I wouldn’t be surprised if I capture a communal sentiment here at Wooster when I say I am sick of the media’s continued speculation of whether or not Donald Trump will run for president in 2012. I mean, come on, Trump, according to the New York City Board of Elections, you haven’t voted in a presidential primary in over two decades! But hey, the media loves to play on fear, and frankly the thought of a real estate mogul who builds property exclusively for rich people being president of the United States is an alarming one. The fact is, wealth distribution in the U.S. is the most unequal it has ever been since 1928, the year before the Great Depression. Aren’t we supposed to be coming out of a recession? While that is a topic for another debate, you can’t help but think the plutocrats that really run this country wouldn’t mind having a billionaire businessman calling the shots in Washington, D.C.
Whether this speculation is sinscere or not, we should not just blame the mainstream media for this whole Trump extravaganza. After all, he has tossed up plenty of claptrap the past few weeks for all the talking heads to babble about. Let’s examine a few of his most outrageous claims. After flip-flopping opinions about who is the worst president in U.S. history, he has had quite a bit to say regarding President Obama. In an interview with the Huffington Post on April 25, Trump made the claim that Obama was not qualified to attend Columbia University or Harvard Law School, stating, “I heard he was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?” Bro, like the fact that your dad was a billionaire real estate tycoon didn’t help you get into Fordham or UP Wharton School of Business? For the record, Obama graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991.
Trump has also played the all too familiar “birther” card in the GOP presidential nomination game of poker. Donald, dude, Hawaii made Obama’s birth certificate public information, this isn’t even a topic for debate anymore. If Trump actually wanted the GOP presidential nomination, one would think he would separate himself from other GOP candidates by sidestepping this fictitious claim ó a claim that, in my opinion, is a frightening representation of a 21st century form of legal racism towards the first black president in our nation’s history.
Perhaps Trump’s most outrageous assertion is that we, or really his billionaire corporate oil buddies ó because you know the U.S. is not nationalizing that shit ó should just seize the oilfields of Iraq and Libya to deal with rising oil prices as a form of reimbursement for the money we spent during occupation. When questioned in an April 18 interview with ABC News if this would be stealing another country’s natural resources, Trump responded, “Excuse me.† You’re not stealing anything.† You’re taking ó we’re reimbursing ourselves ó at least, at a minimum, and I say more.† We’re taking back $1.5 trillion to reimburse ourselves.” Trump, buddy, the whole “God loves America” Manifest Destiny garbage is so 19th century. We already killed most of the American Indians. Why don’t you read a history book instead of wondering who your wife is cheating on you with when she is out for a movie night? But to hell with it, we are the modern day empire anyway.
Let’s be realistic here, Trump couldn’t really win the GOP presidential nomination, could he? I mean, the Republican Party learned their lesson with Sarah Palin, right? In another recent USA poll, 46 percent of Republicans said that they definitely would not vote for Trump in the primaries if he declared his presidential bid. However, the jury is still out on Trump. Even well-respected conservative writer Thomas Sowell has stated that Trump could be Obama’s “Trump card” in his campaign for re-election. I’m admittedly a pretty lefty guy, so with this in mind, keep it coming Donald, keep it coming.