Column by Mary Bradley, Editor-in-Chief
When I think of the future of this nation, I am certain about a few things that I believe need to be achieved.
First, we need to take care of our incomprehensible (but very real) amount of debt.
Second, there are glaring and deep-seated racial issues that have continued to this day.
Third, and arguably the easiest to achieve of this list, is that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump cannot become President of the United States.
Let me tell you why.
As an average millennial, I am quite active on social media, which is perhaps one of the strongest tools a presidential candidate can use to reach people my age.
Oftentimes, posts I see regarding Trump’s candidacy are not based on the sound policies he wants to enact. They are outcries against full frontal racism he shows toward Muslims and Mexicans. They are criticisms of a man whose responses to opposition often contain insults that are more commonly known than his political agenda.
He, quite simply, is a disappointment to the great democratic experiment that is our nation.
As someone who is polling the largest numbers of all Republican candidates, it is hard to me to imagine why someone of his character would be in the lead. But, when referring to point No. 1 on my list, we have a money problem to take care of and he’s making some promises.
Within the last 10 years, the economy hasn’t been great. Actually, it’s been awful, which is why Trump’s biggest selling point is his economic plan.
His plan is basically this, as reported by Politico Jan. 11: He relies on big import tariffs and mass deportations. On the surface, these plans look good to the average person.
According to Politico, tariffs will come back to hurt U.S. citizens in the form of higher prices and deportation of 11 million undocumented workers would create a depression, along with lowering the nation’s gross domestic product.
I will give him credit where credit is due. He sees an issue and he is proposing a plan to solve it. Additionally, Trump has proposed some massive tax cuts, which will bring taxes lower than they have been since the mid-1900s.
But with tax cuts come spending cuts. According to money.cnn.com, Trump’s plan would require that “Just in 2025 alone, the Tax Policy Center estimates that federal spending would need to be cut by at least 20 percent. That would amount to more than 100 percent of defense spending or 82 percent of domestic program spending or 41 percent of Medicare and Social Security spending.”
But perhaps another horror of Trump’s candidacy is the response from other nations.
Let’s take the United Kingdom, for example. Hundreds of thousands of people have signed a petition to ban Trump, which drew enough attention that just this week, the U.K. Parliament held a three-hour debate on whether to ban him.
In other words, people and politicians who cannot vote in our election feel so strongly that he should not be our president that they quite literally want to stop him from ever coming on to their land.
If one of our nation’s oldest allies is already saying, “No, thanks,” to someone who is only a candidate in a race that is months from the finish line, I think we need to take a step back and look at what is really happening.
I am not demanding to know whom it is you want to vote for. I am not questioning your allegiance to one party or another. All I ask is one thing: don’t pick Trump.