The Case for Donald Trump

It's that time again; early voting for the Presidential Primaries are in full swing. I'm a registered Republican, and I voted for Donald Trump.

It's actually easier to vote early, and much more pleasant. There's only 1 thing to vote for also, so it only takes a minute. You don't have all of the judges and congressional things to sift through. I voted in the Coral Ridge Mall. No waiting.

Coral Ridge Early Voting Station

The Trump movement took a new turn last week, as the GOP establishment rolled out Mitt Romney to do a hit job speech on Trump. He basically read the entire opposition file on Trump; nothing we haven't heard before. It caused me to remember how weak and unconvincing Romney was, and why he lost so badly to President Obama in 2012. I got behind Trump early for a number of reasons; the most important of which is that he can do things that no other candidate before him could ever possibly do.

To understand what's going on, you have to understand why the so-called Republican Establishment is fighting so hard against their own front runner.

The K Street Gravy Train

What's happening is that the 'Establishment", that is the people who run things in the Republican party, are terrified because someone who they don't control is on a track to become one of 2 people that can become President of the United States. The way things have worked forever is that donors fund candidates, candidates are beholden to donors, and the donors control the country. "K Street" is an area in Washington DC where all of the think tanks, lobbyists and political operatives are located; it's become synonymous with the term "crony capitalism".

The reason that we don't have a national energy plan or a cost effective healthcare system is because lobbyists are in control of the politicians. Politicians are not free to do what's right for the country; they are beholden to the people who helped them get elected. Drug companies own the politicians, so any plan that does things like brings down the cost of drugs has no chance of happening. This is why nothing useful ever gets done; even the obvious things. Because Politicians on both sides of the aisle are influenced to vote for or against things based on how their donors want them to vote.

When politicians leave office, they often go to work on K-Street for huge salaries. So even if they want to be independent, they have to play the game if they want a job later on. It's a system of influence peddling that is the center of corruption in Washington DC.

Establishment Panic

Why is the GOP establishment spending tens of millions of dollars on negative ads with lies about Donald Trump? Because they are about to lose control. The problem is that they don't have an alternative. Both Rubio and Cruz are weak candidates, and Cruz is also anti-establishment. So Rubio is the only choice, and he's a first term senator who happens to be a very bad senator who is trailing in his own state by 20 points to Trump. So they're talking about crazy stuff; like brokered conventions. Except the only way that a brokered convention can take place is if Trump doesn't get enough delegates via the primary process. Florida and Ohio are the big prize states. Rubio must win Florida. If Trump wins both Florida and Ohio the race is essentially over.

Normally what would happen is once one candidate is a clear front runner, the Establishment will get everyone else to get out of the race and everyone gets behind the candidate. This time, they're trying to come up with schemes to keep Trump from getting the nomination.

It appears that holding onto the influence apparatus is more important to the GOP than winning the election, which shows just how corrupt they are.

The Other Choices

First of all, politics is about choices. People who "stay home" because they don't like any or the choices are fools. The only perfect candidate for you is yourself, and if you're not running, you have to pick the person that you think is the best. People say things like "I don't agree with his position on this, so I can't vote for him". That's nonsense. The President's role is to PROTECT our rights and to PROTECT the country. Whether he agrees with our religion or how we live our lives is unimportant. His job is to protect our right to live as we choose.

At this point in time, there are realistically only 6 people who can become President. Sure, Hillary might get indicted or someone could be assassinated, but we can't think along those terms. My take on the current candidates:

1) Bill's Wife:

I'm a Republican so I'm not voting for Hillary, but even if I was a Democrat I couldn't vote for Hillary. The Bill and Hillary show is bad for the country. Thank God for Newt Gingrich who saved Clinton's Presidency while he was lying to federal judges about having sex with interns. If Hillary was a man, with the same experience and same baggage, she wouldn't have a chance in hell of getting past IOWA. During her tenure as Secretary of State, Iraq, Syria and Libya became cauldrons of death. Lied to the American People about a video.We know what we're getting here, and it's not good.

2) Bernie Sanders

I like Bernie. He's like a benevolent Fidel Castro without the murdering. But he's really just Ron Paul in the right party. He could be the King of Greece, because he wants America to be more like Greece. The problem is, if you dismantle the economy to promote fairness, all that happens is that the rich will become less rich and the poor will become even poorer. If you stripped away everyone's wealth and let them start over, in 10 years the same people would be rich. Rich people are rich for a reason.

3) Marco Rubio

Even though Rubio isn't leading the polling in ANY STATE and never has, a lot of politicians like him. He doesn't like being a Senator and he doesn't really like campaigning. But we're supposed to put him in the White House to run the country. Rubio is one of those guys who wants to be POTUS but isn't willing to do the work. We need a hard worker.

Marco Rubio defines the establishment. He's completely dependent on The Machine; the machine that funds and owns every politician in Washington. He is beholden to Drug Companies, Big Oil and just got the Koch Brothers endorsement, who are a driving force against a sensible energy policy. The Koch brothers own a chemical business, and natural gas is in input. Their agenda is to keep the price of NG artificially low.

Rubio is a dangerous candidate. Beware of smooth talkers (ie Obama). Rubio is for Amnesty. Rubio killed a bill banning sanctuary cities in Florida. Rubio supported a bill that would grant amnesty to criminals. Rubio has supported trade bills that favor other countries. And Rubio has no skills running or organizing anything. The Republican establishment will be in complete control of the country if Rubio wins. He'll be a total puppet.

Rubio is a first term senator who speaks well and is a minority. Sound Familiar?

4) Ted Cruz

Three years ago I thought that Ted Cruz would be a great choice to stir things up in Washington, but the more I hear him speak, the less I like him. He's a total politician; a first term Senator who has never run a company or a state or anything else. He's a talker. He has to win Texas by a wide margin to have a chance. He doesn't poll well in any state that matters. He's a first term senator who speaks well and is a minority. Sound Familiar?

5) John Kasich

Kasich is Governor of Ohio and is a competent politician. He touts his involvement with the "balanced budgets" just before the turn of the century, which happened to correspond with the tech bubble and Clinton's dismantling of our military infrastructure. He's been a good governor, but he's moderate and boring. He's a better choice than Cruz or Rubio, but he doesn't poll well within the party.

And then there's Trump.

I latched onto Trump early on. I could have gone for Jeb or Kasich or Walker or Perry in the beginning, but when Trump announced something happened.. I have a pretty good grasp of what's wrong with our country, and Trump doesn't fit the mold of my ideal candidate. But there are few Great Men in the world. Few people who seem truly special; who are better than we are, simply because they are. Mitt Romney wasn't special. Obama isn't special. Even the Pope seems ordinary. There was Michael Jackson, JFK, Steve Jobs in recent history. Trump is one of those men. Even before The Apprentice, when he came out of his tower in NYC people gathered around. Magazines wrote about him. There's a lot of rich and famous people in NYC; lots of rich real estate developers. Few of them draw crowds like Trump when they go out for a slice of Pizza.

Another way that Trump is better than us is that he's never had a drink, done drugs or smoked a cigarette. How many of us can say that? There's something different about a person with that kind of discipline.

Trump is Romney with a Spine

If you think about it, Trump is really very similar to Mitt Romney policy wise. Trump is tougher, smarter and more successful. But both have liberal leanings. The "establishment" was all behind Romney. They're not against Trump because of his policies. They're against him because they'll lose their influence. This battle is all about money and power.

Absence of Agenda

Trump haters will tell you that that Trump just wants the power to do fix things because he thinks he's smarter than us. I don't see that. He thinks that he knows better ways to get things done than our current leaders, because of his vast experience doing very complicated things. There's substantial evidence of his savvy. His recent projects are always under budget (he had financial issues early in his career but had figured out how to be very efficient over time). One of the reasons that he's so successful is that he does things better than others. Not just the final result; but the process. And the difference between success and failure is often the process. The process of government is badly broken. There are very few people with the independence AND the know-how to fix it.

If you've seen Trump's apartment, you know that the White House is a serious step down in lifestyle. There's a reason that the uber-wealthy don't run for office. I'm convinced that he's running to help the country. He cares about his brand too much to allow himself to fail.

Lately, some other candidates, as well as Mitt Romney, have been calling him a "Con Man". But what is his agenda? With Obama, the charge was that he was really a left-wing radical and he was pretending to be more moderate. But let's say Trump is a con man. What's his agenda? He's stepping away from his glorious life to do what? Liberalize Abortion? Abolish Free Speech? Nobody can point to such an agenda.

Trump is a builder. He takes things that have been bungled by others and turns them into beautiful successes. That's what he does. I firmly believe that's what he want to do with the country.

Vision, Optimism and Winning

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

On September 12, 1962, in response to the Russians taking a lead in the "Space Race", John F Kennedy gave his famous speech where he outlined his goal for the United States to be the first country to put a man on the moon. He didn't have "specifics". He had vision. And he had optimism. JFK had no idea HOW we were going to get to the moon, but he was able to convince a nation that it was a goal worth achieving. That it was a matter of national pride. He motivated Americans to take on a monumental task; a seemingly impossible task. And on July 20, 1969, less than 7 years later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the moon.

JFK understood that winning matters. Trump knows this too.

On Vince Lombardi's first day at Green Bay Packer's training camp, he famously said "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing".

Leaders motivate people to win. It's not the leader that wins, it's the people or the team. It's up to the leader to convince them that winning matters, and that doing the things that it takes to win is worth the effort.

Family and Friends

You can tell a lot about people by looking at their family. If one or more of your kids hate you it doesn't mean that you're a bad person, but what does it say when 3 very rich kids adore their father? Alright, he's been married 3 times, but if you were a 60 yo billionaire wouldn't you want to marry a 32 yr old fashion model? His kids are smart, straight laced and all 3 wanted to go into the family business.

Outside of politics, it seems that everyone likes Trump. He's close friends with Chris Christy, Rudy Giuliani and Bill O'Reilly. Serious people. You don't find people that know him personally saying that he's a bad person. Even Bill and Hillary liked him.

Understanding Trump

The arguments against Trump are largely fabricated. He's a tough guy who knows how to negotiate. His position on immigration is "hard line", because that's how you start a negotiation. If you want to pay $250K for a house you don't offer $250k, you offer $220K. Trump's "deport everyone" is just a beginning point for a negotiation with the Democrats. If you start with a reasonable position, after the "compromise" you end up losing. Trump is smarter than that.

In fact all of his positions are based on that premise. His talk of tariffs is not a threat; it's a tool. If you take tariffs off the table, then you have nothing to bargain with. You lose the negotiation. That's why we're getting robbed by China and Mexico. Because there's this taboo about the word "tariff'. I sell products all over the world. Just about every country has duties except the United States. Import taxes are more the norm than the exception.

You have to realize that "Trade" is part of crony capitalism. Big companies can sell into China, but it's impossible for a smaller company to do business there. Big companies have lobbyists; they don't want competition. These trade deals are not good for the country; they're good for the big companies that fund the politicians.

The Conservative Fallacy

I consider myself conservative, so why am I "for" a candidate that straddles the boundaries? Because pragmatically, what the Conservatives define as 'conservative" is a pipe dream. Entitlements aren't going away. Small Government is impossible (and is only a relative term), and abortion isn't going to be abolished. We need smart government, and the political establishment doesn't result in smart government. It results in waste and corruption.

Trump's idea is to make us a richer country. Rich countries like Norway and Saudi Arabia don't worry about entitlements; they used their national wealth to take care of the people. The "left" wants to spend, spend, spend and tax, tax, tax and the right wants to cut taxes and spend less; Trump's way says make more money and then we can spend without having to tax or make cuts.

Trump's idea is that we can have our cake and eat it too. Why not focus on developing our national wealth, improve our trade agreements and clean up the corruption so we can afford the entitlements that are needed to take care of our people?

Trump Doral Resort

Bottom Line

Because Trump is self-funding and not dependent on money from donors, what he brings to the table is unprecedented. His ability to make decisions independent of the influence of special interest groups will allow him to make pragmatic policy. As a former New Yorker, I understand that Donald Trump was a key player in the transformation of New York City from a dirty, dangerous place into a booming metropolis with some of the best neighborhoods in the world. To understand what Trump is capable of, you must understand what he did for New York City.

If you plan to vote, I strongly urge you to read the following article. Note that the New York Post is owned by News Corp, which is a very active GOP Establishment participant. So Trump is not a favorite of the paper in general.

How Donald Trump Saved New York City

After 9/11, when most people were fleeing NYC, Trump sent 500 of his employees to Ground Zero to help with the search for survivors.

Trump is a man of incredible vision. If he can do for the country what he did for New York City, we'll all be very lucky. He may very well be a wolf in sheep's clothing, but I don't see any agenda. He loves New York City and he helped to make it great. I fully believe that he also loves this country and wants to help fix it the way he helped fix New York City.