Time to Face the Truth about Trump

It was fun for a while but the joke's over.

Obviously, we cannot forbid people to run for president. There are constitutional restrictions as to who can run, while parties have their own guidelines regarding how a candidate is to win their nomination. There are no established rules that if broken automatically force a candidate to forfeit his or her shot at the presidency. It would not be democratic. However, more and more I find myself wishing that such a rule existed, for the good of the country and, indeed, the world.

I understand that there are people with different political views. There are different philosophies of government, just as there are different outlooks on life. Everyone is indeed entitled to their own opinion and their right to vote for candidates who represent the type of country that they wish to live in. However, one thing all Americans should able to agree on, is that voting for a blatant liar or a delusional person is not a good idea.

Unfortunately, the Republican field is being corrupted by the disease that presidential candidate Donald Trump spreads. Gaining momentum early on in the campaign due to his outrageous and nearly comical statements, Trump has not stopped his rise to the forefront of the GOP nomination. He stands a whopping 16 points ahead of anybody else in the latest New Hampshire polls at the time that this was written. For some reason, a campaign that started as a national joke has become a national nightmare.

In order to get to where he is now, Trump has likened fellow presidential candidate Ben Carson to a “child molester,” called the voters of a state in which he is running for the nomination “stupid” due to their supposed chemically-addled brains, and labelled all Mexicans as “rapists,” all while flaunting his alleged abilities of predicting terrorism and having the greatest memory. He insults, lies, and belittles his way to the top. He is a bad stand up comedian with a national platform and a realistic chance at the nomination. How he has gotten this far still baffles most people and yet, the worst has not yet passed.

Donald Trump seems to step up his rhetoric the longer he is on top. He has stated that he would approve waterboarding and other types of torture “in a heartbeat.” He has doubled down and tripled down on his claim that thousands of people cheered in New Jersey during the 9/11 attacks. And finally, in an attempt to catch up to him, his rivals are starting to sound like Trump as well.

Ted Cruz recently came up with his own Trumpish claim that the majority of violent criminals are democrat. He has been contradicted by fact checkers and even by the authors of the study that he cited. And yet, Cruz has doubled down on this claim, in the most Trump-like fashion, while riding a wave of polls that has taken him above Ben Carson to third place behind Trump and only a point away from second. He blames the media that questions his claims, proposing that it's liberal media that wishes to discredit him simply because they don't like the false “facts” he presents.

Donald Trump is a cancer. He is endangering the integrity of the GOP race and the presidential race. He threatens the democratic process by giving the public misinformation while in turn feeding on their fears and misconceptions. Worse, he is doing so well with these tactics that Trump is slowly turning the rest of the Republican presidential candidates into versions of himself.

We need to start hearing intelligent debates, ideas on issues that will shape this country now and in years to come. We need to drop the “great wall” rhetoric and ignore the trash that comes out of the mouths of people that make a joke out of the great privilege of voting that all Americans share. We need to start getting serious about who it is that we want to lead and represent the nearly 320 million people living in this country. Trump, or anybody like him, cannot possibly be made the most powerful man in the free world.