Donald Trump, with his baffling blend of empty rhetoric and malarkey, is simultaneously the eternal plight of the conservative party and early Christmas for liberals.
Against all odds—for really, how many faults can one man have?—he has managed to be legitimate in the face of his sexism, egotism, and illogicality.
Trump’s genius stems from his ability to disguise these failings beneath his Batman-like façade. He is the rich, arrogant billionaire by day and empathetic, heart-string-tapping public avenger by night.
Trump offends people of all sexes, ethnicities and religious background, yet it is precisely this arrogant scapegoating which is so appealing to the average American.
Let’s examine the first public address of Trump’s presidential campaign. He is on record saying, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…They’re sending people that have lots of problems… They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
To fully analyze the fallacies in Trump’s statement, we need to ignore (for now) his rampant racism and classism.
Men that are born in the United States are “incarcerated at a rate over two-and-a-half times greater than that of foreign-born men,” according to the Public Policy Institute of California. Data from the United States Census support this, stating:
“For every ethnic group without exception, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants, even those who are the least educated. This holds true especially for the Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans, who make up the bulk of the undocumented population.”
This is a classic example of Trump using his bombast to equate being repetitive and loud with being right, and the American people buy it!
The depressing part is that Donald Trump was supported with, at one point, 30% of the Republican vote. This is representative of fellow Republicans who think the same way, believe the same hoaxes, and buy into the same lies that Trump spews.
It is because of this very ignorance that Trump is able to get away with so many of his ridiculous proposals, the foremost of which is to build a 1,954-mile long wall, from Tijuana to the Gulf, in order to curb immigration.
This would cost our country an estimated 6.8 billion dollars – not to mention that the main way that illegals get into our country is by plane!
But the buck does not stop there. Trump demands the deportation of over eleven illegal immigrants, despite the exorbitant cost of doing so—218 billion dollars, according to PEW Researchers—and the vacuum of cheap labor that would be created.
The other policy plan that Trump has made public is his tax plan – a plan so viscerally concocted, and so infuriatingly stupid that even Grover Norquist was in favor of it. He intends to remove corporate tax and lower the top rate of income tax from 43% to 15% (Market Watch).
If all of these cuts, coupled with a 20% tariff tax increase, had been in place in 2012, the national deficit would have tripled from $360 billion to nearly $1.5 trillion.
That’s exactly what the American economy needs, right?
Trump’s absurdity extends even into his public statements. On television, Trump has said that a woman would “be a good picture on her knees.” He has also called mothers who breast-feed “disgusting.”
After being asked by Megyn Kelly in the first GOP debate to explain such derogatory attitude towards women, Trump insinuated that her question was a result of being on her period (“blood coming out of her wherever”).
He has also claimed that Senator John McCain is not a war hero and has failed to deny deny that President Barack Obama is a Muslim?
But the most disappointing part of all of this—excluding the fortification of Trump’s insatiable ego—is that none of these inane and inappropriate comments have seemed to phase his top-tier polling.
H.L. Menken once said that no one ever lost any money underestimating the intelligence of the American people. I’d like to raise Menken one and assert that no one has—and no one ever will— lose a cent underestimating the deplorably hypocritical machine that is the infamous Donald John Trump.
The counterargument can be found here.