I Didn't Vote For Trump...but I'm leaning that way for 2020

I didn’t vote for @realDonaldTrump in 2016. I didn’t vote for Hillary either. I withheld my POTUS vote during the general election. I voted for Ted Cruz in my state’s primary…and Cruz won here.

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But I was as giddy as a child on election night when Hillary lost and the media melted down. You see, I WAS a Never Hillaryer, because of this:

But I have to say, I’m likely to vote for @realDonaldTrump in 2020. Here’s why:

First of all, I’m very happy with the policies so far creditable to @realDonaldTrump. Whether it’s the picks to SCOTUS as well as the other federal judge appointments, the shaping of the court is, to me, one the most important legacies a President can leave. Most of the time, what a President does doesn’t affect the average person. But the court…well, that can affect the average person (see the ACA vote on tax vs. fee, e.g.).

I wasn’t certain that @realDonaldTrump would actually appoint the judges he committed to appoint… because up until @realDonaldTrump won, a President’s campaign rhetoric was only campaign rhetoric. It seemed to seldom have anything to do with how they’d govern (no new taxes, you can keep your insurance, as a couple of examples). President @realDonaldTrump has governed or tried to govern EXACTLY as he campaigned. That is a game changer for guys like me.

I don’t particularly like the President’s tweeting but I understand it. As I’ve watched the media attack the President and his family since he won the nomination in 2016, the President’s use of Twitter is his ONLY recourse because the media doesn’t fight fair. Take the Charlottesville Fine People Hoax

https://blog.dilbert.com/2019/04/30/the-fine-people-hoax-funnel/ as example. The way the media distorted that event is simply disgusting. The President in that statement was critical of both Nazis and white supremacists. But to hear the edited version of the President’s remarks, you’d think quite the opposite was true.

I’m happy with the tax cut. My wife and I made about $10K more in 2018 than in 2017 and paid about $5K less in taxes. That’s real money and we get to decide how to spend that. We earned that money and it should be our decision to spend the money how we choose ( we pooled it together with other savings and built a pool ).

I’m happy that the President is trying to secure the border. I am sympathetic to the plight of those not born in the U.S. but if the U.S. must take on ALL of the burdens of the ENTIRE world, at some point we won’t be able to take ANY of the burdens ANYWHERE in the world, including in the U.S. The U.S citizens are among the most generous and charitable people the world has ever known and when people need help, we can help but we can do so where the people that need the help live. We don’t have to have them all come here to help them.

I reject the idea that there are employees of our customs and borders and of DHS that are raping, starving, humiliating, and harming those in illegal alien detention centers…this is not a systemic problem. There may be some cases where among the 000,000s of employees something tragic and criminal like this has happened but to suggest the entirety of the agency is corrupt and evil is ridiculous.

Yes, if families have tried to cross the border illegally, the children are separated from the adults. We don’t know whether those children belong to those adults and a vetting of the facts must occur. The adults have committed a crime in this instance and just like what would happen to an American that is jailed for committing a crime, the spouse and children are NOT ALLOWED to be incarcerated with the accused.
I like that @realDonaldTrump is pushing back on the Chinese. As a sales rep selling to manufacturing companies, I know first-hand the unfair business results when American companies have no choice but to import because the Chinese have priced out an American supplier. This must end and I applaud the President for doing so.

I like that we’re using the art of diplomacy over the doctrine of preemption. Preemption is what took us into Iraq looking for WMD. That has not gone well for American soldier’s lives and our taxpayer’s hard-earned treasure. Negotiating with N. Korea, even if it is a slow process, is a batter tactic for peace than is invasion and preemptive bombing strikes. Sanctions on Iran are better than invasion of loss of innocent lives. The American people have no issue with the Iranian people. It’s their form of government and stated objectives that must be dealt with and doing so without firing a shot is preferred. War ought to always be the last resort and it seems to me with President @realDonaldTrump that this his philosophy.

It troubles most of us that are paying attention to it that our intelligence services may have been weaponized against the President. Given the darn-near guarantee that the media showcased each night on the news that the President colluded to win his election offends a lot of us in two ways. For one, it diminishes the President’s victory against a candidate that had no business running the West Wing. Secondly, they showcased this as fact when it wasn’t. How could the President not be bothered by this? How could he, when discovering the I.C.’s involvement, still trust that what they were advising was true? The IC helped his opponent and yet he’s to believe then when they suggest Russia collusion?

And of course, now we have the Go Back To Your Country comment. Of course, most Americans have thought that someone not born here and yet complaining about how bad we are here…maybe they ought to go back to their country. That’s not being racist…that’s being defensive for your country. Some might call that patriotic. If you want to find racism in something, I guess you’ll find it. If you want to find the good, you’ll find it. Some of these Democrats and the media have made it so that they are essentially trying to shame Americans that agree with @realDonaldTrump that if they do, they are racist. Really? Has the racism card ever been played so often and so out of place?

I have 13 followers as of the start of this thread. I have almost no influence. But I can tell you that I watch so many on Twitter and despite a following count, there are good people and disgusting people and they are both from all races, men and women, Republican and Democrat, etc. Hate knows no bounds…neither does love.

I’m telling you, if don’t start trying to see that the other side isn’t evil…that they just see things differently (except when they really are evil), we are heading for another civil war. It has to change. Is social media the problem? Is cyber courage killing kindness? I hold the door at the store for others…I never ask them first who they voted for and how they think politically. I don’t care. Why is Twitter so tribal? I’m guilty of that a bit except for this…I never attack someone personally. I have no idea how smart or dumb someone is. I don’t know what they’ve been through. I don’t know what they’ve thought about independently, and I don’t know what they‘ve adopted from others as their own now. Trying to ask questions to get their perspective is more my style. But man, if they’re spouting garbage and can’t answer basic questions about the issue, sorry…their right to free speech is a protection from government, not from me.

And then there's this: