Donald J. Trump: 45th President of the United States of America

Several Editors of Pensive have decided to share their opinions on the results of the 2016 election together. Here are their thoughts.

Delaney Russell

I am filled with fear. I fear for my reproductive rights. I fear for the lives of all citizens, specifically women, POC, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. I fear for the health of my planet. Above all, I most immediately fear that many people may go silent in the face of our new leader. My father, a lawyer, acted as a poll watcher in Pennsylvania yesterday. He has filled this job at the same polling place in past elections, but told me that this election day was different. He told me that for the first time, the turn out was amazing, nearly double what he had seen at this location in past years. In fact, he reported there were not enough poll workers to promptly serve all of the people that wished to vote without a wait. This is a hopeful and positive problem to have. This is a glimmer of hope. This is a sign that the American voice might be booming louder than ever, that people are getting excited about government, that people are becoming emotionally invested in the state of their country, that indifferent and complacent are no longer acceptable adjectives to describe one’s relationship with major political issues. This is a sign that the norm might be changing.

I fear that these people, who have more recently found their political voice and the strength to let it be heard, will once again feel helpless and oppressed. Throughout the campaign, Trump has assured us of his intolerant, sexist, racist, and misogynistic ways. I worry that too many trampled down people will not have the endurance or strength to fight back. This does not have to be over. Our call to action has not been dismissed with the end of this single electoral race. We can protest. We can write letters. We can continue to speak out regarding what we believe in and what we want our country to look like. Donald Trump may be the president of the United States, but he does not represent me or what I believe it means to be American.

To those of you who did not get your way: keep fighting for what you believe is right. Keep on talking to people that don’t agree with you, and keep your ears open to what they have to say. Now more than ever, we must communicate. My political awakening has certainly occurred during this election season, and I would like to thank all of the varying points of view that I have encountered for shaping the opinions that I hold today. Disheartened as I am, I will keep fighting. I encourage all that have been knocked down by the election to dust themselves off and do the same.

Graham Glusman

As the tide of the election shifted steadily, relentlessly away from a once guaranteed Clinton victory, a pallor descended over the room of college students huddled around the TV. What had started as a night of excitement, one of hopeful celebration preceded by a day during which many of us had exercised our suffrage for the first time, quickly devolved into something far less joyous as a palpable air of anger and confusion descended upon the room. There is, however, something important to be gleaned from this night, something other than anger to be derived from the seemingly inexplicable outcome of this election. We have learned that the American people have spoken, and have spoken resoundingly against the current state of our nation. They have, in one night of uproarious descent, expressed their collective anger at the direction this country has taken. While many of us may not approve of the means by which they have made their voices heard, it is now our responsibility to answer the summons.

We can lament the power our nation has vested in our new Commander-In-Chief — we most certainly have the written record provided by him to defend our beliefs. But lamentation is not a viable path forward, “anger,” said Hillary Clinton, “is not a plan.” From here, we can only hope that Mr. Trump proves us all wrong. We must hope that the remarks he has made in the past will not inform his policy proposals in the future. To do so is not easy, but neither, for many, is the outcome of this election. In essence, we must now bet against the Trump we were acquainted with during the campaign and hope that he becomes something more than he has demonstrated during this election.

The outcome of last night’s vote reveals a different side of America. It exposed the “silent majority” that politicians and the media can no longer afford to ignore. To criticize and denounce those who voted for Trump is to once again sweep under the rug the sentiments that resulted in his very rise. The fear of terrorism both domestically and abroad that drew so many voters to Trump must now be addressed differently than it has in the past. Our pursuit of globalization and international market liberalization must now take into consideration the subsequent economic implications for the blue-collar workers in the rustbelt and Midwest. To say hate or intolerance drove the vote last night is a shallow analysis, one that aims to examine no deeper than our own ideologies and priorities. As Andrew Sullivan highlights in his article America Has Never Been So Ripe for Tyranny, it is impossible to judge those with different political objectives by our own standards. Our bias has shrouded the reality that Trump supporters have legitimate complaints which our nation’s anointed elites have willingly dismissed. You may disagree with the direction these voters have taken, but you cannot deny their intent.

I hope President Trump is successful. I hope he dispels our fears and exceeds our wildest expectations. I hope he relieves the anger pent up in the American populace that was expressed last night. To bet against Trump is easy, to wish him the best takes something more. If we cannot unite around our president, we must unite around our identity as Americans, and hope that President Trump is more than the man he has shown us to be.

Casey Hunter

I have to express my disappointment. As I try to come up with my vision for how we can best move forward, I cannot help but think of what could have been. I think of what it must feel like to be Hillary Clinton tonight. Or Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. What it must feel like as Barack Obama to realize that with sky-high approval ratings and a stellar final economic report, to hand over the Oval to Donald Trump. To know that the power to destroy Obamacare has finally been handed over to the Republican Party. I am heartbroken because of this outright rejection of values that I hold so dearly. The willful ignorance and anti-intellectualism that has become unquestionably mainstream.

I do not know what President Donald Trump will look like. Frankly, nobody has any idea what will happen over the next four years.

It angers me deeply to take this moral high ground, and it is a step that certainly many will understandably refuse to take, but we must afford President-elect Trump the opportunity that Barack Obama was never given: a chance to succeed. This is not to say that President Obama did not succeed as president, although some of his greatest legacies are in seriously precarious positions, but rather I want to discourage the despicable behavior exhibited by the right in the early days of the Obama administration. Where, within the first 100 days of his presidency, he was being viciously attacked. Branded as a socialist. It was said that he was a foreign-born Muslim who hated America and sought to destroy it from within. These things were shockingly mainstream, and I believe played a large part in not only the success of a conservative movement like Trump, but rampant anti-establishment conservatism. The GOP pedaled the idea around that Obama and the rest of the government didn’t care about the working white people who drove Trump to the presidency, and possibly even had malicious intentions against them. It worked. First, it was the Tea Party. Now, President-elect Donald Trump.

As much as it seems simply unfair to afford this crass, erratic demagogue the chance that was not afforded to the most noble of men, it hurt America in 2008 when Republicans rooted against Barack Obama and it will hurt America now if liberals root against Donald Trump. This is not to say that anyone should back down from their values if he attempts to destroy dearly held progressive achievements. What I mean is that we should not attempt to paint positive economic reports as apocalyptic. We should not scream that he is weak, or a tyrant, when he takes sensible military action or inaction. We should not make unfounded, fabricated, attacks on his character.

Last night, the President-elect, for maybe the first time ever, did not attempt to fire up his base when giving a speech. He did not come out and say that they would lock Hillary Clinton up, but rather that we owed her a debt for her life in public service. That sentiment does not make any sense in the context of what he has spewed about Clinton over the course of this campaign, but it points towards a possible positive outcome of all of this. If this man wants to be a president for the entire nation, he first has to soothe the genuine fear of the people. It is a relatively narrow segment of people who should be afraid because of his specific policy proposals, but massive amounts of people have cause for fear due to the nativist fervor of a large percentage of his supporters, coupled with Trump’s own unpredictability and faithlessness towards specific policies.

However, there is a real possibility that Trump will not prove us wrong. That this demagogue will seek sweeping policy change to the detriment of minority groups across the country. This election has completely ignored the reality of the actual powers of the presidency, no one more so than Trump himself. It is possible that he will seek systemic change in order to cement power and strengthen his office in order to live up to his own inflated vision of the powers of the office.

That will be the true test of the American system. If the outcome of this election does give us the boogeyman that so many fear, it will be up to the people to hold strength in the system that has allowed America to be the only major country to not have been ruled by a tyrant in the last 300 years.

I am devastated that this is the course of action the people have chosen. I do not believe in the message or vision that Donald Trump has promoted. I find it deeply un-American and corrosive to relations in the country. I think his rhetoric that attacks the integrity of this system is dangerous. But, I do not know what this presidency has in store, and I will not be rooting against America.

Good luck Mr. President-elect.

Carrigan Miller

I have, uh, a lot of feelings about this one. I certainly didn’t expect it, and maybe that’s on me. Clearly he struck a chord with an America that I wasn’t as familiar with (the two counties I’ve lived in voted 65.7% and 77.1% for Clinton). I was watching CNN late last night, and as it started to look like he was the victor, Van Jones criticized the elitism of his party. I’m probably guilty of this too. A big part of this election was the assumption that Democrats would easily top Trump, an apparent fiction I bought into. It’s why Clinton didn’t spend time in states like Wisconsin and Michigan, which ended up turning red, Wisconsin for the first time since Reagan. Four years from now, expect every state to be a swing state.

I wonder how this is going to affect Clinton’s legacy. I’ve already seen it from some people, but the temptation to blame Hillary is obvious. How could she lose to Trump? This might be underestimating Donald, but exit polling clearly shows that she had lower turnout from the Obama coalition, which consists of millennials and people of color. Conversely, Trump was exciting to his electorate, which contained some people who voted for Obama in both terms. He did a good job of picking up non-Republicans, while Hillary couldn’t pick up the moderates and undecided voters. In fact, it looks like Trump even caused a bump in voting down ballot: Republicans over-performed in senate races as well.

On the other hand, it now looks like Hillary will win the popular vote. With 98% reporting as of this writing, she has a more than 200,000 vote advantage over Trump. If there was ever a time to reevaluate the way that we vote in this country, this is it. I won’t go down the rabbit hole, but most countries on Earth have a less convoluted, more effective system than we do.

Finally, we have to shape what our relationship with our new president will look like. Part of me wants to give him the benefit of the doubt, tap into the excitement that his voters felt. He had a movement, while Clinton had a campaign, it’s certainly true. Why couldn’t I bring myself to feel part of intoxicating energy?

When Donald Trump came to speak in Minnesota, where I currently go to school, he spoke at length about Somali refugees. He said that the state had “suffered enough.” He stated that some would join ISIS. He described the situation as a “disaster.” That’s why I can’t support or forgive him, amongst dozens of other reasons. I know the people who Trump insults with this rhetoric. They sit in class with me. They live in the same community as I do. They’re my friends.

While Trump was in New York, one quiet Minnesota race made history. Ilhan Omar, who moved to the U.S. when she was 12 to flee the Somali civil war, was elected to the Minnesota House. She becomes America’s first Somali-American Muslim female legislator. She wore the hijab all throughout her campaign, and she did so with pride. That’s why I can’t support Trump. Maybe he’ll change his tone, but he has a lot of apologizing to do before I’ll ever respect him.