8 REASONS WHY REPUBLICANS MUST DUMP TRUMP
By
Robert Reich
The
Republican Party still has time to change its mind. Right now it’s supporting
for President of the United States a man
1.
who divides us by race and ethnicity
and religion.
He
says undocumented Americans “bring drugs, crime, they’re rapists.” That the
Mexican government “sends bad ones over because they don’t want to pay for them.” And
who says he’ll round up and deport all 11 million undocumented workers in the
United States.
This
is a man who equivocated on repudiating an endorsement from
David Duke, former head of the Ku Klux Klan. And when asked to repudiate
the vicious anti-semitism of some of his followers said “I don’t have a message to the fans.”
A
man who claimed “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the Twin Towers collapsing, when
there’s no evidence at all to support that statement. And whose response
to terrorism is to prevent all Muslims from coming into the United States.
A
man who, in response to the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, did not
mourn the victims, but instead crowed “Appreciate the congrats for being right
on radical Islamic terrorism, I don’t want congrats, I want toughness &
vigilance. We must be smart!” and repeated his call for his temporary Muslim
ban – even though the shooter was an American citizen. “What has happened in
Orlando is just the beginning. Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called
it and asked for the ban. Must be tough,” he said.
A
man who says black criminals are responsible for 81 percent of homicides
against whites, which turns out to be a racist myth.
2.
whose incendiary lies are inciting violence across
this land, but he excuses them.
When
he learned that some of his supporters punched, kicked and spit on protesters
of color at his rallies, he said “people who are following me are very passionate.”
When
a handful of white supporters punched and attempted to choke a Black Lives
Matter protester at another of his rallies, he said “maybe he should have been roughed up.”
3.
who bullies, humiliates, and
threatens those who dare cross him.
He
mocks their physical characteristics, makes up lies about them, degrades them,
tries to intimidate them by unleashing hostile attacks on the Internet –
announcing, for example, that a family who donated money to a political
opponent “better be careful, they have a lot to hide.”
He
calls a federal judge who’s considering a case against Trump University a
“total disgrace” and a “hater,” and alleging he’s Mexican although he was born
in the United States.
4.
who spreads baseless conspiracy
theories.
He
conjectured that President Obama was not born in the United States, and that
the government hid information about the Ebola virus and
a plague would start in America if flights from Ebola infected countries
weren’t cancelled. He opined thatTed Cruz’s father was with Lee Harvey Oswald during
the Kennedy assasination in Dallas, and that child health vaccinations cause autism.
And
he suggested that the death of Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia might
have been a part of a plot.
Such
baseless conspiracy theories can do great damage, when, for example, parents
don’t vaccinate their children because they fear autism.
5.
whose hateful and demeaning attitudes toward women
and boastful claims of sexual dominance have been filling the airwaves for
years.
They’re
best summed up in an interview where he said “women, you have to treat them
like shit.”
And
he calls for more fossil fuel drilling and fewer environmental regulations,
vows to cancel the Paris agreement committing nearly every nation to curbing
climate change, and to rescind Obama’s rules to curb planet-warming emissions
from coal-fired power plants.
7.
who proposes using torture against terrorists, and punishing their
families, both in clear violation of
international law.
And
if all this weren’t enough,
8.
who wants to cut taxes on the rich, giving the
wealthiest one tenth of one percent an average tax cut of more than $1.3 million each every year -
exploding the national debt and endangering the future of Social Security and
Medicare.
This
man is Donald Trump, and the Republican Party wants him to be President of the
United States.
Why
are there so few statesmen left in the Republican Party?
Are there no
principled Republicans whose loyalty to the nation is greater than their
eagerness to win back the White House?
No
Republican leaders with the courage to stand up and say this is wrong – that
this man doesn’t have the character or the temperament to be president, and his
election would endanger America and everything we believe in and stand for?
If
not, shame on them.
Republicans
still have time to dump Trump. For the good of the country and the world, they
must.
ROBERT
B. REICH is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of
California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing
Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for
which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries
of the twentieth century. He has written fourteen books, including the best
sellers “Aftershock, “The Work of Nations," and "Beyond
Outrage," and, his most recent, "Saving Capitalism." He is also
a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause,
a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the
award-winning documentary, INEQUALITY FOR ALL.