The Man Trump

Donald Trump was a man of many things, a man of many negative things. In previous chapters, you have gotten a small glimpse of Trump. In the 21st century, Republicans often complained that we never see the entire image, so that is the goal of this article to give you the entire image. This article will feature a lot, here is a list of what we will cover:

  • Foreign Policy
  • Healthcare
  • Coal
  • Sanctuary Cities
  • Vietnam War
  • Trump as a businessman
  • Trump in lawsuits
  • Trump University
  • Golfing
  • Naming
  • Trump Foundation
  • Civility
  • Trump Foundation
  • Tax Returns
  • Trump on Obama

One of the most worrying prospects of Donald Trump as president was foreign policy. The thing that makes foreign policy different was that Trump could do whatever he wanted. Here we will cover NATO, Trade, and briefly Trump’s plan to fight ISIS (a terrorist group).

Trump’s views on NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) are shocking. His view son NATO shocked many. NATO is comprised of the U.S., Canada and many European nations. The goal of NATO was to deter a Soviet Attack on Europe. Their message was, if you attack one of us, all of us will attack you. Donald Trump often complains about other nations not funding NATO, which is absurd. No country funds NATO, what Trump is talking about was a goal for nations to commit a minimum of 2% of their Gross Domestic Product. The problem with this is that the goal’s “deadline” was 2024, and at the time, it was 2016.

The problem with Donald Trump’s view on trade is that he knows nothing about trade. Trump believes that there are winners and losers in trade. This isn’t true. Trump blames job losses on NAFTA, which is not true. The problem is that the U.S. is not an attractive place to manufacture goods. Many farmers supported Trump, and his actions would eventually harm them.

The Islamic State is a small part of a big conflict. We won’t dive into this conflict as it is very complicated, but ISIS would be a byproduct of the conflict that would become the main concentration of the conflict. Part of Donald Trump’s plan was to kill the families of terrorists (which is a war crime). Trump also supported torture technique like waterboarding. Trump would often keep his plan secret, but when he released his plan in the campaign, it demonstrated his incompetence in this area. Here is the plan:

“I am also going to convene my top generals and give them a simple instruction: They will have 30 days to submit to the Oval Office a plan for defeating ISIS.” Basically, his plan was to get a plan.

Like all Republicans at the time, he said that he wanted to repeal and replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (on day one), an Obama era policy. The part where he differed with them was that he supported health care for all, and did not support cutting funding to Social Security and Medicaid (the government-run health insurance).

Donald Trump’s view on coal was that Obama led to the decline of coal and the job losses. The truth is that the decline of coal was always there and that other factors like Natural Gas being cheaper led to the decline of coal. Trump also promised to bring back coal mining jobs, the problem with this is that it won’t be happening. Even the head of a coal mining company said that it won’t be happening, but what will happen will be the end of job losses. The problem with this was that the future is renewable energy. We see that every day today. Donald Trump preferred to invest in coal, instead of renewable energy that was the future. This is why China is today is a leader in renewable energy. They saw the opportunity and immediately took it.

Sanctuary Cities is a complicated topic, the definition of Sanctuary City varies depending on the city, generally what it means is that when you have an interaction with the police and they find out that you are an illegal immigrant, they will not report you to ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement).

The reasoning behind this act is one that you might’ve not thought of. The problem now with this is that if you report illegal immigrants to ICE, some communities will no longer interact with police. This means that the police loses the trust of a large community. This makes them a target for crime, which is not a good thing. The police need their cooperation so that they can be witnesses to crimes and many other people. This is the reason why police departments and cities chose to be Sanctuary Cities.

During the Vietnam War, conscription was implemented to recruit troops. Donald Trump instead received five deferments. Four for education and the one that was most talked about was for bone spurs. The reason why he was criticised for this was that he still played basketball and baseball. Donald Trump also mocked Sen. John McCain of Arizona for being a Prisoner of War in the Vietnam War.

Donald Trump is most known for being a businessman, and his record of being a businessman is not the best. This is worrying as many people voted for him to run the country like his businesses. As a businessman, Trump had made a lot of money, but he has also lost a lot of money. Trump has filed for bankruptcy six times, these are not of the Trump Corporation, but of their properties. But note, the way how Trump operates is not really by building buildings. Trump licenses out his name so that people can name their buildings Trump. According to Ivanka Trump (Trump’s daughter), said that his father pointed at a homeless person and said that the homeless person has $8 billion more than him.

At the time, Donald Trump claimed himself to be worth $10 billion. Trump has also once said that his net worth changes depending on his mood. The way how Trump gets to this number is by claiming that his brand is worth $3 billion. Generally, it is agreed that Trump is worth $2.5 billion with one journalist suggesting, that he is worth $150 million to $250 million.

Due to the activities of Donald Trump licensing his name out, companies that are actually building these building heavily advertise the Trump name. The problem with this is that many of these projects failed. This led to many unhappy investors. This led to Donald Trump being sued. And in these cases, he often settled the suit. This is hypocritical as Donald Trump has claimed many times that he never settles lawsuits. At the time, USA TODAY found that Donald Trump and his businesses have been involved in a minimum 3,500 lawsuits in the U.S.

Trump University was one of his most talked about failed products. This business was brought up right before the election. One of the controversies was when Donald Trump criticized his judge in the lawsuit for having a Mexican heritage, saying that it was not fair for him to have a judge of Mexican heritage due to his proposal of building a wall. Trump also claimed that students would be successful if they attended. Donald Trump also claimed to have hand-picked instructors. In a deposition, Trump said that he did not pick the instructors. Other controversies lie in how they operated, here is a list of them:

  1. Say that the pricing of courses ranges from $29 to $35,000.
  2. Remind clients that Trump is the best if they complain about the price.
  3. Use “congratulations instead of “thank you” to have the result of the customer thanking them.
  4. How to market courses to poor and struggling parents what may not have enough money to afford food.
  5. There was even a part which instructed employees what to do if the attorney general arrived.

There were claims that Trump’s team used to prove that people were satisfied. The truth was that those were those reviews happened before they realized that Trump University was a scam. What made matters worse was that some of these instructors had no experience. The biggest problem with Trump University was that it wasn’t even a UNIVERSITY, it was a series of seminars. Donald Trump would later settle the lawsuit for $25 million.

The Trump Foundation was really controversial. It was sued in 2018 for using the foundation as his bank account. The problem with this is that charitable foundations are allowed to be tax-exempt. In one case, Trump allegedly used the money for settling legal matters. The money donated to the charity was used to benefit Trump himself.

During his campaign, Donald Trump complained about Obama golfing all the time. These comments will prove to be hypocritical. Donald Trump has also said that Obama was a Muslim, and supported a conspiracy theory that stated that Obama was born in Kenya. There are three problems with this statement:

  1. Obama provided his birth certificate which proved himself to be born in America.
  2. Even if Obama was born in Mexico, he could still be President as to be President you have to be a natural citizen. To be one, you have to be either born in the U.S. or have parents that were born in the U.S., which Obama did have.
  3. Trump later criticized people for presenting him negatively saying that this is not good for his 11 years old son, when in fact, he called Obama, a Muslim and saying that he was born in Kenya when his daughter was 8 years old.

The last name Trump is a very powerful name, it just sounds successful, rich and wealthy. But, ancestor of Trump’s previous name was apparently changed from “Dromb, Drumb, Trum, Tromp, Trumpf, Trumpff or the more accepted one, Drumpf” to Trump. There is a dispute on when the name was changed as this could change the reason why the change happened. The reason why he was mostly criticized for this name change is that he criticized others for changing their names.

We can all agree that Donald Trump was not an ordinary presidential candidate. At his rallies, Trump would encourage violence against protesters and say that he would cover the legal fees. He also mocked a journalist for being paralyzed, and once even encouraged the Russians to hack the DNC. Trump differed with other candidates by not releasing his tax returns, he also said that if he shot someone on 5th Avenue, people would still vote for him. Trump not releasing his tax returns meant that people did not know anything about his financial situation.

After reading this, reflect on how much he seems unqualified, like a liar and a hypocrite. And that’s true, at the time, 76% of his campaign statements were some degree labelled as false.