Shouldn’t We Give Trump a Chance?

DECEMBER+15%2C+2016%3A+President-Elect+Donald+Trump+arrives+on+stage+to+deliver+a+speech+at+a+Thank+You+tour+rally+held+at+the+Giant+Center.+

Credit to Evan El-Amin

DECEMBER 15, 2016: President-Elect Donald Trump arrives on stage to deliver a speech at a Thank You tour rally held at the Giant Center.

By Martin Groves, Newspaper Staffer

There is no doubt that President Donald J. Trump has been a divisive figure in American politics, both before and after his inauguration. While it is true that a lot of the comments that he made and policies he promised to implement are controversial, he was elected to office on that manifesto. Having criticized politicians in the past for not sticking to their word, President Trump has backed himself into a corner, one in which he must implement what he has said he would, because that is precisely what his voters expect.

Let’s take a look back at the campaign and see if Trump really has followed through on what he’s said. He said he would nominate a conservative supreme court justice – done. He promised to withdraw the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership – done. He guaranteed a crackdown on immigration – definitely done, albeit rather controversially. He would impose a hiring freeze on civilian government employees – done. He would authorize construction of the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines – done as well. Must we list anymore?

While most of what he has done has been through executive orders, something he criticized Obama for, he is doing exactly what he had told the American people he would do if elected. On top of this, much of what he has done has reflected badly in the opinion polls, with his approval rating of 39% according to CBS news, a historical low of any President prior to their first Congressional Address since Jimmy Carter in 1977. Trump could certainly take the easy way out of this situation, by reversing some of what he has implemented, but doing that would make him a hypocrite, just like any other establishment politician, the polar opposite of his image and his appeal as being an outsider and non-establishment. By sticking to his policies and ideas, regardless of their unpopularity, what Trump has shown is that he is a man of his word.

Taking a look specifically at the crackdown on immigration, arguably Trump’s most unpopular policy, where holders of passports from seven Muslim-majority nations were temporarily banned from entering the U.S. The signing of this particular executive order was met with global outrage and a massive response from the media, most of which was negative. Some even portrayed Trump as a war-criminal, but is this migrant ban really as bad as it has been made out to be? Trump had promised that if he were elected, he would become more ‘presidential’. While seemingly trivial, his original proposal of a “Muslim ban” has now been twiddled down to a ban on just seven nations, all of which were identified under the Obama administration as being high risk. Yes, it is an enormous shame that so many innocent people have been negatively affected by this politically-incorrect policy, but it was a policy on which Trump has a mandate to carry out.

In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan was an outsider too, utterly despised by the establishment, yet he managed to win two landslide elections, defeat communism, and sparked what would become over 25 years of strong economic growth. While much of what Trump has done so far has been divisive, he needs to be given a chance. Who knows, after what has been a pretty rough start to his presidency, Trump might just go on to do something great.