Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump: Two Tragedies for President

An opinion piece by Tyese Williams. Photo from abc news.

OCT. 26, 2016: The start of the presidential race left me with the usual options—the conservative, bluntly racist, extreme and overzealous Republican candidates, and the moderate to progressive, pro-everyone, Democrats. Since the Green Party’s Jill Stein and the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson can’t even get their names into the media to gain the proper influence needed to get a large amount of votes, this becomes the most polarized and risky U.S presidential election in my lifetime. As an independent and former Democrat, I’m not bound to any political party. Although I think liberally, I’m always willing to hear the other side of an opinion. However, after seeing the same pro-white closed mindedness that plagues the once honorable Republican party, I once again turn to Democrats—mainly for the fact that I’m quite liberal and they (Democrats) didn’t waste time talking about walls and hand sizes.

It wasn’t until most of the Republican candidates started dropping like flies to Donald Trump’s landslide victories in the Republican primaries, and the realization that the DNC had united with Hillary way before the race began, that I realized we’re about to face four years or even eight years of a corrupt presidency with either the resilient Hillary Clinton (aka the two-faced, pants-suited, opportunistic politician) who says anything to get a powerful position and Donald Trump, the most fascist U.S presidential candidate in history. Both of these candidates are horrible and we can point fingers at each other or blame the party or people for allowing this. But at the end of the day, we can only hope that Trump doesn’t get into the White House and that Hillary just get’s impeached and removed from office. Both choices are terrible for the country in many ways.

Starting with Trump...we all know why this guy should never have any political office. First off, he’s ruining foreign relations and he’s not even in office. Trump’s rhetoric about Mexicans has been terrible. He’s called them rapists who bring drugs and says that he’ll build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. He even threatened to end trade agreements like NAFTA after his awkward and shocking visit to Mexico. Mexican officials have recently responded by threatening to end the treaty that gave the California, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas to the U.S after the Mexican-American war. Now, of course, Mexico could never take those states back, but this is an example of how far countries will go to oppose Trump. Scotland even tried to have Trump banned from entering the country over his rhetoric. When Trump visited his golf course in Scotland, hecklers interrupted him by passing out golf balls with swastikas on them. Trump has made inaccurate and offensive statements about Muslims as well as using fear mongering to get people to believe that Syrian refugees shouldn’t be let in the U.S because they may be terrorists. To which, there’s no evidence to support any of these claims.

Trump’s immigration policies could actually bring the economy down due to the sheer scope of trying to deport millions of undocumented citizens    who if they were given citizenship, could help the economy by allowing them to pay taxes. This would also help us gain back 12 billion in taxpayer money from this terrible “border protection” the government has been paying for. Trump’s ego has also made him the target of two assassination attempts thus far and adds to the number of enemies. Trump may have even gained the troubling support of Vladimir Putin, Russia’s current and illegally elected president. For those of you who don’t know why Vladimir Putin’s support for Trump is so upsetting—he’s in his fourth presidential term—which is illegal under Russian law; he invaded Ukraine last year taking Crimea and supporting Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine; and he leads a state sponsored witch hunt against 

the LGBT community in Russia. Sounds like Trump’s guy if he gets elected.

Trump’s terrible business record is also a red flag to America’s economy. He’s filed bankruptcy three times due to horrible investments in things like his failed airline, steaks, a board game based off of him, as well as a bad purchase on yachts. Trump even caused two of his casinos, Trump Plaza and The Palace to lose money by building a third casino, the Taj Mahal which made the other two go near bankrupt. Now the Taj Mahal closed its doors officially on Monday, October 10th, 2016. 

Donald Trump’s obvious head first nature and lack of proper policy or basic education regarding what common citizens go through is a major reason why he should not hold the presidency. His reference to black people as “the blacks” and a black Trump supporter as “his black guy” is just a taste of his mind set. The cowardice of the other Republican candidates and other party members shows that they have only themselves to blame for the inevitable downfall of their party.

However, I assure you that Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate, is no saint. She’s bought by Wall Street and corrupted by her wealthy donors who pump money into her campaign. But, that’s not even the worst thing about her. The worst thing is that she used the DNC to basically buy her nomination for the Democratic primary. The email hack of the DNC in June by Russian Government hackers shows that the DNC leaders were behind Clinton before the race began. They talked in the ears of other politicians to get her support before Bernie Sanders or Martin O’Malley even began. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who thankfully was removed as a DNC chair was revealed to have worked with Clinton in advance to assure that the race was in her favor. And Mrs. Clinton’s email scandal is, of course, what was used to try to end her career—mainly for the favor of the Republicans. I’m not gonna go into the content of the email scandal. It’s old and played out. But the fact that a person with such a high position acted so carelessly is just upsetting. Hillary Clinton is also known to switch on her stances. Currently she is claiming to support the Black Lives Matter movement and is against both police brutality and prison privatization. But during her husband’s presidency, Clinton supported a crime bill that caused incarceration to go up from 5.5 million in 1996 to 6.8 million as of 2014, primarily in African American communities in the U.S. (Vanessa Williams, Washington Post, 2016). Clinton also referred to the targeted subjects as “super predators who must be brought to heel”. She also claims to be pro LGBT, but while in Congress, she openly opposed same sex marriage saying that she feels “marriage should be between a man and a woman”.  Hillary Clinton claims to be anti-war as well, but she pushed for the U.S to enter into war in Iraq during Bush’s presidency.

Clinton’s track record of lies along with Trump’s ego and madness has left the American people both weary and fed up. This election has given the American people the contemptuous task of choosing the lesser of two evils. On one hand, you have a candidate who’ll bring the economy down with racist policies and who will probably rely on warmongering for solutions. While, on the other hand,  Hillary Clinton is a two-faced corrupt politician with more interest in titles than what the American people want. America needs to get it’s priorities straight before we fall into ruin because of the leadership of both parties. We all need to get involved in the political process to prevent this. If more young people got involved, this wouldn’t even be a topic of discussion. 

Tyese Williams is a senior at Friendship Collegiate Academy.