I'm Not Voting for Trump

There seems to be a lot of debate on both sides of the political aisle, and I’m far from a disinterested observer. While I strive to remain objectively detached in most circumstances, I’ve found that this particular election cycle makes that impossible. Being the polarizing figure that he is, the fundamental reason for this is obviously Donald J. Trump.

This isn’t click-bait; I’m not voting for him. The reason for that is much more nuanced than some might expect, so I feel it’s important to explain my reasoning.

Why Not Trump?

To get the obvious out of the way first: Trump is very clearly a narcissist. He immediately belittles anything that threatens his paper-thin self-esteem, including ostensibly aligned figures such as Ron DeSantis. And likewise, any and all policies, projects, and people associated with or endorsed by Trump are always the best, quite possibly the greatest to have ever existed in the history of the United States.

It’s offputting, childish, transparent, and insulting at best. The endless one-upmanship and braggadocious need for recognition essentially makes an enemy of anyone who isn’t aggressively supplicating his fragile ego. As a statesman representing the highest office in the land, it makes enemies of anyone unwilling to placate his often petulant demands—a dangerous attribute for a diplomat.

To put it bluntly, he’s kind of asshole. It’s no wonder so many are opposed to another Trump presidency. Just from a purely psychological angle, his actual policies become irrelevant in the face of that kind of distaste.

However, I’m not really emotionally invested sufficiently to care about that. I’m not exactly Mr. Sunshine myself, so why would I care about that? Rather than focus on Trump himself, I decided to examine those he’s chosen to associate with his campaign. I feel that’s a better statement about what he really wants than his empty boasting.

A Family Legacy

Back in 2008, I penned a rather caustic diatribe against family dynasties ruling the United States. I was further enraged by this in 2016 when the race came down to Hillary and Trump. I am fundamentally opposed to any family dynasty being treated like some kind of royalty, where each member deserves “their turn” at the helm. This country was literally founded to disengage from that kind of government; it’s antithetical to who we are.

So when I first saw Robert F. Kennedy Jr. throw his hat into the ring, I rolled my eyes and tried to ignore him. Then Joe Rogan interviewed him and I saw that he actually aligned with me on a number of issues.

• He’s a real environmentalist. Rather than being hyper-focused on carbon like everyone else, he wants to get rid of environmental toxins and other pollutants. He famously won a $290 million lawsuit against Monsanto, $396 million from DuPont, and another $670 million from DuPont due to contamination.
• He’s practically just as ravenous concerning human health. Most notably, he contributed a scathing critique of Anthony Fauci. Despite how the media framed the man during the Covid pandemic, Fauci bungled the AIDS epidemic and his corruption became associated with the Dallas Buyer’s CLub movie. This matters because irresponsible bureaucracy facilitates corporate malfeasance, and the various regulation agencies are fully captured by the healthcare industry itself. That kind of thing starts at the top.
• The rest of his policies are fairly straight-forward. Abortion is a “tragedy” but a person’s right. Reduce military spending. Single-payer healthcare. Less militant police. I don’t agree with all of his stances, but there’s enough alignment I can overlook them.

For all intents and purposes, the guy is a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat. But because Biden was the incumbent, the Democrat National Party had no real primary process at all and sued to keep RFK off the ballot when he ran independently. The DNC has a history of these kinds of shenanigans, as supporters of Bernie Sanders are already aware.

Independent or not, I would have gladly voted for RFK Jr. if he were the Democrat nominee. Then something incredibly strange happened… RFK Jr. ended his independent campaign and endorsed Trump. And then right-wing favorite Tucker Carlson interviewed him. Given my support of Kennedy, I had to consider this move.

So I kept looking.

The Honor Guard

Many Democrats are probably familiar with Tulsi Gabbard already. Born in Hawaii, she’s an Iraq war veteran, four-time senator of Hawaii, and even podcast host.

She ran for the Democratic party nomination in 2020 among a hilariously crowded list of candidates. She was infamously critical of Kamala Harris during one of the debates, and it’s probably no accident that Kamala dropped out shortly afterwards.

She fits many of the progressive checkboxes as a strong woman of color in government. She’s gone on record supporting dropping charges against Edward Snowden among other anti-war stances despite—or perhaps because of—her service in the military. Politico has a study on her 2020 stances and they fall roughly in line with typical Democrat policies. Despite all of that, she somehow became embroiled in a feud with Hillary Clinton. That kind of sin is unforgivable to the DNC, so rather than a darling of the party, they treated her like a pariah. She eventually left the party that she says abandoned her and the American people.

Had things gone differently, I could have seen myself voting for her in 2020. Despite her service to the country as a combat veteran and senator, she’s currently on the TSA’s “Quiet Skies” watchlist. Is that where we are now? Political retaliation? Given the treatment she’s endured for not falling in line, I’m frankly enraged on her behalf.

I still performed a double-take when Tulsi announced her endorsement of Trump. Weren’t Republicans the party of War and abuse of power? Isn’t Trump a misogynist? How crazy has the world gone?

This was starting to deserve further investigation.

A New Generation

Fine, the Democrats are drunk with power and all the Cool Kids are Republicans now. I get it. So I watched the Republican primary process and aside from the usual suspects like Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Chris Christie, there was a new contender I’d never seen before.

Vivek Ramaswamy is a once-in-a-generation polymath. The guy is a Harvard graduate with a law degree from Yale, founded a biotech firm and an asset management firm, and then decided to go into politics. Even that is an understatement, because he launched a political career that could very well eventually win him the presidency. His 2024 run was essentially an advertising campaign for future ventures.

Besides being incredibly articulate in stating his positions, I found myself behind almost every single one of his policies. He quickly made a name for himself for respecting his protestors, and his enthusiastic campaign even during an Iowa blizzard. His 10 Truths, besides being a definitive message, was a brilliant marketing strategy. Some even started jokingly comparing his rhetoric to Javier Milei. Afuera!

I knew it was a long-shot, but I begged the universe to let Vivek win the Republican nomination. The US needs that kind of re-calibration. Perhaps if Trump hadn’t decided to re-enter the race, things may have gone differently. So long as his presence overshadowed all the other candidates, the primary was over before it began.

Regardless, Vivek gracefully bowed out and endorsed trump when that eventuality became clear. Even before then, he refused to take swipes at Trump, and is now campaigning on his behalf. Some have criticized him of trying to be a Trump surrogate and ride his coattails. Whatever the case, I respect Vivek in a way I didn’t expect. He’s a true believer, and we have so little of that in an era of cynical selfishness and lack of accountability.

There seems to be a running theme here. I need to keep looking.

Innovation Unchained

Sticking with the theme of people whom I respect, there’s Elon Musk. As probably the most outspoken and obnoxious of the tech billionaires, he’s certainly a notable figure. And his ventures are—almost without exception—unparalleled success stories:

• Tesla is easily the most dominant electric vehicle manufacturer, and their chargers are now the de-facto standard.
• SpaceX has revolutionized launch systems, and is slated to bring home the astronauts stranded by Boeing.
• Starlink makes broadband internet possible in even the most remote locations, or in the face of natural disasters.
• Twitter / X is probably his most controversial business decision, and opened him to a litany of criticism that continues to boil unabated. Elon sees himself as a champion of Free Speech, which he calls the bedrock of democracy, and the framers of the Constitution would likely agree given its place as the First Amendment.
• Grok is the built-in AI available on X. Despite being a mere “feature” of X, it’s a high-end large language and vision model comparable to ChatGPT, Claude, and other notable AI systems.
• Nuralink is a brain-chip which has assisted quadriplegics and may soon even bring sight to the blind. Given all of my vision problems, I have a personal interest in this, and root for its success.

No matter what you think of his politics, the man is a visionary. His companies are bringing the world into the next phase of human evolution, kicking and screaming if necessary. And yet because he disagrees with the current administration, he’s persona non grata. Stalling his efforts to spite him literally threatens the survival of our species.

What do his posts on X have to do with approving SpaceX launches? Why revoke a $900 million grant to deliver working internet to rural areas when a $42.5 billion program has failed to connect even a single home? Why not fund proven Tesla chargers rather than waste $7.5 billion on a paltry 8 stations? Why continue to harass him in the face of hurricane Helene? Spite? Political maneuvering? What’s the point of that?

Once again, someone I respect has been pushed into the arms of Donald Trump. Why does this keep happening? What’s going on here?

An End to Bias

There seemed to be some kind of underlying process I was clearly missing. Then I saw a headline that seemed to lift the veil.

It read ‘Unprecedented’ positive media for Harris, 89% negative for Trump. Was this a new phenomenon? No, a study in 2017 produced similar findings. Was Trump really as bad as I thought, or was it because the media had some kind of bone to pick with him?

I thought about some of the earliest stories I’d heard of him way back in 2016, and remembered this quote:

Excuse me, they didn’t put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.

And that was the clip that was played non-stop, everywhere, constantly. But I found a longer video, and the rest of the transcript:

You’re changing history, you’re changing culture, and you had people — and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay?

The problem is that Trump often speaks in a dialect of Word Salad, like he’s an easily distracted ferret. If someone made the case to me that he had ADHD, I wouldn’t argue. Even Snopes eventually fact-checked the claim that Trump called Neo Nazies “fine people” as false. I then realized these are the same media outlets that call everything “misinformation” and threw my hands up in despair.

Upon further investigation, it seems six companies essentially own all of our media. These same companies employ veritable armies of sleazy lobbyists to influence their decisions and legislation, literally write laws, and ultimately obliterate any semblance of balance our government may have once represented.

They all loved Trump before he ran for office. The most racist man in history won the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and loved Muhammad Ali? The same guy who was once on friendly terms with Oprah? The guy who refuses to sign a federal abortion ban and does so repeatedly “hates women”? Really? It’s that same repeated “Trump is Hitler” rhetoric that is effectively inspiring people to try and murder him.

And all of this while Dick “War Criminal” Cheney endorses Kamala Harris? The same woman who once jailed the parents of a girl with sickle cell anemia for her “truancy”? And broke the tie on the anti-inflation bill that’s contributing to all the record-breaking inflation? The Border Czar who suddenly isn’t?

I’m sorry, but I don’t buy it. Everything is misinformation, and nothing is, depending on who the current authoritative source is. Say something frequently enough and it becomes the truth. On the one hand, we have a guy everyone in the media and Hollywood—and their dogs—is begging you to hate, and a woman they once wanted Biden to replace is suddenly the second coming of Christ.

No. No way. I can’t do it. My skeptical brain steadfastly refuses to believe any of that.

So no, I’m not voting for Trump. I’m voting for RFK Junior, Tulsi Gabbard, Vivek Ramaswamy, Elon Musk, and the eventual administration he produces with their guidance. Trump has his faults, and I find him personally grating, but he has the right people behind him in my opinion.

Until Tomorrow