Thumbs-Down on the Donald

By Audrey Stallsmith

I was happy to hear that the American Review had come out strongly against Donald Trump. It was about time that somebody did.

The public’s current infatuation with the billionaire and former reality show host completely baffles me. As Kevin Williamson points out, Trump is “a lifelong crony capitalist who brags about buying political favors.” 

How does such a guy get away with calling himself anti-establishment? Jonah Goldberg notes that we apparently “are supposed to forgive the fact that he was part of that corrupt system, excelled in that corrupt system, and makes no apologies for being a product of that corrupt system.”

Whenever anybody criticizes Trump for such hypocrisy, he doesn’t bother coming up with intelligent answers to their charges—probably knowing that there are none.  Instead, he calls those critics names and points out how unimportant they are as compared to himself. A response with all the maturity of “Nyah, nyah, nyah.” 

Apparently his bad behavior appeals to the worst instincts in his followers. Williamson writes that “Understanding and exploiting the baser emotions is what con artists do, and Donald Trump is a con artist par excellence.” It’s what salesmen do too, and Trump obviously is trying to sell us working stiffs the idea that he’s on our side.

The members of my own redneck, blue-collar family aren’t buying that snake oil. I'll point out just a few of the issues which should make him unacceptable to other Christian voters too. 

Trump has been married three times. He reportedly cheated on his first wife and dumped her to wed his actress mistress. He then divorced that second wife to marry a supermodel almost 25 years younger than himself. 

Despite all this, Trump doesn’t believe he requires forgiveness for his sins. To quote him, “I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don't bring God into that picture." 

His position on abortion also is muddy, to put it mildly. In the past, he frequently called himself pro-choice. Now that he wants to win conservative votes, he apparently has been converted to the pro-life side. He obviously wouldn’t consider it a conversion, though, since he thinks himself too perfect to have any need of such things. Some of us would beg to differ.