The cult of Trump has dished up more nonsense, falsehoods and flip-flops than I have seen from any recent presidential candidate. Despite the fact that Trump is a life-long progressive, and one who has supported and financed leftist and Democrat causes, he now wants to con people into believing he is somehow a conservative. And incredibly, legions of folks have fallen for this, hook, line and sinker.
But here is the simple truth: Trump is not a conservative, and has never been a conservative. He is a big-government, crony capitalist liberal who does not have a conservative bone in his body. He tells people what they want to hear, and flip flops not just daily, but even hourly.
So it is necessary to point out his decidedly non-conservative credentials, and dismantle so many of the myths that he and his devotees have been spraying around. But before I go much further, I have heard Trumpbots claim that criticisms of Trump come from leftist and Democrat sites, so we must ignore them.
Yeah right. National Review, American Thinker, RedState, etc, are all leftist outfits and Democrat front groups. Gotcha. The truth is, if the New York Times says that 2+2=4, guess what, it is still true, regardless of who said it. Rejecting something solely because of where it comes from is known as the genetic fallacy. And as will be seen, most of the links I offer below are from conservative sites.
Because there is so much material here, this piece will have to be broken into two parts. The first part will look at issues which all true conservatives should be concerned about, while the second will look at issues of finance, money, who is owning who, etc.
ISSUES OF CONCERN TO CONSERVATIVES
Trump and abortion
Trump is the flip-flopper extraordinaire. Up until recently he was always pro-abortion. But now that he is pretending he is a Republican, he has been all over the place on the abortion issue. Nonetheless, most of what he says has been a real worry to pro-lifers. He has praised Planned Parenthood time and again, thanking them for their “wonderful work.” He has said his pro-abortion sister would make a “phenomenal” Supreme Court Justice. Plenty of links can be provided here:
And then just in the past 24 hours he has flip-flopped even further on this issue. First he said women should be punished for having abortions if it were illegal. Prolife groups quickly condemned this, saying we never penalise the women. Then he changed his tune and said doctors should be punished. Before I finish writing this article he will likely contradict himself even further.
The homosexual lobby has been one of the most destructive, anti-family groups around. Yet Trump has never been pro-family and critical of the homosexual agenda. In fact he has long supported homosexual causes, including even offering financial support. See here, eg.:
Obviously a guy who changes wives almost as often as he changes his policy positions can hardly be described as a pro-family conservative. That is because he is not one, and has never been one. A good piece warning about this can be found here:
Religious liberty is obviously another major conservative concern, but we will get little help here from Trump. As one writer puts it:
So far on religious liberty, Trump’s only substantive policy position is that Americans are going to start saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again. That might be nice, if that’s actually something that gets your goat, but the reality of the current situation is that actual attacks on religious liberty in the United States have doubled over the last three years, and the trend doesn’t look like it will slow down without a solid, consistent defender of freedom in the White House. Conservative voters deserve a candidate with the moral courage to stand up to this insidious trend, not just throw out distracting fluff on one of our most important liberties and founding principles.
Conservatives have long been pro-Israel and cautious about Islam. But not Trump. At best, as usual, he is all over the place here, telling people what they want to hear.
As one piece reminds us, “Presidential candidate Donald Trump may want to ban Muslims entering the U.S. but he’s making millions from business deals in countries where Islam is the main religion.” But see more on this in the next section.
Trump and immigration
This is one of the big claims that has endeared so many Trumpians: that he will somehow be tough on immigration. He has plenty of rhetoric on this, but as with almost all his positions, almost no policy specifics. But a few things must be said here. It is ludicrous in the extreme to suggest that immigration is the only problem facing America, and if that somehow gets fixed, then everything else will just be rosy.
Not only are there many other major problems – most of which Trump will never touch, or will make worse – but we already have principled conservatives and Christians who are running who will deal with these problems, including immigration. And his rhetoric on immigration, building walls, etc., is just that – rhetoric. As my colleague Michael Bauman rightly stated about Islamic immigration:
Even if Donald Trump’s bizarre proposal to stop all Muslim immigration were Constitutional (and it is not), and even if it lowered Muslim immigration to zero, it would not work, if by “work” you mean keep us safe. Under Obama, nearly 700,000 Muslims came to America. They did not come to nothing; they came to already existing, intact, Muslim communities, where hundreds of thousands of Muslims already lived before them. If you want to be safe, you might have no safety but what you, your vehicles, and your guns will provide. The police won’t necessarily do it for you. The police have already consented, by their practices, to “no go” zones. Those zones will spread, not diminish. What will you do to provide security for yourself and your family? The answer is up to you, not me. I can answer for no one else. As for me and my house . . . (Joshua 24:15).
As to Mexico, Trump is all over the place on this one as well. Indeed, we simply must ask how many illegal aliens Trump is happy to employ in his companies for starters.
And of course Cruz has long been consistently strong on this issue, pushing strong dealings with Mexico well before Trump ever did. And Trump changes his tune regularly on this issue. So who are we going to count on with this issue?
Trump’s catalogue of lies, and his continuous flip-flopping
As mentioned, Trump is simply all over the place and he changes his tune whenever circumstances demand it. A less polite way of putting all this is to say Trump is a chronic liar, and truth means nothing to him. Various folks have listed his many lies and flip-flops. Here are just a few lists:
Trump’s preference for tyrants, dictators and thugs, and autocratic policies and rule
Conservatives believe in limited government and always warn against Big Brother government. They especially despise Statist dictators. But Trump over and over again praises the dictators, the tyrants, and the big government rulers. Whether he praises the crackdown in Tiananmen Square, or gives credit to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, or dumps on the First amendment, or encourages his own supporters to resort to violence, or calls for curbs on press freedom, he is not the sort of person any conservative can countenance:
Indeed, why do I keep thinking about Germany in the 30s when I witness the rise of the Trump cult? As one concerned commentator put it:
“Trump isn’t Hitler” isn’t a defense; it’s an excuse – a way of letting Trump get as close to the line of actual fascism without stepping over it. If we let him close to that line he will, like a toddler, slip a toe over, then a foot, to test us and see how far he can really go. We shouldn’t have to wait for someone to go full Hitler to recognize a danger to our system of government.
Besides, even Hitler wasn’t “Hitler” when he was running for office in 1928 and 1932. He hadn’t yet brought down democracy in Europe, started the most catastrophic war in all history, and murdered millions. He was just a powerful orator who knew how to connect with everyday people – mainly by exploiting their fears and anxieties over economic dislocation, racial tension, and their belief that they just didn’t win anymore. He wanted to help make Germany great again, and Germans agreed. The rest is history.
Related to the above point is the sad truth that Trump is no small-government conservative. Quite the opposite. His policies favour a bigger role for the state, not a smaller role. More will be said on this issue in Part Two, but just yesterday we once again heard Trump declaring his love of big government. He informed us that he thinks the federal government should be in the business of providing housing, education, and healthcare. Um, I thought that was the view of Obama and Clinton. No wonder so many have said Trump is just the mirror image of the Democrats in so many areas.
But more must be said about Trump and all things economic, so please proceed to Part Two: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2016/03/31/dismantling-trump-myths-part-two/
So it is necessary to point out his decidedly non-conservative credentials, and dismantle so many of the myths that he and his devotees have been spraying around. But before I go much further, I have heard Trumpbots claim that criticisms of Trump come from leftist and Democrat sites, so we must ignore them.
