Five Explanations On Why So Many Friends & Family Members Hate Trump. Five Suggestions On How To Plant Seeds of Doubt In Their Minds.

Most Trump-haters hate Trump voters and supporters even more than they hate Trump.  Last Saturday, CNN’s Don Lemon, Bush/GOP campaign consultant Rick Wilson, and NY Times Political Reporter could not contain their laughter as they mocked Trump supporters on CNN for being dumb, illiterate “boomer rubes”.  “Progressive” Democrats posted dozens of similar comments to Twitter reports by Philly Inquirer’s Amy S Rosenberg on the large crowd that supported President Trump and new GOP Congressman Van Drew in Wildwood, NJ.

We all have close friends and family members who hate Trump.   Most of them are smart, educated, and sincere. However, they have been seduced by a clever and effective propaganda campaign that has been shaping their perceptions and opinions for most of their lives.  Do not expect to change them in a few short conversations.  The best you can do is plant seeds of doubt to make them open to different opinions in the future.  The key to reaching them is high tolerance and low expectations.  

Five explanations for why otherwise smart, informed, and sincere friends and family members have an irrational hatred towards President Trump:

#1.   Pop Culture taught Americans to hate men like President Trump for more than 60 years. Starting in the 1960’s, the villains (or buffoons) of popular songs, movies and TV shows increasingly became assertive, successful, married/heterosexual white Christian, American men. They were portrayed as selfish, dishonest bigots, hypocrites and/or ignorant fools whose power, money, or “toxic masculinity”  hurt minorities, women, gays, immigrants, people from other cultures, or the environment. The heroes of our most popular songs, movies, and TV shows increasingly became their “victims”:  blacks, Hispanics, immigrants, women, gays or other “victims” who defeated and humiliated them. Long before Donald Trump went into politics, the popular culture was shaped to hate him.

#2.  For more than 60 years, our public schools and colleges taught students that America was never great.  They instead taught students to falsely blame America for most of the poverty, violence, and injustice in the world!  Public education began with Turner TV cartoons in kindergarten showing business owners as villains who destroy forests and pollute the planet. They failed to mention that nations with private business and free-enterprise (the system Communists call “capitalism”) have much cleaner air and water than nations where the government controls the economy.  High schools and colleges falsely taught that “robber barons” in an age of “unfettered capitalism” in America paid starvation wages, caused the Great Depression, and poisoned the planet. (They fail to explain how the genius, inventions, and work ethic of Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, John D Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Henry Ford created the enormous wealth that gave most ordinary Americans more comfort, safety, justice, and opportunity than any other people in history.   Teachers and professors falsely blamed Christians for starting the Crusades a thousand years ago, but failed to mention how our Bible-based Christianity required education for girls and boys.  It was this, together with along with inventions like mass produced clothing, well-stocked supermarkets, washing machines, microwaves, and other household appliances that brought equality to American women long before women elsewhere in the world.  High school and college textbooks falsely blamed all Americans, an not Democrats for slavery, the KKK and segregation.  They fail to credit Republican Presidents like Lincoln and Grant and black Republican leaders like Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington for ending them.  They also fail to mention how Hollywood’s first fake history movie, “Birth of a Nation” glorified and revived racism and the KKK to help Democrats win elections in 1916. By teaching students to hate America when America was great, our schools and colleges taught young Americans to hate President Trump for promising to Make America Great Again.

#3.  Trump-hating college graduates are mistaken when they think they are smarter and better educated than conservatives and Trump supporters. That is because for years, high school counselors and the pop culture repeatedly promoted the benefits of college to justify borrowing money with mortgage sized student loans to pay exorbitant tuitions. However, college today teaches students few useful skills for improving their own lives, but to instead blame others for whatever is wrong in their lives. That is because nearly all public schools and colleges in America are run by administrators who systematically exclude all professors and books that do not support that “progressive” Democrat thinking. Ordinary citizens who look up and compare original sources and documents online and do their own critical thinking are far better educated that those who rely on secondary sources of college textbooks and lectures alone.   If college administrators and professors really believed their students were smarter and better educated than conservatives and Trump supporters, they would welcome open forums and debates to prove their superiority. However, like those who run Stockton University near Atlantic City, they do everything possible to avoid them.  If students had to be smart to succeed in top colleges, why would so many students use bribes, fake athletics, and “diversity” to get admitted?

#4.  Trump-haters are less informed because they get their news from the same biased sources.  They pride themselves for getting news from a “variety” of “reliable” sources without realizing that the “journalists” for all of them went to the same “progressive” journalism schools, where they were taught to think and report the same way and NOT be “reliable”.  Since the 1960’s journalism students were taught NOT to impartially report the news but to instead promote “progressive” candidates and causes.  The executives of all “mainstream” news companies are products of those schools and only hire and promote “journalists” who think and report the same way.  The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Associated Press, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, NPR and Fox News Radio may be owned by different companies.   Yet almost every day, they report the same stories in the same way, often using the same “talking points”!  The stories they don’t report are as important as the ones they do.  Few of these “mainstream” news sources ever report stories that make conservative Republicans look good, or make “progressive” Democrats look bad.   Few Trump-haters know that Democrat President Obama illegally spied on reporters, used the IRS to shut down conservative groups, sold automatic weapons to drug cartels, systematically lied to the public and Congress about Iran and Obamacare,  and was caught on a “hot mic” promising to “be flexible” with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin after his re-election.  Few Trump-haters know the details of how Joe Biden’s son, and relatives of other top Democrats got millions of dollars of kick-backs from countries that benefitted from aid and trade deals given out by top Obama officials.  That is because these stories were never (or rarely) reported by those “mainstream” news outlets.  We conservatives are usually much better informed. We also read and watch all the “mainstream” news sources because we cannot avoid them.   However, we supplement that information with different facts and opinions from Fox News, Talk Radio/Rush Limbaugh or conservative online news from Breitbart to Facebook and Twitter contributors. Then we use critical thinking to compare, contrast, and analyze the different viewpoints.   Trump-haters rarely go outside their “mainstream” news bubble.

#5.  Trump-haters are mistaken when they think they are more compassionate because they rarely think of the cruel, real-life consequences of their politics. Trump-haters condemn enforcing our generous, bi-partisan immigration laws, without thinking of the crime, high taxes, high health-care costs and low wages we have when these laws are not enforced.  Trump-haters want all of America to be a “gun free zone” without realizing that most gun deaths take place in “gun free zones” or cities and states which limit the right to own and carry guns the most. Trump-haters demand a $15 per hour minimum wage without thinking to pay those wages, government employers must raise taxes, and business employers must race prices, lay off employees, or go out of business.

Five arguments that may plant seeds of doubt in their minds:  (The best we can do for now!)

#1.  The U.S. Constitution was designed to have conflict (known as checks and balances) between an “Article II” President (elected by the whole nation for 4 years), and an “Article I” Congress composed of a Senate (elected by each state for 6 years), and House of Representatives (elected by smaller districts for 2 years). Most Americans agree that America was run well in the 1980’s when Republican President Reagan had a Democrat majority Congress, and in the 1990’s when Democratic President Clinton had a Republican majority in Congress. That system would be destroyed if a Congress controlled by one party could remove any President of the other party any time before the end of a 4 year term whenever that President disagreed with Congress.  (Something that could easily be called “abuse of power” or “obstruction of Congress”).   The Framers of our Constitution created an “Article III” Supreme Court and Federal Courts to resolve disputes between the President and Congress.

Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution states:   “The President, Vice-President, and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on impeachment for, and conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”  When our Constitution was adopted, a “felony” was an “atrocious” high crime, usually resulting in death and/or total forfeiture of all property, while a “misdemeanor” was less serious, and resulted in fine or imprisonment.  In 1787, the Framers of our Constitution considered, but rejected a proposal to allow a President to be impeached and removed without proof he committed a crime.  They did NOT want America to be like countries in Europe where the legislature could remove the chief executive any time they were unhappy with what he was doing. 

#2.  Conversations, letters, emails and other communications between a President and his lawyers and closest advisors are “privileged” and must be kept confidential.  This has been well-known and established by law for hundreds of years. There are very good reasons for this. We want our President to request and receive advice from trusted advisors before making decisions.  If a President thought any request for advice would embarrass him if it were made public, he might act alone without asking for advice.   An advisor might be afraid to give his or her honest opinion, if he or she thought it would be unpopular and embarrassing if released to the public.   As a result, it has long been established law that those communications are confidential. Any person who releases confidential information without the consent of all parties could be punished.   Today, half of America believes it is good and normal for trusted lawyers and advisors to break their promises and “leak” confidential information to opponents of the President they work for. Even worse, Democrats in Congress now claim they have the right to impeach and remove the President for NOT releasing these confidential, privileged communications!

#3.  President Trump had every legal and moral right to ask for help from private citizens to investigate corruption in the Ukraine which involved U.S. citizens and tax dollars.

In 1829 political opponents accused Democrat President Andrew Jackson of “abuse of power” when he ignored “career professionals” and instead invited personal friends to advise him in the White House kitchen. These friends became known as President Jackson’s “Kitchen Cabinet”.

Article II, Section 1 of the US Constitution states, “The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America”. That means the President is America’s is our nation’s chief law enforcement officer. The Attorney General, the FBI Director, and all ambassadors report to the President, not the other way around. President Trump is not the first President to do his job by using trusted friends rather than “career professionals” appointed by political opponents. In 1829, President Andrew Jackson brought a handful of trusted friends and newspaper editors into the White House kitchen to help him run the government.  They soon became known as the President Jackson’s “Kitchen Cabinet”.  In 1913, Democratic President Woodrow Wilson bypassed “career professionals” and used “Colonel” Edwin House, a personal friend and Texas politician to conduct his foreign policy.  In 1933,  Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt did something similar with his personal lawyer Samuel Rosenman and others like Harry Hopkins known as his “Brain Trust”. Democratic President Obama did this on steroids when he appointed 45 “czars” to by-pass “career professionals” shortly after taking office.

#4.  President Trump had very good reasons not to trust the “career professionals” appointed by Democrats and Bush Republicans when he learned of corruption involving relatives of former Vice-President Biden and other top Democrats. For three years, many of those “career professionals” illegally spied on Trump, his family and advisors, they systematically leaked confidential and fabricated conversations and documents to Trump’s critics and opponents.  They also publicly and privately attacked Trump and sabotaged his policies.  During this same time, these “career professionals” did nothing to follow up on reports that Hunter Biden was getting cash payments plus $83,000 per month from the Ukraine and a billion dollars of loans from China shortly after his father, the former Democratic Vice President had given those countries billions of dollars in aid or trade deals. It is worth mentioning that Hunter Biden did not speak Chinese or Ukrainian and had no previous training or experience with any of the countries he dealt with or any of the business he did.

#5.   President Trump is more “unfiltered”, unscripted, and impulsive when he speaks. However, there is no evidence that he is less honest than other Presidents or politicians.  During his entire life, President Trump has said what was on his mind, without checking details first. President Trump also has a habit of generalizing or exaggerating to make a point.   Democratic Presidents Obama and Clinton usually carefully prepared their messages and had them checked by professionals before making public statements. Democrats who accuse  Clinton carefully scripted their messages.   President Trump kept many Obama, Bush and Clinton holdovers on his staff.  As a result, many of them leaked to the media, every careless word that President Trump said privately.  Democrats Obama and Clinton did the opposite.  Both completely cleaned house before taking office, and surrounded themselves only with people loyal to them.  They may have made just as many careless statements privately, but they were never leaked to the media.    Because of those differences in style, it is entirely possible that President Trump is far more open and truthful than his predecessors. President Trump never said anything close to Obama’s “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” to win support for Obamacare.  President Trump never engaged in a planned, systematic campaign of lies like Democratic President Obama did to win passage of the Iran nuclear deal.

#6.  Most Trump supporters understand that President Trump is far from perfect.  In many ways they look at Trump the way Jews in Poland looked at Oskar Schindler during the Holocaust.  They knew that Oskar Schindler had many flaws. Yet those Jews also knew that when nobody else was there to save them, Oskar Schindler, for all his flaws, put himself at great risk to step forward and do the right thing. That is how many Americans look at President Donald Trump.

These thoughts came up during our 9:30 am every Saturday breakfast discussions at the Shore Diner in Egg Harbor Township, NJ.  We know there are a lot more explanations and talking points.  If you have other suggestions, please share them with us! Thanks.