President Donald J. Trump

summary

The election of Donald Trump was an attack. That’s why so many of us feel nauseous, why we feel like the wind has been knocked out of us. We’ve been punched in the gut. To defend ourselves we must be informed, skeptical, unwavering, convincing, and completely honest. The Best Defenses below (and all of the other that appear on the website) have been constructed to help you stand your ground and maybe even convince a few people too.

background

Trump’s Life

• Donald Trump was born Queens in 1946 making him the oldest president in American history. He is the fourth of five children.
• He attended New York Military Academy before going to the Wharton Business School and graduating with a BA in Economics.
• In college he got five deferments and did not serve in Vietnam.
• Trump got married in 1977 to Czech fashion model, Ivana Zelníčková.
  • They had three children (Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric).
  • They divorced in 1992 after Trump's affair with actress Marla Maples became public.
• Trump married Maples in 1993.
  • They had a daughter (Tiffany).
  • They divorced in 1998.
• Trump met Melania Knauss while he was still married to Marla Maples and they started dating shortly afterward.
  • Trump and Melania married in 2005.
  • Their son, Barron, was born in 2006.

Trump’s Business

• Trump started working in his father's real-estate business before graduating college and he closed his first multi-million dollar real estate deal at 26 years old.
• The Grand Hyatt Hotel, his first major deal in Manhattan, was completed in 1980, three years before he completed Trump Tower.
• Trump’s Atlantic City casinos (Trump Plaza, Trump Marina, and the Taj Mahal) were all built or acquired by Trump in the '80s along with the Plaza Hotel in New York and the Mar-a-lago estate in Palm Beach.
• In the '90s all three of Trump’s casinos, as well as the Plaza hotel, went bankrupt due to the real estate market slowing down and Trump's mismanagement.  
• During the '90s, Trump had as much as $3.2 billion in debt.
• He never personally applied for bankruptcy partly because his creditors allowed him to restructure his massive debt.
• Since the '90s, he’s managed to get out of some debt, but not all of it.
• In addition to Trump’s successes in large real estate projects, he had success building golf courses, smaller real estate ventures, and producing the TV show “The Apprentice”.
• Trump has also had many failures: Trump Air, the New Jersey Generals football team, Trump The Game, Tour De Trump Bicycle race, Trump Steaks, Trump Magazine, Trump Vodka, GoTrump.com, Trump Mortgage, Trump University, Trump Network and many others.
• Trump has also been involved in more than 4000 lawsuits including:
  • Being sued by the Justice Department for housing discrimination against African American renters.
  • For the use of undocumented immigrants to complete Trump Tower that he then didn’t pay in full.
  • For swindling students with his fraudulent college, Trump University.
  • When the Florida condos he had pretended he was building but secretly only licensing went bankrupt, screwing investors.
  • Suing New York City twice for tax breaks for his developments.
• Trump is aggressive in using public money to fund his private businesses.
  • He’s used his bankruptcies to renegotiate debt.
  • He’s received subsidies and tax abatements on almost all of his NYC properties all totaling $885 million.
  • He even claimed a $150 thousand small business recovery grant for his wall street property after September 11th despite the fact that he said the property was unaffected by the attacks.

Trump’s Political Life

• Through his father’s political connections, Trump secured a historic 40-year tax abatement for his Grand Hyatt hotel.
• Trump has donated to both Republicans and Democrats on a federal, state, and local level. He has donated more money to Republicans over the years.
• Trump has openly talked about donating to politicians to get favors in exchange.
• Trump ran for president in 2000 as a member of the Reform Party put dropped out, giving Pat Buchanan the nomination.
• Trump has been a member of the Democratic and Republican parties at different points in his life.

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the best defenses

Response 1: Trump didn’t win the electoral college by a landslide. He barely won it at all.

• Of the 58 presidential elections, Trump’s electoral win ranked 48th by percentage of electoral votes won. Compared to contemporary presidents, he received fewer electoral votes than Harry Truman (‘48), Dwight Eisenhower (‘52 & ‘56), Lyndon Johnson (‘64), Richard Nixon (‘72), Ronald Reagan (‘80 & ‘84), George HW Bush (‘88), Bill Clinton (‘92 & ‘96), and Barack Obama (‘08 & ‘12).

Response 2: Trump lost the popular vote by a lot (2,864,974 votes, 2.1% of voters). Trump received 46% of the popular vote.

• The only president to win an election with a smaller percentage of the popular vote was John Quincy Adams in 1824 who was appointed president by the House of Representatives.

Response 3: When compared to other incoming presidents, Trump’s approval rating is shockingly low.

• According to a variety of polls, Trump has a higher unfavorability rating than favorability rating. According to the Washington Post poll, he has the worst favorability rating of any incoming president in the last 40 years.

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Response 1: It’s essential that a president is honest with the electorate, which is why it’s so dangerous to have a president as dishonest as Trump. Democracies demand the participation of informed citizens to function. If we don’t know the truth, how are we expected to vote for candidates who will represent our concerns? Donald Trump’s record-breaking dishonesty threatens our democracy.

• He has a history of both intentionally lying and spreading information without any proof that it’s true.
  • Here’s a short list of his obvious lies:
    • Lying about his father’s involvement in the KKK.
    • Lying about “seeing” Arabs celebrating the 9/11 attacks.
    • Lying about not knowing “anything about David Duke.”
    • Lying that the White House only brought up Russian hacking after Hillary lost.
    • Lying twice about what the CIA hacking report said directly after reading the report.
    • And many more.
  • Here’s a list of the outrageous claims he’s made with absolutely no proof:
    • There was “serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire, and California” that favored Hillary.
    • No one from Obama’s college remembers him going there.
    • America’s GDP was below zero.
    • A photo of a man with assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was Ted Cruz’s father and then that Cruz never denied it.
    • That Hillary Clinton wants to release all violent criminals from prison.
    • That crime is on the rise.
    • That with the amount of money Clinton wanted to spend on refugees, you could rebuild all inner cities.
    • Blacks killed 81 percent of white homicide victims.
    • And many more.
• In 2015 he received year-end recognition from two prominent fact checking websites for being more dishonest than any other politician.
  • FactCheck.org named him the “King of Whoppers” saying “In the 12 years of Factcheck.org’s existence, we’ve never seen his match.”
  • Politifact rolled all his campaign statements into one bunch for their “2015 Lie of the year” and claimed no other politician they’ve rated has been this consistently dishonest.

Response 2: Some of Trump’s biggest lies are the ones he told to his supporters. Presidents break campaign promises frequently, but Trump went back on many of them before even being sworn in.

• During his campaign, Trump put forth serious concerns about corruption in our political system. After he won, he admitted he was never serious about those claims.
  • Trump claimed over and over, without any evidence, that the electoral system in this country is rigged. After he won, he said in West Virginia “You’ve been hearing me say it’s a rigged system, but now I don’t say it anymore because I won. It’s true. Now I don’t care.”
  • Trump said he would put Hillary Clinton in jail if he won. “Lock Her Up” was a campaign slogan. After the election, when his own supporters chanted “lock her up” he responded, “That plays great before the election, now we don’t care, right?” After winning, Trump told the NY Times “It’s just not something I feel strongly about.”
  • One of Trump’s main campaign promises was to drain the swamp in Washington. “Drain the Swamp” became a campaign slogan. After he won the election he said, “Somebody said ‘Drain the Swamp.’ I said, ‘oh that’s so hokey. That is so terrible.’ I said, ‘All right. I’ll try it.’ So like a month ago I said ‘Drain the Swamp.’ The place went crazy...Then I started saying it like I meant it, right?”
    • A month after the election, Corey Lewandowski, former campaign manager, said that “Draining the Swamp” is “somewhere down at the bottom” on Trump’s list of priorities as president.
• Other promises he’s already gone back on include:
  • He said he’d “strongly consider” picking a Supreme Court justice to overturn marriage equality in January of 2016 and five days after the election he said “It’s done...and I’m fine with that.”
  • He said many times that he’d deport the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in this country, and five days after the election he said he would just deport the two or three million “criminal” ones.

Response 3: Trump frequently “changes his mind” on issues. Sometimes he changes his mind right after making public statements, directly contradicting himself.

• Trump said torture “works” and “we should go much stronger than waterboarding” and then changed his mind to say he doesn’t think it works.
• Trump said women should face “some sort of punishment” for having an abortion then said several hours later changed his perspective to say only abortion providers should be punished.
• Trump called for a “Total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” in December 2015 and has since changed his mind or modified his position on that four or five times.

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Response 1: His “successes” at keeping jobs in America are exaggerated or false.

• Trump’s deal with Carrier was a bad, ineffective deal.
  • Carrier originally announced it was going to move around 2000 jobs to Mexico. Trump claimed his deal saved 1100 of those (a little more than half) but even that number is inflated as 300 of those jobs were never going to move in the first place.
  • Carrier didn’t change its mind to move based on Trump’s phone call alone.
    • Carrier will receive $7 million in tax breaks over ten years to not relocate those 800 jobs.
  • The deal probably wasn’t the main reason Carrier stayed.
    • The $7 million payoff over ten years only works out to $875 per worker per year. That’s nothing compared to the $65 million per year savings the company stood to make in Mexico, some of which it will have to give up by taking this deal.
    • Carrier probably only took the deal because Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies, has federal contracts worth $6.7 billion and United Technologies doesn't want to have an adversarial relationship with the new administration. 
  • Trump’s Carrier strategy doesn’t work on a national scale.
    • Indiana has tried to pay companies to keep factory workers in the past and it hasn’t worked. In most cases, companies keep employees at one facility, while closing others that aren’t in the limelight.
    • This deal only worked because Carrier’s parent company had other federal contracts. Most companies that outsource jobs don't also have large federal contracts. 
    • It would be much too expensive to pay all the companies to keep their jobs in the country at the rate that Trump paid. 
      • The US has lost 5 million manufacturing jobs since 2000. If you take the $875 per worker per year number and multiply it by the 5 million jobs lost, it would take $4.3 billion dollars per year just to keep those jobs in the country. That’s just manufacturing jobs. Also, remember the $875 per worker per year rate only worked at Carrier for other reasons. The rate for most companies to keep them from moving would have to be much higher.
• Trump has claimed responsibility for various Ford business decisions to keep workers in the country, but in reality he was not a factor in the decision-making process.
  • Trump claimed responsibility for keeping a Ford factory in Kentucky from moving to Mexico. However, the factory was never planning on moving to Mexico, only relocating the manufacturing of one vehicle to Mexico and that move wasn’t going to cost any jobs.
  • There have been claims that Ford moved a plant from Mexico to Ohio because of Trump’s election, however the decision to move the plant was made in 2011.
  • Trump claimed responsibility for stopping Ford from building a new plant in Mexico in 2015. Not only did Trump not have any actual effect on Ford’s decision, but also Ford never stopped.
  • It’s true Ford CEO Mark Fields said a decision the company made to create 700 new jobs in Flat Rock was “a vote of confidence for President-elect Trump and some of the policies that they may be pursuing.” However, moves like the move to Flat Rock have been happening already under Obama and Bush before him, based on car manufacturing trends. 

Response 2: Trump’s not a great businessman. He was born rich and his father supported him. Many of his “success stories” are filled with illegal corner-cutting or government subsidy. Also, he has had many, many disasters throughout his career and has personally gone into billions of dollars of debt.

• Eight of Trump’s NYC properties (Trump Tower, Trump Plaza, the Grand Hyatt, One Central Park West, Trump Parc East, 120-240 Riverside, Trump Palace Condos, and 40 Wall Street) received government money. Several of them received tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.
  • He secured this public money through political connections, twice suing New York City, and taking advantage of a 9/11 rebuilding grant he didn’t deserve.
  • His tax abatements and subsidies have cost NYC $885 million in lost revenue.
• He’s used company bankruptcies to renegotiate debt six times.
• He used undocumented immigrants to build Trump Tower and then failed to pay these illegally employed people for their work.
• His failed business ventures include Trump Air, the New Jersey Generals football team, Trump The Game, Tour De Trump Bicycle race, Trump Steaks, Trump Magazine, Trump Vodka, GoTrump.com, Trump Mortgage, Trump University, Trump Network and many others.
• During the '90s, Trump had as much as $3.2 billion in debt.

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Response 1: Before running for president, Trump was a businessman who contributed to campaigns in exchange for political favors. He is the swamp. If Trump really wants to drain the swamp, he can take the first step by resigning.

• Trump has used public money frequently for his own financial gain.
  • Eight of Trump’s NYC properties (Trump Tower, Trump Plaza, the Grand Hyatt, One Central Park West, Trump Parc East, 120-240 Riverside, Trump Palace Condos, and 40 Wall Street) received government money. Several of them received tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.
    • He secured this public money through political connections, twice suing New York City, and taking advantage of a 9/11 rebuilding grant he didn’t deserve.
    • All told, Trump has cost NYC $885 million dollars in lost revenue.
• Trump bragged about how his political contributions got him special favors from politicians.
• Trump used his charity to pay off at least one government official so they wouldn’t prosecute his fraudulent university.

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Response 1: Some members of his cabinet (or appointees) have literally no experience in their field.

• Secretary of Housing and Urban Development - Dr. Ben Carson

  • While a genius neurosurgeon, Carson has never worked in government or been involved in public housing with the small exception of living in it as a child.

• Secretary of Energy - Former Texas Governor Rick Perry

  • Perry famously forgot the name of the Department of Energy, the department he is now going to run, during a televised debate in 2012.
  • When offered the position, he accepted the job with no idea what the secretary of the department did.
  • Perry’s has no experience with nuclear weapons or nuclear energy, except a plan he worked on as governor of Texas to create a privately run, low-level nuclear waste repository.

• Secretary of Education - Betsy DeVos

  • DeVos has never worked in education. She has never taught or even attended a public school. She’s never held elected office.

    • She is the only secretary of education in the history of the department who doesn’t fulfill at least one of these qualifications, making her the least qualified secretary of education in American history.

  • Her only experience relating to education is as an advocate and fundraiser for charter schools and school vouchers programs.

• Senior Advisor - Jared Kushner

  • Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, a real estate heir and owner of The New York Observer, has never held elected office.

• UN Ambassador - South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley

  • Haley has no foreign policy experience whatsoever.

Response 2: Many of Trump’s appointees can’t effectively do their jobs as they oppose the missions of the department they are now running.

• Secretary of the Interior - Montana Representative Ryan Zinke

  • According to the mission statement of the US Department of the Interior, the department “protects and manages the Nation’s natural resources ... and honors its trust responsibilities or special commitments to American Indians.” As Montana's representative, Zinke voted to limit the president’s ability to protect public lands under the Antiquities Act, limit public review of hardrock mining applications on federal land, make drought damaged federal land available for grazing, and voted for the Keystone XL pipeline to carry tar sands oil under the water resources for the Standing Rock Sioux.

• Secretary of Housing and Urban Development - Dr. Ben Carson

  • Carson actively opposes essential components of HUD’s work. One of the central pieces of legislation HUD works with is the 1968 Fair Housing Act. The act not only bans housing discrimination but also asks communities to further the goal of integration. Carson disagrees with the second part of the Fair Housing Act. He has said of it:

    • “These government-engineered attempts to legislate racial equality create consequences that often make matters worse.”
    • “There are reasonable ways to use housing policy to enhance the opportunities available to lower-income citizens, but based on the history of failed socialist experiments in this country, entrusting the government to get it right can prove downright dangerous.”
    • He has argued that attempts to achieve the goal of integration are “what you see in communist countries.”

• Secretary of Education - Betsy DeVos

  • Part of the Department of Education’s mission is “ensuring equal access to education.” One way the Department of Education achieves this is by supporting a strong public school system and laws like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) that requires schools to provide free and appropriate education to students with disabilities.

    • DeVos advocates moving money from the largely underfunded public school system to charter schools.
    • She said states should get to decide if they abide by IDEA or not.
    • In theory, school choice promotes equality, because everyone has the option to attend the best school. However, in practice, when DeVos helped create a network of charter schools in Detroit through her advocacy and fundraising, wealthier, whiter students moved out of poorer school districts, thereby increasing inequality and segregation.

• Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) - Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt

  • The EPA ensures that “all Americans are protected from significant risks to human health and the environment,” and that “national efforts to reduce environmental risk are based on the best available scientific information.” The best available scientific information describes global climate change as real and a significant risk to our health.

    • Pruitt has sued the EPA twice to stop EPA plans to reduce greenhouse gasses.
    • Pruitt brags about being “a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.”
    • Pruitt has such a close relationship with the energy industry that he sent a letter in his name to the EPA defending natural gas drilling that had actually been written by Devon energy and given to him by lobbyists. He's now responsible for regulating an industry that he believes shouldn't be regulated. 

• Secretary of Labor - CEO of CKE Restaurants Andrew Puzder

  • The mission of the US Department of Labor is “to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners ... improve working conditions ... and assure work related benefits and rights.” In Puzder’s tenure as CEO of fast food restaurants Hardees and Carl’s Jr, he hasn’t been a pro-labor CEO.

    • 60% of CKE Restaurants have had one or more Fair Labor Standards Act violations.
    • Employees have reported while working at CKE restaurants their hours were cut in the middle of shifts to reduce costs and restaurants were regularly understaffed. Other employees said they were asked to work early or during breaks without clocking in. There have accusations of failure to pay fair wages to managers and misclassifying employees to avoid paying overtime.
    • Puzder is an outspoken critic of expanded overtime eligibility.
    • Puzder believes computer workers to be preferable to humans saying “They’re always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case.”
    • Puzder, as part of an industry nonprofit, sued the Obama Department of Labor for reforming overtime rules allow more employees to receive time-and-a-half pay for working over 40 hours. The case is still in the courts. As secretary of the Department of Labor, it will now be up to Puzder to defend the law he, in part, sued to get rid of.

• Secretary of Energy - Former Texas Governor Rick Perry

  • Perry advocated shutting down the Department of Energy in 2012, arguing “They’ve never created one bit of energy, the best I can tell.” Apparently you can be against a department and be incredibly ignorant of its responsibilities.

Response 3: Many members of his cabinet are the wealthy elites in business and government that Trump accused of making up the “political swamp.” Instead of draining the swamp, Trump’s submerged himself in it.  

• Secretary of State - Former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson

  • Multi-millionaire Rex Tillerson, as former CEO of ExxonMobile, is certainly a member of the wealthy elite Trump criticized throughout his campaign.

• Secretary of Education - Betsy DeVos

  • As a political fundraiser, billionaire Betsy DeVos uses her wealth to influence elections and policy. She is the perfect example of the political corruption that comes from money in politics.

    • She’s publicly talked about her and her family using their wealth to influence politics. In 1997, she wrote “My family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican party...we expect a return on our investment.”
    • Her family has donated over $200 million to Republicans and republican institutions.

  • Even as she accepts the position as the Secretary of Education, she holds between $5 and $25 million of stock in an educational enhancement company. Her decisions as the secretary of education could impact her personal wealth through these stocks. She’s made no effort to sell her stake.

• Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) - Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt

  • Before he was appointed head of the EPA, Pruitt worked closely with the oil and gas industry. Now he’s responsible for regulating the companies that supported him.

    • Pruitt’s ties to private oil and gas companies are so strong that the chief executive of an Oklahoma oil and gas company was the co-chairman of his 2013 re-election campaign.
    • He sent a letter under his name to the EPA defending natural gas drilling that had actually been written by Devon Energy company and given to him by lobbyists.

• Secretary of Labor - CEO of CKE Restaurants Andrew Puzder

  • Puzder, as a multi-millionaire fast-food CEO, contributed almost a million dollars to republican candidates and groups.

• Secretary of Transportation - Banker and Shipping Heiress Elaine Chao

  • Multimillionaire heiress Elaine Chao is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has been a Vice President at Bank of America, a banker at Citicorp, and was on the board of Wells Fargo.

• Secretary of Commerce - Investor and “King of Bankruptcy” Wilbur Ross

  • Billionaire Wall Street investor Wilbur Ross is the richest of Trump's cabinet of the super rich. Ross made his fortune acquiring bankrupt companies and negotiating to acquire the assets without paying the debt.

• Secretary of the Treasury - Hedge Fund Manager Steven Mnuchin

  • Multi-millionaire hedge fund manager and former Goldman Sachs partner Steve Mnuchin made his fortune from, among other things, taking advantage of the 2008 crash to purchase the mortgage assets of a California bank and with $13 billion in government subsidies, then foreclosed on many of them. This lead to a protest outside his Bel-Air house by evicted homeowners.

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Response 1: Divesting himself of his assets is the only effective way to prevent conflicts of interest. It’s the only way we could be sure he isn’t acting to enrich his future holdings.

• If President Trump knows that he will be repossessing his assets after he’s served his term as he has said he will, it is financially in his best interest to act in a way to increase the value of his businesses and his brand. That itself is a shocking conflict of interest. Purely financially speaking, Trump stands to make much more money using the office of the president to benefit his businesses than we, as a country, pay him to serve as president. Anything less than complete divestment is unacceptable.
  • Ethics lawyers for both George W. Bush and Barack Obama have said that his placing his business in a trust to be run by his sons and his designee is not nearly sufficient to separate himself from conflicts of interest.
  • Trump’s lawyer argued that him divesting from his business would “exacerbate” conflicts of interest because he would still receive royalties from his brand and couldn’t control how that brand was used.
    • He could, of course, refuse to accept royalties if he were truly concerned.
    • Owning the licensing rights gives him many more opportunities to profit from his office than if he didn't control his brand. 
    • The royalties are pennies compared to the licensing rights.
• The Trump Organization is a private company. Information on its holdings, potential shell companies, and businesses it has a stake in are not made public. That means that any policy Trump puts forward that affects business in any way could potentially be used to enrich his company (which he has said he will take back over once his term is up) without us even knowing.

Response 2: Trump should be specifically subject to ethics restrictions considering his sketchy ethical past.

• Trump isn’t transparent.
  • He has still not released his tax returns and Trump spokespeople have said he doesn’t need to now. If he owes money to foreign governments, we still have no way of knowing.
  • The Trump Organization is private company. It’s holdings, potential shell companies, businesses it has a stake in, are not made public.
• Trump has a history of using money unethically.
  • He was sued for fraud and racketeering in the case of Trump university and settled for $25 million.
  • He was found to have used his private charity for legal fees and a painting of himself to hang in his office.

Response 3: A blind trust would certainly prevent conflicts of interest more than a trust run by his children.

• Trump will, of course, still have contact with his sons while he is president. Even small exchanges of information from Trump to his sons could affect their business decisions giving the company an unfair advantage in the market. 
  • His sons have more of an interest in the success of the company than a third party that doesn’t stand to profit once Trump’s term ends. They, therefore, have more reason to get private information from their father, the president.

Response 4: Trump has not done nearly enough to clear himself of his responsibilities to avoid emoluments. While it’s true that the president isn’t subject to some rules concerning conflicts of interest, he is subject to the emoluments clause in Article 1 of the Constitution.

• The clause specifies, among other things, that the president can’t receive money from foreign governments or representatives of foreign governments.
• Right now Trump, as he has not divested himself of his business, still personally profits from any business his company does with foreign governments.
  • The Trump Organization is currently leasing out office space to a state-controlled bank in China.
  • Trump Towers Pune, a development project in India, is owned by a family with close personal ties to the head of the National Congress Party.
  • And many more.
• Trump lawyers argue the emoluments clause only refers to gifts and not exchanges of goods and services. Also, they have pledged to give up all income from Trump hotel stays by foreign leaders. This is not true and not enough. Due to the Trump Organization's lack of transparency, foreign governments can now easily pay the president through his company by engaging in a private business transactions. If they did, there would be no public way of tracking that direct violation of the emoluments clause. 

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warnings

Trump’s comments are tricky. He contradicts himself regularly, making it difficult to pin down his actual perspectives. He has claimed he was kidding or being sarcastic in certain cases to get out of outright lies. He talks in incomplete, confusing, rambling sentences that can be interpreted many ways due to his imprecise use of language. When using what Trump has said in your argument, stick to clear statements that he’s repeated and are demonstrably false. Even with those limitations, you’ll have a lot to go on.

Don’t be condescending or elitist. Trump won the election for a lot of reasons, but one of them was that he didn’t talk down to his supporters. He seemed genuine and characterized Clinton as a disconnected elitist. When you’re talking about Trump to Trump supporters, be genuine. Don’t be condescending. Talk to them like equals.

Forget Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump is an exponentially worse president than Hillary Clinton ever would have been. I know it. You know it. That said, Hillary isn’t going to be president. Many Trump voters don’t like Trump and only voted for him because they hated Hillary. Now that Hillary’s gone, it should be easier to convince them that Trump’s a monster. So don’t mention Hillary.

Don’t attack your audience for voting for Trump. This is HARD. It’s mind-boggling that so many people voted for a man who has said and done the things Trump has said and done, but they did and the election is over now. Stay focused on your goal: to tear down the facade of Donald Trump and expose him for what he really is. It’s more important that you convince your audience not to support Trump going forward than to convince them they made a mistake.

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