Trump presidency dangers are increasingly apparent
He swept Super Tuesday by a landslide. His rallies echo with blunt fearmongering and fiery screaming. Media coverage swarmed his seemingly effortless consecutive victories. All this publicity and chatter and fire and momentum — and to think, he started out with only a small loan of a million dollars.
But there are several things that college-age voters need to know about the Trump Situation. Not all of them are laughable. Donald Trump is creating a schism within the GOP that, as his contenders fall further behind him in the Republican primary, is growing rapidly into an irreparable chasm. Ongoing allegations against his past business endeavors, most recently Trump University, underscore his selfish nature and lack of credibility. His lack of political experience — or legal training, at the very least — is only one of the many contributing factors to his ineptitude as a presidential candidate. Following his victories on Super Tuesday earlier this week, Trump is on a course for victory in the Republican primary — and if he wins, he will not only do lasting damage to the GOP and its traditional voter base, but also change the party balance for cycles to come. Put simply: Do not dismiss or underestimate the importance of derailing the Trump Situation.
As Americans everywhere begin to grapple with the prospect of a Trump administration, the businessman’s most recent scandal provides an example of what we might expect from his presidency. Since 2010, Trump has been embroiled in class-action lawsuits surrounding his real-estate “school,” Trump University, a for-profit training center for aspiring commercial real estate agents. The school made a variety of false commitments to its students and pressured them to enlist in exorbitantly expensive “elite” programs which would unlock these fabled doors to quick success. It continuously promised outlandish results for further payment, bullied students into expensive contracts and even went so far as to encourage students to make calls to their credit card companies in the hallways to increase their card limits. The school failed to deliver students their promised lessons, instead funneling them into “infomercial” sessions designed to advertise lecturers. Tuition costs came out at upwards of $36,000. Students received nothing but mountains of debt. Trump has since denied any wrongdoing.
Aside from obvious disgust at the idea of a president who scams college students for money, the Trump University suits also provide an apt metaphor for what a Trump presidency might look like: mountains of empty promises, a lack of understanding of the task at hand, a lack of results and in the end, mountains of debt. And Trump denies responsibility.
Even the GOP itself, though splitting, has been able to reach this conclusion. Due to greater pressure for radically conservative social policy, economic conservatives and moderates have been slowly disappearing from the Republican voter base. Party leadership cannot tie the wealthy elite, big business, the Tea Party’s anti-establishment anarchists and the old neo-conservative Bible Belt religious block back together into a party. Trump has done nothing but take this divide and turn it into an ocean. The fear is that traditional conservatives will abandon Trump and break with the radical strands of the party altogether. This would leave the new ranks of previously dormant racist-radical voters — currently boosting Trump’s turnout — to become the new support base. Once in office, big business will resent a president they cannot control. The religious bloc and social conservatives won’t identify with his mostly secular and selfishly motivated policy. Old elites will be even less comfortable with his representation of the Grand Old Party.
Here, we reach the crux of the Trump Situation: As the presidential race continues, the GOP leadership has been scrambling at luncheons and meetings to take this fractured party and put it behind someone else, like Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, to have a viable candidate to get behind for the general election. Super Tuesday suggests they may not be able to do it.
So here’s where we find ourselves with the Trump Situation: He’s clearly no candidate for the country’s highest office. His own party has all but disowned him — and is scrambling for an alternative. But among the conservative wave, he’s winning the states that count. So, as the Trump Situation unfolds, remember: Do not dismiss Trump as some funny just-for-show celebrity politician that will be hilarious until we roll around to 2017 and need a real president. Trump cannot be allowed to represent any party — not even one as fractured and reactionary as the modern-day GOP. It’s time college-age voters became wary of the Trump Situation — and started acting to make his bid a cautionary tale rather than a long-lasting American regret. So turn out to the California primary in June — and not for Trump.
Lily Vaughan is a freshman majoring in history and political science. Her column, “Playing Politics,” runs Fridays.
Contrary to the author’s uninformed and biased opinion, Donald Trump is a great American businessman whom thousands of Americans rightfully support for POTUS. During the course of his lifetime, Trump has built over 500 major buildings and companies and taken entrepreneurial risks to create a commercial real estate and development empire that presently employs over 22,000 men and women worldwide. Out of the thousands of businesses and transactions in which he has participated, a scant four – mainly in Atlantic City – have gone through Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code, which is a reorganization of the businesses, not liquidation of assets. Thousands of successful businessmen have used the Bankruptcy Code to rebuild businesses, including Warren Buffet and Mitt Romney. Given Trump’s proven track record for creating jobs, the author’s suggestion that Trump is a failed businessman is laughable and extraordinarily naïve, even considering the handful of relatively minor companies that have failed.
Her simplistic rush to judgment regarding Trump University is equally pathetic, especially since this is a civil case where the only claims she makes are based upon unproven allegations taken from the complaint and snippets of witnesses whose credibility is questionable. Even assuming Trump mislead the plaintiff class, a high bar in light of the credible facts that have surfaced, his seminars were far less egregious than the harm inflicted upon tens of thousands of students who have borrowed heavily to attend for-profit Phoenix University or Corinthian College, which defrauded thousands and for whom Marco Rubio lobbied heavily after receiving over $27,000 in campaign contributions; now that is an opposition research scandal just surfacing.
As college students, use your critical thinking skills to deconstruct the main stream media and pundits who claim to understand the anger of millions of Democrats and Republicans who are supporting Trump, including this well-educated but “low information” supporter. Ignore the noise around you and look at his business record throughout the years, not disparate parts or even his seemingly bombastic statements that for the most part are grossly taken out of context. Then make an informed decision based upon your own research, not the rants of those who are doing everything humanly possible to prevent their power from being swept away by an electorate whose purported leaders have betrayed them.
Dude relax, did you read how stupid her other articles have been? She’s a freshmen, cut her some slack. There is a reason people become more conservative as they get older.
As a former DT staffer, I think anyone at USC should do their due diligence before putting pen to paper, period.