no political experience whatsoever is leading the polls. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina, along with Trump, are all political outsiders with no experience, and together they own more than half of currently projected votes.
Thus far Donald Trump has put forth very little substance to his campaign and is largely running on rhetoric and blind patriotism. When presidential candidates say they will “Make America Great Again,” America should answer with a resounding "HOW?" While all campaigns have their slogans, Trump has run a campaign primarily on the stance of being the only candidate that will fix America’s “illegal immigration problem.” In fact his own campaign website until this week only included his position on immigration reform, rather than his positions on improving the economy, solving income inequality, foreign policy issues, abortion and many other influential issues that American voters are interested in. Now Trump also includes among his issues his desire to protect the Second Amendment, although this claim is baseless fear-mongering as no Democrat is running on their desire to revoke the Second Amendment or take away the guns people already have.
Currently Trump is leading the polls on the merits of his name, his wealth, his popularity, his boisterous persona and his prejudiced beliefs. Trump has made a variety of ignorant statements regarding immigrants in America, women and the poor, and these comments can be easily found online or on his Twitter. He recently spoke with distaste about Jeb Bush speaking Spanish while campaigning for president, and it's hard to understand why anyone who be offended at Jeb for attempting to reach the 13 percent of Americans that speak Spanish. The English-only movement only seeks to shame those people in America who are already disenfranchised by an American culture that refuses to learn other languages.
Is America, presumably the land of the free and the home of the brave, a place where we feel the need to elect a man with these qualities and beliefs to represent us on the world stage? Having a well-informed electorate who act on their own free accord is the staple of democracy, and the only way we will elect the best candidate for the job is if we enlighten ourselves on our beliefs on current issues. Next we must demand that candidates give us clear-cut answers on the important issues in debates, instead of partisan rhetoric and personal attacks. Before you support any candidate for president, do your homework, and after you’ve learned about the real Donald Trump and his empty campaign, it will become clear he is not our future president.
