A Republican’s Perspective on the 2024 Election: The Deception of Voting for Trump for His “Policies”

This piece is part of a series of articles produced in a special topics class taught by Professor of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought Lawrence Douglas on the upcoming election. Articles may have been reviewed by Douglas as well as other members of the class prior to submission to The Student.

I find myself agreeing with Trump’s own vice-presidential pick, J.D. Vance, when he, before the 2016 election, said, “I’m definitely not gonna vote for Trump because I think he’s projecting very complex problems onto simple villains.” Many Americans are attracted to Trump’s straightforward solutions, but that’s exactly what they are — oversimplified fixes for complex problems, many of which he created himself.

Immigration

Although his newfound super fan Elon Musk was once an undocumented immigrant himself, Trump has continued to capitalize on fear and racism regarding immigration as a tool to sway voters. Throughout his political career, he has claimed that Mexico is “sending” its drug dealers, criminals, and rapists into the United States; he has called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”; he has argued that undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country”; and suggested that immigrants who commit crimes do so because “it’s in their genes.”

In 2024, the border is again one of Trump’s focal points, yet Trump has been one of the strongest forces keeping our southern border porous. When Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma developed a bipartisan border deal — supported by Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who warned that a similar deal was unlikely even if Trump were re-elected — Trump persuaded Republican congressmen to torpedo the bill. In fact, he even boasted that if the bill failed, people should “blame it on him.” A solution, after all, would take away one of his key campaign issues. Lankford recounted, “I had a popular commentator tell me flat out, before they knew any of the contents of the bill, ‘If you try to move a bill that solves the border crisis during this presidential year, I will do whatever I can to destroy you, because I do not want you to solve this during the presidential election.’” Consequently, nearly all Republicans, including McConnell, who had previously urged lawmakers to pass the bill, voted against it. Lankford later remarked, “By the way, they have been faithful to their promise and have done everything they can to destroy me in the past several weeks.”

Thankfully, 2012 Republican presidential nominee and current Utah Senator Mitt Romney spoke out, saying, “The fact that [Trump] would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling. But the reality is that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border, and someone running for president ought to try to get the problem solved as opposed to saying, ‘Hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later.’”

On the surface, Trump’s tactics might seem as simple as denying Biden a success, but the narrative of an “intentionally” flooded border also feeds into his election fraud conspiracy theories. Trump and his allies claim that Democrats are deliberately allowing noncitizens to cross the border to vote against him, pointing to Democratic opposition to stricter voter ID laws. Republican extremists often misinterpret the allowance of noncitizens voting in local elections in places like California, Vermont, Maryland, and Washington D.C. as evidence of voter fraud. However, a 1996 bill prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, such as for the House, Senate, or President. Moreover, since an ID is required to register to vote, the notion that noncitizens can simply walk into the polls on election day and vote is unfounded. The myth of widespread voter fraud is fraudulent itself, as shown by the dismissal of all 62 of Trump’s election fraud cases in court, including by judges he appointed.

Economy

The U.S. currently boasts the world’s strongest economy, eighth-highest GDP per capita, and fastest growing economy among G7 nations. But this hasn’t stopped Trump from claiming that under Biden, the U.S. is “in some ways … a third-world country.” While there is something poetic about an American billionaire comparing the U.S. to developing nations that lack basic necessities like running water and steady food sources, this deception is perpetuated by right-wing media moguls who echo Trump’s lies. For example, Jesse Watters, a Fox News anchor and Trinity College graduate, who earns $11 million annually and owns five luxury cars, two yachts, and multiple real estate properties, expressed in a 2024 interview that he believed minimum-wage workers made $100,000 a year. In reality, for a 40-hour work week, that figure ranges from $15,000 to $35,000, depending on the state. The fact that a 46-year-old news anchor, whose job is to discuss politics and the economy, has no clue how much minimum-wage workers make suggests that his role is more about echoing whatever his superiors tell him than understanding the realities faced by average Americans.

While the Biden administration hasn’t handled everything perfectly, we should remember the impact Covid-19 had on the world. After Trump’s administration flooded the nation with stimulus checks and unemployment benefits to avoid a recession, inflation was bound to rise. Still, the U.S. has achieved the lowest inflation rate among the G-7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.), which are considered the world's most advanced economies. The fact that our economy under Biden rebounded better than any of the other leading nations should not be overlooked. Trump’s notion that voters should compare the two presidencies without accounting for the pandemic is overly simplistic and characteristically misleading.

On the other hand, Vance himself described Trump’s presidency as an economic failure, Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus have both called Trump an “idiot” and his former economic adviser Gary Cohn labeled him “dumb as shit.” Trump’s proposed retaliatory tariff war is estimated to add $7.5 trillion to the national debt, $4 trillion more than Harris's plan, and just shy of the $7.8 trillion he added during his first presidency. Even considering Harris’s unrealistic populist economic proposals, both Trump and Vance have suggested one of the most misguided ideas in economic history: allowing the president to influence the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy — undermining the very principle of the Fed’s independence.

Foreign Affairs

One of Trump’s key points in this election is that he is the smart, strong leader America needs on the international scene. His own former Republican cabinet members strongly disagree, however. John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor, said, “I have been in those rooms with him when he met with world leaders; I believe they think he’s a laughing fool. The idea that somehow his presence in office would have deterred Putin is flatly wrong.” Former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster wrote in his memoir that Trump was often treated like a “chump” by authoritarian leaders and that Xi Jinping, the President of China, “ate our lunch” after Trump was tricked into agreeing that military exercises in South Korea were “provocative” and a “waste of money,” even suggesting that China might have a claim to the Senkaku Islands, which actually belong to Japan, a U.S. ally.

John Kelly, one of Trump’s former chiefs of staff and Homeland Security secretaries, called Trump an idiot on multiple occasions and described him as “a person that has no idea what America stands for and no idea what America is all about … a person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators and has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.” Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Trump had the understanding of “a fifth- or sixth-grader” referring to Trump’s questioning why the government was using U.S. resources to maintain a military presence on the Korean peninsula. McMaster also called Trump a “dope” with the intelligence of a “kindergartner,” while Rex Tillerson, Trump’s former secretary of state, called Trump a “fucking moron.”

Humility means recognizing what we understand, and for most Americans, including myself, we know next to nothing about policy making. Therefore, it seems wiser to set aside personal opinions and trust the opinions of his former hand-picked cabinet of Republicans, whom he once described as the “best and most serious people” and claimed had the “highest IQ of any cabinet ever.” The fact that 91% of his cabinet refused to endorse his primary run and 43% have refused to endorse him over Harris suggests that even his former team doubts his record on policy making and fitness as president.

While these are just a few of Trump’s main campaign points, his entire platform grossly oversimplifies highly complex issues that even the Republicans he hand-picked believe he is incapable of solving. During his first two years in office, when Republicans controlled the House, Senate, and Supreme Court, Trump failed to deliver on key promises such as border reform, healthcare reform, and reducing the national debt — which actually ballooned by nearly a third. The only significant legislation he passed was a tax cut that disproportionately benefited the top 1%, including himself, rather than the middle class. His presidency revealed an inability to work with U.S. lawmakers, and I don’t expect that to change in 2024. If Trump is re-elected, his misleading rhetoric, legislative obstruction, and weak foreign policy will be seen as a successful campaign strategy, setting a dangerous precedent of vindictive, divisive, and un-American politics capable of destroying our country.