Tag Archives: Donald Trump

News

Do supporters of Donald Trump really support what Trump believes?

15 Comments
Donald Trump and his friends, the Clintons
Donald Trump and his friends, the Clintons

My friend Doug wrote a post addressed to all the evangelical Christians and Tea Party conservatives who support Trump, to ask them if they really support the actual policies and record of the man.

Doug writes:

Do you support Planned Parenthood, and do you approve of your tax dollars going to fund the abortion giant?

If your answer is, No, then you must ask yourself, Are you willing to overlook that shortcoming in Donald Trump? [1] [2] [3] [4]

I am not.

Do you identify with the Tea Party movement?

If your answer is, Yes, then you must ask yourself, Are you willing to overlook the fact that Donald Trump does not and has actively tried to defeat it? [5] [6] [7]

I am not.

Would you ever under any circumstance help the Democrats retake Congress from the Republicans?

If your answer is, No, then you must ask yourself, Are you willing to overlook that shortcoming in Donald Trump? [8]

I am not.

Do you like the idea of socialized, single-payer, government-run healthcare?

If your answer is, No, then you must ask yourself, Are you willing to overlook that shortcoming in Donald Trump? [9] [10]

I am not.

Do you support amnesty for those who are residing in our country illegally?

If your answer is, No, then you must ask yourself, Are you willing to overlook that shortcoming in Donald Trump? [11] [12]

I am not.

Do you like the ObamaCare mandate?

If your answer is, No, then you must ask yourself, Are you willing to overlook that shortcoming in Donald Trump? [13] [14]

I am not.

Do you want to see another liberal judge placed on the Supreme Court?

If your answer is, No, then you must ask yourself, Are you willing to overlook that shortcoming in Donald Trump? [15]

I am not.

Do you support Israel in the Israel-Palestinian conflict?

If your answer is, Yes, then you must ask yourself, Are you willing to overlook the fact that Donald Trump does not? [16] [17] [18] [19]

I am not.

Do you support gun control?

If your answer is, No, then you must ask yourself, Are you willing to overlook that shortcoming in Donald Trump? [20]

I am not.

Do you support the unconstitutional abuse of eminent domain?

If your answer is, No, then you must ask yourself, Are you willing to overlook that shortcoming in Donald Trump? [21] [22]

I am not.

Do you believe that Bush intentionally lied about Iraq?

If your answer is, No, then you must ask yourself, Are you willing to overlook that shortcoming in Donald Trump? [23]

I am not.

Do you approve of casinos, strip clubs, and extramarital affairs?

If your answer is, No, then you must ask yourself, Are you willing to overlook that shortcoming in Donald Trump? [24] [25]

I am not.

Would you ever under any circumstance donate money to Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid?

If your answer is, No, then you must ask yourself, Are you willing to overlook that shortcoming in Donald Trump? [26]

I am not.

Do you like the idea of more “forward motion on gay rights”?

If your answer is, No, then you must ask yourself, Are you willing to overlook that shortcoming in Donald Trump? [27] [28] [29]

I am not.

Do you support the legality of partial birth abortion?

If your answer is, No, then you must ask yourself, Are you willing to overlook that shortcoming in Donald Trump? [30] [31] [32]

I am not.

Do you consider yourself a conservative on the most important political matters?

If your answer is, Yes, then you must ask yourself, Are you willing to overlook that shortcoming in Donald Trump? [33]

I am not.

Do you think it’s OK to ban U.S. citizens from entering this country based on religion?

If your answer is, No, then you must ask yourself, Are you willing to overlook that shortcoming in Donald Trump? [34]

I am not.

Do you think that U.S. citizens should be required to register their religion with the government?

If your answer is, No, then you must ask yourself, Are you willing to overlook that shortcoming in Donald Trump? [35]

I am not.

Do you want a President who flip flops on important issues?

If your answer is, No, then you must ask yourself, Are you willing to overlook that shortcoming in Donald Trump? [36] [37] [38]

I am not.

But then, I am a Christian, an evangelical, and a consistent Constitutional conservative, and consequently, I do not support Donald Trump.

The question is, Do you? Do you really support the things that Donald Trump supports?

You can find the footnotes in the original post.

I’ve had conversations with Trump supporters about some of these issues, and the response I get is that Trump is leading in the polls. I actually sent one Trump supporter who told me this to Real Clear Politics, which catalogs all the polls that are done nationally and at the state level. The polls clear show that Trump does not win against Clinton nationally, and he does even worse against Bernie Sanders. The response of the Trump supporter? All the polls are biased. So, the polls that show Trump in the lead in the Republican primary are not biased, but the polls showing Trump losing to Clinton and Sanders are biased.

I’ve tried to speak to the Trump supporters about things like eminent domain, support for bank bailouts, single payer health care, touchback amnesty, Planned Parenthood support,support for Vladimir Putin, adultery and divorce, support for the gay rights agenda, four bankruptcies, etc. Their response has been do deny the evidence. Trump never did those things, all the news articles are lies, and all the videos of Trump saying those things are fake.

Anyway, I like listening to Ben Shapiro and Ben has a new 6-minute video where he makes the case against Trump:

Doug, Ben, and myself are all supporters of Ted Cruz. I would urge Trump voters to reconsider their vote. Please share this post, and share the Ben Shapiro video, as well.

News

Is Donald Trump a successful businessman? Let’s look at his record

10 Comments
Donald Trump and his friends, the Clintons
Donald Trump and his friends, the Clintons

This post is from Daily Wire, and it lists a number of Donald Trump’s business misadventures:

  • United States Football League 
  • Trump Steaks 
  • Trump Vodka 
  • Trump’s board games 
  • Trump Airlines 
  • Trump Mortgage 
  • GoTrump.com 
  • Trump Magazine 
  • Trump hotels and casinos (four bankruptcies)
  • Trump University

But most interesting of all is the Trump University case.

Here’s an article from National Review about that:

Many people believe that higher education is a de facto scam. Trump University, Donald Trump’s real-estate institution, was a de jure one.

First thing first, Trump University was never a university. When the “school” was established in 2005, the New York State Education Department warned that it was in violation of state law for operating without a NYSED license. Trump ignored the warnings.

[…]Trump University is currently the defendant in three lawsuits — two class-action lawsuits filed in California, and one filed in New York by then-attorney general Eric Schneiderman, who told CNN’s New Day in 2013: “We started looking at Trump University and discovered that it was a classic bait-and-switch scheme. It was a scam, starting with the fact that it was not a university.”

Trump U “students” say the same. In his affidavit, Richard Hewson reported that he and his wife “concluded that we had paid over $20,000 for nothing, based on our belief in Donald Trump and the promises made at the [organization’s] free seminar and three-day workshop.” But “the whole thing was a scam.”

In fact, $20,000 is only a mid-range loss. The lead plaintiff in one of the California suits, yoga instructor Tarla Makaeff, says she was “scammed” out of $60,000 over the course of her time in Trump U.

How could that have happened? The New York suit offers a suggestion:

The free seminars were the first step in a bait and switch to induce prospective students to enroll in increasingly expensive seminars starting with the three-day $1495 seminar and ultimately one of respondents’ advanced seminars such as the “Gold Elite” program costing $35,000.

At the “free” 90-minute introductory seminars to which Trump University advertisements and solicitations invited prospective students, Trump University instructors engaged in a methodical, systematic series of misrepresentations designed to convince students to sign up for the Trump University three-day seminar at a cost of $1495.

[…]But according to the New York complaint, none of the instructors was “handpicked” by Trump, many of them came from fields having nothing to do with real estate, and Trump “‘never’ reviewed any of Trump University’s curricula or programming materials.” The materials were “in large part developed by a third-party company that creates and develops materials for an array of motivational speakers and seminar and timeshare rental companies.”

Furthermore, Trump’s promises that the three-day seminar ($1,495) would include “access to ‘private’ or ‘hard money’ lenders and financing,” that it would include a “year-long ‘apprenticeship support’ program,” and that it would “​improve the credit scores”​ of students were empty.

How is it that the mainstream media never told us about this? I suspect they will – once Trump is declared the Republican nominee. For now, they prefer to keep it hidden.

Donald Trump inherited a lot of money from his father. Should we assume that he knows something about business just because he did? Or should we look at his record and see how good of a businessman he really is?

Commentary

Which candidate is best at working with Democrats to get things done?

5 Comments
The Jesus Seminar and their pre-suppositions
Republican voters need to go beyond the surface level in assessing candidates

I have a few friends who I know are supporting either Donald Trump or Marco Rubio in the election. I have asked them specifically what policies, accomplishments and past battles they like best about their candidate.

Donald Trump supporters say this:

  • he’s leading in the polls (vs Republicans)
  • he tells it like it is
  • he’s going to build a fence  and make Mexico pay for it
  • he’s a businessman

Marco Rubio supporters say this:

  • he’s leading in the polls (vs Democrats)
  • he’s handsome
  • I like the way he talks
  • his wife was a Miami Dolphins cheerleader, so she is prettier and funner than nerdy workaholic Harvard MBA Heidi Cruz

My candidate is Ted Cruz, and the Trump supporters tend to have no problem with him. But the Rubio supporters don’t like Cruz. So I made a list of their objections to Cruz.

The Rubio supporters say this:

  • (quoting Donald Trump) not one of his colleagues in the Senate has endorsed him
  • he won’t be able to convince other people to get things done
  • I don’t like the way he talks
  • he has a pickle nose
  • he said he wanted to make Marco Rubio’s amnesty bill “better” but  his amendment actually killed the amnesty bill – that means he’s a liar because his amendment didn’t make the bill better

Regarding the point about Ted Cruz not being able to get along with his colleagues in the Senate, that’s actually false. First, Cruz and Rubio came into the Senate at the same time, and Cruz has passed more legislation than Rubio. That might be because Rubio has the worst attendance record in the Senate.

When Rubio works together with people, he authors an amnesty bill, he supports the failed Libya invasion, he gives in-state tuition to illegal immigrants, he weakens border security, he authors a bill to remove the due process rights of men falsely accused of rape on campus, he skips votes to defund Planned Parenthood, he is liberal on the issue of gay marriage, his deputy campaign manager is a gay activist, and so on. In short, he works with liberals on liberal priorities – that’s why he is likable to them.

Ted Cruz gets into trouble with his colleagues, because he tries to stop the spending, stop amnesty, stop the military interventions in Syria, Libya and Egypt, etc. That’s why he is not likable to them.

What about the point that Cruz would not be persuasive to Democrats, and so would not be able to get anything done? Well, we already saw that Cruz has passed more legislation than Rubio, despite having a pickle nose. But he’s also shown the ability to pull Democrats towards his point of view.

Here’s an article from PJ Media to explain:

Now that Cruz regularly polls toward the top of an ever-shrinking field, his early tenure bears closer scrutiny. Cruz has gained fame as a social conservative and an unwavering opponent of Obamacare. In his first major leadership role, however, he developed economic policy as the director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Office of Policy Planning.

At the FTC, Cruz’s agenda could have been written by Milton Friedman.

Cruz promoted economic liberty and fought government efforts to rig the marketplace in favor of special interests. Most notably, Cruz launched an initiative to study the government’s role in conspiring with established businesses to suppress e-commerce. This initiative ultimately led the U.S. Supreme Court to open up an entire industry to small e-tailers. Based on his early support of disruptive online companies, Cruz has some grounds to call himself the “Uber of American politics.”

Moreover, and perhaps surprising to some, Cruz sought and secured a broad, bipartisan consensus for his agenda. Almost all of Cruz’s initiatives received unanimous support among both Republicans and Democrats.

Ted Cruz a consensus-builder? He was, at the FTC.

[…]Beyond the e-commerce initiative, Cruz also reoriented the FTC’s use of antitrust laws.

[…]Cruz also sent dozens of letters to states to fight new efforts to enshrine crony capitalism.

[…]Perhaps surprisingly, Cruz secured a high degree of consensus in pursuing his agenda.

As an independent agency, the FTC has five commissioners, and during Cruz’s tenure, two of them had served in President Clinton’s administration. All five commissioners voted to support almost all of Cruz’s proposals.

Cruz achieved this consensus by listening to policy experts and political opponents. He listened to the FTC’s economic experts and marshaled empirical economic analysis to support his policy objectives. He solicited input from prominent Democrats, including the late Senator Howard Metzenbaum, who spoke at the e-commerce conference. In addition, Cruz worked to develop personal relationships across the aisle. He regularly met with Democratic commissioners and incorporated their ideas into his policy proposals.

The article explains Cruz’s conservative agenda in detail; increasing competition, protecting consumers, and so on. But he wasn’t likable in the way that Marco Rubio was likable – by pushing a Democrat agenda. He was likable by convincing Democrats to push a conservative agenda. He did it by gathering evidence and making his case. And that’s what you expect from a lawyer who wins cases for conservatives at the Supreme  Court.