Donald Trump, stupid leaders and the Great Wall of Mexico
We’re all tired of presidential politics, and we haven’t even made it to the election year. We’ve heard it all before…and before that.
Then, on a hot hazy Tuesday morning in June, the 2016 presidential election cycle instantly became awesome.
Walking onto the stage to the tune of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in a Free World,” Donald Trump delivered one of the most epic candidacy announcements in recent memory.
“The [United States] has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems,” said a defiant Trump.
Wow, now I’m listening.
“Every time we give Iraq equipment, the first time a bullet goes off in the air, they leave it.” Trump stated that we’ve lost more than 2,300 Humvees to enemies’ forces, essentially because of Iraq’s military cowardice.
How’s that for foreign policy?
But that’s mostly because, according to Trump, politicians “don’t know what they’re doing.”
And that’s because “they’re controlled fully by the lobbyists, by the donors and by the special interests.”
Trump should know. “I have lobbyists that can produce anything for me,” he said. “They’re great.”
The good news is that Trump assured voters that he wouldn’t use them.
He doesn’t have to.
“I’m not using donors. I don’t care, he said. “I’m really rich.” To prove his point, he produced a financial summary assessing his net worth at around $8.7 billion.
Then Trump got tough on Mexico. “I will build a great, great wall on our southern border,” he said. “And I will make Mexico pay for that wall.”
Trump is going after Mexico for taking manufacturing jobs from Tennessee. He’s mad at Ford for going there too. In fact, he spent several minutes of his announcement reenacting a fictional conversation between President Trump, Ford’s chief executive officer and an army of lobbyists and donors.
Donald Trump isn’t interested in their excuses.
When he’s done with Ford and Mexico, our southern neighbors will have paid to barricade themselves from the United States, and Ford will be clamoring to bring their operations back to the states.
And those returning jobs will just add the number created by “the greatest jobs president that God has ever created.”
According to Trump, our biggest election issue is competency. “How stupid are our leaders?”
“Take the New England Patriots and Tom Brady and have them play your [high school] football team. That’s the difference between China’s leaders and our leaders.”
They’re so stupid that Secretary of State John Kerry “goes into a bicycle race at 72 years old and falls and breaks his leg.”
Under a Trump presidency, that sort of silliness won’t be a problem. “I will never be in a bicycle race,” said Trump. “That I can tell you.”
With $8.7 billion and an attitude, Trump might not be the next commander in chief, but he could certainly make things interesting.
While Trump has an uphill battle in the Republican primary, his boisterous announcement surprisingly touched on many of the items the average conservative voter cares about. To put it mildly, it wasn’t the carefully scripted sterilized rhetoric we’ve seen so far.
More importantly, his wealth and name identification make it certainly possible that he makes the cut for the televised debates.
“The American Dream is dead,” he concluded. “But if I get elected president, I will bring it back, bigger, better and stronger than ever before and we will make America great again.”
And you thought the presidential election cycle was going to be boring.
