An Open Letter To Trump’s Supporters

I know you made up your mind a long time ago, and you’re probably not interested now in what I have to say. In fact, you probably never were. But like you, I believe in straight talk. So, let’s talk.

Here’s the thing: I know we screwed up. You, me, and the rest of America. We’ve voted for politicians that disappointed us over and over again. When things were going well, their hidden agendas and incompetence were mostly just annoying, but now they are doing real damage. The economy is stuck, terrorists are attacking us regularly, and we’re losing jobs to foreign competitors. Anyone who can’t see that is either blind or naive. It’s time for real change. I get what you’re saying: Donald Trump is the only true outsider in this race. He is the only one willing to take on the political establishment.

I see where you’re coming from and there is nothing I would like more than to elect a president who will take on the cronies in Washington, protect American jobs, and put an end to terrorism. But I also know that desperate people are easy to mislead. So we have to ask ourselves: Is Donald Trump the solution to our problems, or just another symptom of a broken system?

We all know that politicians lie, so it’s probably wise to discount a lot of what they say. I’ll go first. Trump has said plenty of objectionable things about women, Mexicans, Muslims, gold-star families, and just about anyone who’s criticized him. I’ll ignore that. Not because I don’t think it’s important, but because I suspect you’re thinking that those are minor issues compared with some of the bigger problems facing this country. So let’s talk about what Trump has done and what he’s promised to do as president.

Donald Trump has made himself fabulously rich. But let’s tell it like it is. He was born rich and had every privilege money and connections could buy. If he were a Democrat, you’d be outraged at how he used his father’s wealth and connections to dodge the Vietnam draft — partly for minor medical problems that some fancy New York doctor cooked up. Whether his dad loaned him $1 million or $100 million, there’s a reason he chose to make his fortune in the same business as his father. He had a lot of help.

As for his business record, he has clearly done well for himself. Do you wish that you could hitch your wagon to his star? Thousands of individual investors did just that when Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts went public in 1995. This was Trump’s baby. As Chairman and CEO, he had total control of the company. How did that go? The company lost money every single year, racking up total losses of $647 million by June 2005. If you had invested $100 in that company’s stock in June 1995, you would have limped away with about $10 a decade later.

Meanwhile, Trump got paid handsomely every year and also had the company take over a bundle of debt he was personally on the hook to repay. Virtually every success he’s had has come at the expense of someone else. Trump University is being sued for fraud, Trump International Hotel and Tower in Ontario is in receivership (pre-bankruptcy), and countless Trump products and services have been taken off the market, including Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, and Trump Mortgage.

And I know you like his tough-guy persona, but a lot of contractors don’t. They have complained that he stiffs them by paying less than he owes and then daring them to sue him. Sure, Trump says that he will now fight on your behalf, that he will put the interests of the average American worker above his own. I hope you are certain of that, because there may be no turning back. Today, it is the rights of Mexicans and Muslims that he’s willing to trample to get what he wants. But what happens if his policies don’t work out the way you hoped and you want to give someone else a try? Good luck finding a bigger bully to replace Trump once he controls all the powers of the US presidency.

I know the Clintons have had more than their share of problems. Hillary and Bill Clinton have gotten rich off speaking fees and other shady activities on behalf of companies and foreign governments that would love to influence government policy. They paid to play, and that is obscene. But do you have the same concerns about where Trump’s money comes from? You should.

Trump has a vast global web of businesses, and he’s not willing to tell you anything about it. We have unprecedented access to the Clintons’ internal communications from hacked emails, along with decades of tax returns they’ve voluntarily released. There is little about their finances we don’t know. Then there are the reams of documents from countless investigations. We know far more about them than they would probably like us to know.

Trump on the other hand won’t show you his tax returns or account for all his assets and sources of income. Yet all those financial incentives and conflicts will follow him into the oval office. How much does he owe to Wall Street banks? Is he doing business with friends of Russia’s Vladimir Putin? Will he use his power as president to influence the civil lawsuit against Trump University? Of course not. Trust me, he says. As if you’ve never heard that from a politician.

I make no apologies for Hillary Clinton. I would vastly prefer a president who was smart enough to keep her email communications secure, for one thing. But even on that score, what makes you think Trump would be any better? Are the RNC and the Trump organization so brilliantly secured that Putin has been unable to hack them? It is at least as likely that Putin has hacked Trump’s email, too, but is choosing to use his dirty secrets as blackmail rather than make them public. Putin didn’t rise to the top of the KGB based on how good he looks shirtless.

Do I think Hillary Clinton will be everything this country needs? Not at all. Personally, I think electing a woman president would be pretty inspirational, but you don’t have to agree. As President she would likely be competent rather than electrifying. That said, she has an essential advantage over Trump: she has a long track record of fighting for the rights of unions to organize, broader access to health care, a federal minimum wage, and for the rich to pay a higher share of the federal tax burden, among other things. She has spent her entire life in public service. If you work for a living, it’s hard to see how you would doubt her commitment to those issues, regardless of whatever else you may believe about her.

And finally, we’ve got to get past the whining about how you just don’t trust her. You want honesty? Hillary speaks to you like you’re a grown up, while Trump talks down to you like you’re an idiot. He promises everything to everyone. He has a foolproof “secret” plan to end terror, he will protect all entitlements, military spending will ramp up, the Veterans Administration will become a model of efficiency, health care will be cheaper, taxes will go down for everyone, and the budget deficit will magically melt away. The only ones who will lose under his policies, according to Donald Trump, are illegal immigrants, terrorists, the Mexicans, and the Chinese. It’s a long list of people who have one thing in common: not one of them votes. If your spider sense isn’t tingling a warning to you that Trump’s promises may be too good to be true, then I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but you’re being played. Again.