Matt Fecteau: Dear Trump Supporters, This isn’t a Reality TV Show

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Sunday, March 20, 2016

Matt Fecteau, GoLocalWorcester Guest MINDSETTER™

Thanks to US Presidential candidate and business mogul Donald Trump, and his fan club, this presidential season will go down in history as one of the looniest, wackiest, and most surreal in American history. This experiment in unadulterated, sheer lunacy makes for good ratings, but that is about it. 

You have to laugh to keep from crying; a reality television star is considered a serious contender for the highest office in the land. Trump is astute at playing to the crowd, lying straight to their face, and using hot button issues to rally his supporters, little else. I don’t want him near our nuclear arsenal. I don’t care how many people he fired on his reality television show.

To call Trump a conservative would be disingenuous.  Before his candidacy, Trump came out in support of universal healthcare, supported raising taxes, an assault weapons ban, and even said Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton did a “good job” as Secretary of State (heresy if I ever heard it!).  This is a perplexing considering Trump now opposes all the aforementioned, and says Clinton is the worst Secretary of State in history. If any other candidate had a track record like Trump in the Republican primary, he or she would be tarred and feathered. 

To call Trump a bigot, racist, and xenophobe would also be reaching.  Trump’s sporadic successes as a businessman point to man far more tolerant than most Democrats would like to believe. Trump is merely playing his deprived supporters like cheap fiddles, catering to the impulses of the ignorant and misguided (that’s how he ran the now debunked Trump University). 

None of this matter to Trump’s deranged supporters. All sins are forgiven when Trump mentions something about building a wall on the Mexico-U.S. border – a red herring.  This is fascinating given illegal immigration from Mexico to the USA has been negative since 2010 (in other words, more undocumented immigrants might be leaving our country, not entering).  Trump is essentially talking about building a wall – which includes a massive seizure of private land -- to protect us from no one.

With his demagogy, Trump continues defies political gravity.  He called Mexicans rapists, said our POWs are not war heroes, insulted women, endorsed violence in his rallies, mocked a disabled reporter, stated “Islam hates America” (an estimated 1.6 billion people), and threw African Americans out of his events – for the dreadful crime of merely being black.  Trump will say anything to win, and his intolerant sycophants cheer him on. This is democracy in its rawest, yet scariest form.  

As a result of his candidacy, the Republican candidates no longer debate substantive policy issues; eager to appease the low information voters in their ranks, the Republican presidential campaigns resorted to a mere schoolyard name calling contest.  Trump was the pioneer of extreme negative campaigning this presidential cycle.  The other presidential (including former) candidates eventually joined the fray (by the way, I never want to hear another Republican say “grow up” when your presumptive nominee is Trump). 

Take for example US Senator Marco Rubio, whom mockingly said, Trump has the "worst spray tan in America." Though his presidential candidacy has ended, Rubio has expressed a degree of regret for joining in the schoolyard taunts – redemption? I cannot say that for another Republican presidential candidate still in the race, US Senator Ted Cruz, who has so piquantly mimicked Trump’s insults to such an extent the respective campaign are almost indistinguishable.

Never in my wildest dreams (or nightmares) would I ever think to say this: I sincerely miss President George W. Bush. He might have been a horrible commander-in-chief, but at least he would have the good sense to enthusiastically disavow an endorsement from the former leader of the KKK.  While the tactics used by W. Bush’s political advisor Karl Rove in the 2000 Republican presidential primary were completely abhorrent, – producing propaganda saying US Senator John McCain had an African American child out of wedlock – at least W. Bush’s presidential campaign was more subtle with its scumishness. 

With this election season, there is a lot of collateral damage and the political animosity is much more overt. Our democracy for one is becoming a laughingstock around the world.  In addition, because this political cycle is so filled with insults, we have little knowledge of where candidates stand – at least in the Republican primary. However, the true victims are the Trump supporters; they are cheering for a man that is merely manipulating them for self-gain, a fraud if I ever saw one, willing to say anything to win as if the star in his own reality TV show. 

You have to truly pity Trump supporters. Trump can put whatever he wants on his cheap hats; electing him as President won’t ‘make America great again.’ His agenda is completely unrealistic. His tax program could add $24.5 trillion to our national debt, and Mexico certainly won’t build that wall.  This is the ongoing fraud perpetrated on his supporters.  With all the outlandish promises made, a Trump presidency would likely be a disaster for America, a Trump candidacy already is. 

In the end, Trump will go down in history as one of the most astute self-promotionists of all time, but he definitely won’t be president. There is no way Americans are so gullible to elect a former reality television host president. As for the Republican Party, I cannot say the same.  For those who support Trump, sorry to disappoint you, this is not a reality television show, this is real life. Your candidate is far from what he seems, but that is what you get when you support a reality TV star.

Matt Fecteau ([email protected]), of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, lost to U.S. Rep. David Cicilline in 2014’s Democratic primary. He is a former White House national security intern and Iraq war veteran.

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