Political analysts of all stripes have concluded that President Trump has a base of supporters who are credulous, immovable, and unpersuadable. Allow us to briefly test that hypothesis, but to ignore the skins-shirts labels—Left-Right, Democrat-Republican—that often though not always determine how a person votes.
Instead, we’d like to ask sincere Trump voters whether they’d have a neighbor over for a family dinner who did any or all of the following?
- He has admitted on tape to routinely abusing women as several dozen have publicly accused him of sexual assaults. And he paid substantial hush money to buy the silence of at least two mistresses.
- He has cheated his workers, vendors, customers, and wives, and even cheated on his college entrance exam. Indeed, his only sister and niece have denounced his “dishonesty” and “phony” character. He says he used bankruptcy for his companies as a strategy—one that allows him to run away with responsibility.
- He has paid large civil fines after unlawful conduct, is prohibited from sitting on a charitable board in New York State, and is currently the subject of a grand jury investigation for financial fraud.
- He has been caught in 20,000+ falsehoods or lies in the past four years alone—telling an average of 22 a day—including several that led to thousands of deaths.
- He favors allowing toxic polluters to contaminate your neighborhood’s air and your family’s food because he believes “in the free market.”
- He brags that he is very religious, but doesn’t go to church or show any awareness of the Bible while violating most of the Ten Commandments.
- He frequently makes cruel, dehumanizing remarks about people of color, legal immigrants, and the disabled in your community and never retracts them.
- He rejects public health warnings designed to protect your neighborhood during an ongoing lethal epidemic, substituting his amateur hunches and reckless behavior for those of epidemiologists.
- He often ignores the by-laws of the neighborhood association, saying “so sue me” when challenged. The rules don’t apply to him.
- And he has never apologized for anything above, actually telling a group of 6th-graders, “apologies are for losers.”
Were all this true of a Democrat, say Barack Obama, you wouldn’t hesitate refusing any relationship with him. But if you don’t want such a person as your neighbor, why would you want him as your president where he’d have exponentially more power to harm you and your family?
One answer really can’t be that you heard about someone in another town—or years ago—who is/was supposedly even worse. On the other hand, a respectable response would be to reconsider your vote for president since, as you tell your children and grandchildren, “Honesty is the best policy.” Or as President Kennedy once put it, “sometimes party loyalty demands too much.”
Mark Green and Ralph Nader are consumer advocates and authors of many public policy books, including their just published, Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All. Unlike other books on Trump, this is a book to be used, not just read, for the coming months.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His latest books include: To the Ramparts: How Bush and Obama Paved the Way for the Trump Presidency, and Why It Isn’t Too Late to Reverse Course, How the Rats Re-Formed the Congress, Breaking Through Power: It’s easier than we think, and Animal Envy: A Fable.
