Why are so many people against Trump?
Tom Thompson, Financial Analyst (2018-present)
Answered Feb 25
There are a lot of different reasons why people dislike President Donald Trump. In light of some of the idiotic responses on this thread I will list out some of the reasons.
1.) Unethical
This is my biggest issue with him. Even before he ran for president he was known to scam people and rip them off in various ventures. Trump University was a for profit, unaccredited institution that simply scammed people into attending expensive seminars that taught them nothing. A New York Times investigation from last December showed that he and his siblings committed widespread fraud to avoid paying taxes which included overcharging their apartment tenants through a shell company. He ran casinos into the ground and then declared bankruptcy to absolve himself of consequences, while hundreds of people lost their jobs.
He is believed by many psychologists to be a malignant narcissist, meaning he has no capacity to understand the wishes and desires of others. This is a really bad quality in a leader, as a malignant narcissist will always choose what’s best for them personally over the people they should serve. Since taking office Trump has shown time and time again that he cannot be relied upon to do the right thing. His “Muslim ban” conveniently left out the countries which he had business ties with. He’s only presidential candidate in 40 years to not release tax returns. He appoints his unqualified family members to important government posts. He’s refused to step down from his business while in office. Hundreds of examples exist to choose from, but a lot of his ethical failings tie into other reasons why people don’t like him, which is why I will end this section here.
2.) He is a terrible ally who is eroding the world’s trust in the USA
As a proud American, I’m appalled at Trump’s behavior on the international stage. He cozies up to oppressive dictators like Vladimir Putin, the Saudis and Kim Jong Un, while undoing relationships with allies that have taken decades to build. The USA’s global image took a hit after the Iraq War and while it has slightly recovered since, Trump is not helping things at all. He has taken every effort to erase all of Barack Obama’s legacy for no reason other than spite. Any countries that were friendly with Obama are thrown under the bus by him. He pulled out of the Iran Nuclear deal without a plan for another deal. He took executive action to end the largely successful mission against ISIL in Syria to the dismay of his allies and military advisors. He publicly betrayed our country by stating that he did not believe Putin interfered in the US elections, simply because Putin said so. He has talked about leaving NATO and regularly blames Western allies like Germany for situations which the USA itself created, such as large numbers of military bases in Europe. Because of Trump’s terrible international reputation, the USA can no longer be relied upon as a leader or source of stability in world politics, and that makes my American heart very sad.
3.) Anti-Intellectualism and shameless peddling of conspiracy theories
Trump has peddled numerous conspiracy theories since his entry into politics began. He first came to be a political figure in 2011 following his peddling of the racist “birther” conspiracy, suggesting that Barack Obama was born in another country, thus not a legal citizen of the USA, and unqualified to be president. There is of course no evidence that Barack Obama was born anywhere other than where he said he was, in Hawaii. Trump’s greatest conspiracy hits include claiming that climate change is a hoax made up by the Chinese, suggesting that Ted Cruz’s father had a role in the murder of JFK, claiming that Obama wiretapped his campaign, and claiming that the reason he lost the popular vote was because of widespread voter fraud. All claims were made without evidence and are universally considered false. But that does not stop him from continuing to make false claims.
4.) High level members of his campaign were crooks and traitors
Paul Manafort. Rick Gates. George Papadopoulous. Michael Cohen. Michael Flynn. Roger Stone.
What two things do these men have in common? First is that they are all close associates of Donald Trump. Second is that they have all been charged and all but Stone (who is awaiting trial) convicted on felony counts in the Mueller investigation. Manafort, along with Donald Trump Jr and Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner, met with Russian lawyers in Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign. It’s highly likely that Senior members of Trump’s team colluded or attempted to collude with Russia in rigging the election. The final truth, however will not come to light until Mueller releases his report.
5.) He scapegoats immigrants and appeals to racism within the American populace
I’m going to get a lot of flack for this. Trump supporters are ultra sensitive when it comes to the word “racism” but the facts show that he’s taken every chance to scapegoat certain minority groups. He has time and time again painted all illegal immigrants as thugs and murderers. He ran blatantly racist ads during the midterms on the migrant caravan which cherry picked cases of illegal immigrants committing terrible crimes and painted it as normal Hispanic *cough* I mean illegal immigrant behavior. Regardless of where you stand on the issue of the caravan, promoting racial prejudice to boost your side is totally wrong. The murder of a college girl in Iowa named Molly Tibbets by an illegal immigrant was used by Trump and his followers to promote the border wall. He shamelessly used a young woman’s murder to spread falsehoods about a group of millions of people whose rate of crime is shown by research to generally be lower than that of native born Americans. [1] By the way, the wall will cost 25 billion dollars to build, billions more per year to maintain in perpetuity, become a massive eyesore on the border, and serve little practical purpose other than temporarily satisfying Trump’s ego issues.
Regarding other race issues, Trump notoriously defended the white supremacist march in Charlottesville VA, saying that the marchers were “wonderful people” and violence there was instigated by “both sides” when it was a white supremacist who drove his car into a crowd of people, killing one and injuring many more. It’s clearly obvious that trump recognizes that a sizeable portion of his base is racist and he makes a concerted effort to keep those people on his side.
6.) No respect for the rule of law
Trump, who the Right has touted as the “tough on crime” president, actually has no respect for the law when it comes to himself or his associates. He has routinely called the Mueller investigation into the Russian interference a “Witch Hunt”, a ploy by the Democrats to take seats in Congress, and an effort to rig the 2018 midterm election, among other things, all baseless claims. The reality of the situation is that Mueller has successfully indicted 34 people, including 6 Trump senior campaign members/associates, on charges relating to the investigation, with nearly all indictments resulting in immediate guilty pleas. Yet Trump and his surrogates believe he is above the law and call for the investigation to end and for Mueller to be fired based on their ridiculous accusations of bias (Mueller is a Republican, and so is overseer Rod Rosenstein). He has repeatedly obstructed justice. He fired FBI director James Comey a few months after taking office for no reason other than to end the Russia investigation which he himself confirmed. He also fired Comey’s confidantes in the FBI. He previously asked Comey to drop the investigation into his National Security advisor Michael Flynn, which is a clear obstruction of Justice, but Comey refused. He called his former campaign manager Paul Manafort a “great man” after he was convicted of numerous felony counts in the Mueller investigation. He’s tried to get top law agencies to investigate his political opponents. He fired his attorney general Jeff Sessions, a hard right leaning southern republican, simply for recusing himself from overseeing the Mueller investigation, which is the ethical thing to do in that situation, and not being enough of a Trump loyalist. Trump actually called Sessions out on twitter for bringing back the investigations of two republican congressmen before the midterms, saying that two easy wins were now in doubt.
7.) His Administration is a chaotic, poorly run mess
The Trump administration has so far proven to be one of the worst run in history. Hardly any of his cabinet remains from two years ago. His national security advisor was indicted on Felony counts of lying to the fbi and was ousted after two weeks. His communications director position has been a revolving door. His Defense Secretary resigned last year. He fired his attorney general. He fired his Secretary of State. His press secretary was a joke and lasted a few months. Numerous aides have come and gone, many saying not-so-flattering things about the administration and the president. The internal strife shows that trump was wholly unprepared for his job and chose people that he did not know how to work with. Bob Woodward, possibly the most respected journalist in the country, wrote a book which details Trump’s absolute mess of a presidency based on hundreds of hours of interviews with both current and former administration officials. Aides would literally take documents off Trump’s desk because they felt like he wasn’t capable of making a rational decision on them. His own defense secretary said that he had the mental capacity of a sixth grader. Trump has failed at running the government, causing a month long government shutdown and later declaring a phony national emergency in order to secure funding for his wall. Throughout it all, he still finds time to take a record number of vacation days at his Mar-a-Lago resorts.
8.) Many people believe that he wasn’t elected fairly.
Trump’s election was even more controversial than the 2000 election Bush vs. Gore. He lost the popular vote by ~three million yet still won the electoral college, mostly because of a few razor thin margins in Rust Belt states. There’s also now been the revelation that Russia made a concerted effort into helping his campaign through the use of fake news, hacking, fake social media accounts and other covert disinformation operations. There’s also suspicions, due to evidence, Senior campaign staffers’ connections with Russia and the indictments handed to those staffers, that he or members of his campaign conspired with the Russians to influence the election. It’s already been proven that he ordered his lawyer Michael Cohen to pay two women who Trump had affairs with hush money with campaign funds, which ended up influencing the election. It’s not a stretch to assume he would have done the same thing if the Russians came to him with info.
9.) Miscellaneous
Numerous women have accused Trump of Sexual Assault and/or sexual harassment, and he has called them all liars. Yet at the same time he takes the opportunity to smear political opponents like the Clintons with similar accusations. I think the infamous “grab them by the pussy” tape shows that there’s good credibility to Trump’s accusers. He was accused by his ex wife Ivana of raping her in the 1980s.
He has been allegedly disrespectful when making condolence calls to family members of deceased service members. He also said that John McCain wasn’t a war hero because he was captured. McCain was a bomber pilot who spent five years in a Vietnamese prison, was tortured horribly for a lot of that time, and in many cases came very close to death. Trump meanwhile missed the draft due to “bone spurs” on his foot, although he can’t recall exactly which foot it was. He also insulted the Muslim parents of a slain US soldier for speaking out against him, saying the wife was “not allowed to speak”. He was unable to make the trip to a WWI cemetery for the 100th anniversary of the armistice due to a light drizzle, even though every other head of state was able to make the trip.
He encouraged violence against protestors at his rallies, saying he’d pay the legal bills for anyone involved.
According to Trump, anything that disagrees with him is fake news. Even highly esteemed publications like the Washington Post and the New York Times are fake news if it’s against trump. Ironically, actual fake news was propaganda sponsored by the Russians which helped Trump get elected.
Well, there you have it. Books, or series of books, could be written about why people dislike Donald Trump. There are probably plenty of other reasons that I just couldn’t get into. This is just a general overview. |
