Donald Trump, not America’s best choice

By Jaime Ortega.

 

As I predicted in 2014, the visible rise of conspiracy theories in social media has become a reliable indicator to the present untrustworthiness linking media, people and the political class. Everyone, including the avid political experts thought Jeb Bush conclusively bestowed the crown of choice amid republican loyalist before the race for the primaries started – not long after, he quit the race to the astonishment of Republican traditionalist.

The rise of Donald Trump comes as a desperate attempt by the middle class to feel represented in government against the evil forces of greed and corruption said to be responsible for unemployment and poverty in the US. The question remains whether the Republican Party will uphold a broker convention to hand Marco Rubio or speaker of the House Paul Ryan a bypass to defeat Trump given the nervous breakdown of the RNC.

Long gone the days when politicians and bureaucrats sold hope to voters to guarantee reelection. The consensus among the average US citizen is that the political class is crooked, dishonestly directed by financial elites. According to a recent poll conducted by The Daily Journalist up to 89% of US citizens distrust the government and up to 75% mistrust the media. The polls also shows that 81% view Republicans and Democrats equally untrustworthy.

According to Fox News, the reason why voters feel identified with Trump is because he taunts issues that resemble voter opinion and public concern, whereas the rest of republican candidates epitomize the current problem of the present-day establishment. The RNC has become so Anti-Trump and Anti-Cruz, that they have endorsed Marco Rubio the ideal Republican frontrunner, which has inevitably backfired with more public support leaning to Trump and Cruz.

Not withholding perspective, Donald Trump successfully swindled the political establishment focused in the weakness of the Obama administration, equally maximizing his attacks on political pundits that oppose his campaign. The GOP resentment toward Trump only holds testimony of his communicative prowess to resonate with voters to counter party critics – it is working.

Mystery Trump

Trump’s political affiliation should concern his most vocal advocates. He’s been a Democrat, an Independent, and even briefly according to CNN, Trump toyed with being a Reform Party candidate in 1999. Insofar Trump looks like an opportunist, who unexpectedly and against the odds, decided to join the Republican caucus to avert the nations financial and moral decline. According to Nick Glass from Politico, Trump spent years courting Hillary and other Democrats before joining the GOP. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner and former New York senator received donations from both Trump and Trump Jr. on separate occasions in 2002, 2005, 2006 and 2007, according to state and federal disclosure records.  Trump brags about the fact that he is self-funding his campaign, but according to Politi Fact, Trump’s campaign isn’t 100 percent self-funded. Out of the $19.4 million he brought by the end of 2015, $13 million came out of pocket at 66 percent. 25.3 percent came out from small individual contributions, and 8.4 percent came from large individual contributions. It’s worth noting a couple of more caveats. First, Trump’s self-financing only picked up in the last three months of 2015. From the start of his campaign in April through October last year, individual contributions made up about 67 percent of total money raised for his campaign. But in the last quarter, Trump gave his campaign a $10.8 million loan, turning that balance around. The second caveat shows that the vast majority of Trump’s contributions to his own campaign about $12.6 million are loans rather than donations. Are interest groups now involved in Trump’s campaign considering his loans? Is Donald Trump an actor who is playing the republican side? What is his true political affiliation? Who is Donald Trump? It’s a mystery.

An economic wizard or the wizard of Oz?

Another mystery of the Trump campaign relates not to the sudden popularity avertedly linked with his uprising, but in how he plans to change the politburo on issues related with the economy. Trump is one of the few Republicans in the 2016 field who isn’t skeptical of the usefulness of a federal minimum wage, but he doesn’t think it should be increased from the current rate of $7.25 an hour, which could halt Obama’s recent plan to raise it to $9 an hour. The Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan research body of Congress, has said that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would likely cost half a million jobs, but it would also lift nearly a million Americans out of poverty. The Washington Post reported, that Trump plans to dramatically cut federal income taxes for all Americans — the question remains how?  In 1999, Trump wanted to enact a 14.25% one-time tax on the wealthy. He hasn’t since spoken too much about it. In his 2011 book, “Time to Get Tough,” he outlined changes including the elimination of state taxes, corporate income taxes and lowering taxes on capital gains.  In principle the idea sounds good, but experts say it would add heavily to the federal debt.  His plan looks lucrative on paper, but considering the current US debt, and the living standards of many hard working Americans it seems like Trump’s faith in the economy is not short of fairy tales.

Trump and his spicy trade ordeal

Little if anything is known of his financial plan and how he plans to execute his reforms, a problem that ultimately should raise flags to his cohorts. If you want more details on how he’ll create millions of jobs, the only place to find them on his website is under “US China Trade Reform,” because “Jobs” is not on his list of six major policy areas. One way he wants to stop American companies from moving jobs overseas is to smack a 35 percent tax on goods moving into the US produced by Americans who have moved offshore. However, what Trump doesn’t say is that raising tariffs on goods coming into America will raise not only the prices of those goods, but many other prices as well.  Mitt Romney said recently, that “If Donald Trump’s plan were ever implemented, the country would sink into a prolonged recession.” As CNN reported, such massive Tariff’s to China, Japan and Mexico could start a trade war. His plan to negotiate better deals and slapping tariffs by suggesting 25% tax tariffs on goods coming from China to the US will not only disgruntle the economy but slow down its growth. India also doubts Trump’s tariff strategy. Trump recently said “If you look at the way China and India and almost everyone takes advantage of the US, is something disgraceful – China in particular because they’re so good.” According to the First Post, some Indians are worried that the same policy Trump intends to introduce to China, might likewise include India, which could directly hit US interest with another trade war. The worrisome part is that Trumps myopic plan hides other social cultural problems that affect individual Americans, as I reported with the problems of integrating socialism in America.

Russian roulette policy?

The most worrisome side of Trump, is that he openly states on his state rallies that he doesn’t want to broadcast his intentions to remain unpredictable. But should his foreign policy remain undisclosed? Bellow a few examples of what Americans could expect from Trump if he won the presidency. Trump said in Fox News during President Xi Jinping’s most recent visit to the US, that it was a disgrace how kindly Obama treated his Chinese counterpart. Trump also suggested that if he was president, in the next Chinese premier visit to the US, he would skip the filet mignon and buy him a two dollar cheeseburger. Mexico also ranks high on Trumps list of dubious foreign relations. Trump stressed the idea that Mexico pay for his new protective wall to secure the US border against illegal immigrants and drug dealers. Mexican president Pena Nieto adamant to respond to Trumps silly idea compared him to Benito Mussolini, “That’s how Mussolini came to power and that’s how Hitler came to power,” adding “they took advantage of public discontent and eventually started a world war.” Nieto believes common sense will prevail in Washington DC, by the end of November when the next American president is elected. Albeit Obama’s relation with Russia pend suspended and in state of animosity thanks to the recent events involving Syria, Ukraine, Crimea and most recently Turkey’s Russian aircraft incident; Russian Premier Vladimir Putin has endorsed Trump for president saying that, “Donald Trump is a really brilliant and talented person, without any doubts. He says he wants to move on to a new, more substantial relationship, a deeper relationship with Russia, who cannot welcome that?” he said. “Of course we welcome that.” To finalize, Trump is more concerned with Pakistan than North Korea, and Iran.  Trump’s remarks of Pakistan could set India in a dangerous power vacuum on South East Asia. Trump said on Fox News, that Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world and in order to remain in check, “India should get involved in case war broke out.” In all, it seems as if foreign leaders except Putin (known for his diplomatic ends) view Trump like a problem maker, rather than a problem solver.

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