President Clinton Or President Trump: Everything That’s Wrong With Election 2016

The title says it all. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the culmination of a broken, corrupt electoral system that has left a massive portion of the United States’ electorate between a rock and a hard place. No one seems to really like either candidate, and many voters are considering voting for a third party and even writing in Bernie Sanders for president.

I could devote an entire piece on how the dumbing down of our society has brought us to this point (and perhaps I will sometime), but for the purpose of this particular article, I’ll focus on why both Clinton and Trump are everything that’s wrong with Election 2016.

First up is Donald Trump.

• He’s a misogynist and is vocal about it, but he doesn’t think it makes him sexist.
• He has a nasty habit of not paying his bills, and threatens to go into bankruptcy to avoid paying what he owes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7j86EC6gAM

• He’s a tax cheat, and during the debate said that makes him “smart.”
• According to the New York Times, Trump University is accused of knowingly defrauding students with high-pressure sales tactics, leaving them with large debts.
• He was sued for housing discrimination back in the 1970s.
• He tried to force a widow out of her home to build a casino parking lot using eminent domain (he lost).
• Trump rallies are notoriously violent, with people of color often the victims of unprovoked attacks.
• He wants to deport immigrants, and the Washington Post asserts that under his plan, U.S. citizens might even be deported during sweeping mass roundups.
• Trump wants to cut taxes for the rich, while reducing assistance for the poor and working class.
• He believes President Reagan’s failed trickle-down economics was a great thing for the economy.
• Trump wants to cut the Environmental Protection Agency. When asked about protecting the environment on Fox News last year, he said business trumps the environment.

“We’ll be fine with the environment. We can leave a little bit, but you can’t destroy business.”

• He wants to defund Planned Parenthood, although abortions are not funded with money received by the federal government.
• Trump wants to cut the Department of Education.
• He believes that green energy is “an expensive feel-good for tree-huggers,” and thinks that oil is the life-blood of corporations.
• He is against gun control.
• Trump doesn’t believe in a single payer healthcare system.
• He has admitted to taking advantage of the H1-B visa loophole but thinks we ought to stop them, according to On the Issues.

This isn’t even everything I could find on Trump, either. Granted, some of his policies seem to make sense, but with his penchant for pathological lying, can we really trust him to do what’s right beyond that which benefits himself? In a nutshell, with Trump, we’d have a megalomaniacal president, whose number one priority would be to himself and his business. The American people would be an afterthought.

Where to begin with Hillary Clinton? There is so much information, but I’ll do my best to get to the meat of it.

• The Clinton Foundation participated in “pay to play” schemes in which countries with horrible human rights records make large donations in exchange for sweetheart arms deals. The New York Times states the allegations have not been proved, but also calls these ties “tangled alliances.”
• Although not indicted, James Comey weakly condemned Clinton for her improper use of a private email server that risked our national security while she was secretary of State.
• Clinton used her leverage as secretary of State to force a candidate for president in Haiti to drop out, leading the way for a corrupt candidate to win, according to The Daily Beast. It was a move that proved devastating for the small Caribbean country.
• Clinton also reportedly used her foundation as a tool to generate personal income in the earthquake-devastated nation.
• She supported the Honduran military coup that removed a democratically elected president and installed a dictator, leading to large numbers of Hondurans to flee the country due to subsequent and widespread violence.
• Clinton supported deporting children back to war-torn Latin American countries, where some of them died from the violence they had originally fled.

• She supported a U.S.-NATO coup of Libya, which removed Muammar Gaddafi from power after the Libyan leader had sought to create an African currency that would rely on a gold standard rather than the U.S. dollar. In April, I wrote about Clinton emails that linked her to the death of Gaddafi and possibly the Benghazi attacks.
• Documents released by WikiLeaks proved that Clinton either colluded with the DNC or knew about its favoritism toward her during the Democratic primary.
• When husband Bill was president, Clinton vigorously supported welfare reform, which made the lives of poor people — particularly African Americans — even worse.
• Clinton also wholeheartedly supported prison reform under President Bill Clinton, and famously declared, “We have to bring them to heel,” regarding African-American youth whom she described as superpredators.
• In 2001, Clinton suggested that to help Israel against the threat of Iran nuclear power, the United States should help Syrians overthrow Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. The emails were released by WikiLeaks.
• Has vocally threatened to “obliterate” Iran if she believes its government is considering harming Israel.
• Supports military action against countries she believes have committed cyberattacks while supporting the Unites States’ own cyber warfare.

Like Trump, this list of Clinton’s negatives don’t even delve deep enough to show just how bad she would be for our country as president. But while Trump talks a frightening game, Clinton has engaged in it. Suffice it to say that with a President Clinton, the U.S. would engage in constant international war, possibly with Russia and China, as I discussed in a previous story.

Our country will suffer tremendously under both a President Trump or a President Clinton. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. And that, dear readers, is what is wrong with this election. These are the choices the Democrats and Republicans have thrust upon us. We’re damned if we vote Democratic, damned if we vote Republican, and damned if we vote Johnson or Stein. Because let’s face it, one of the two major party candidates will win the election, whether through fair or nefarious means. We’re stuck with two power-hungry, greedy, narcissistic maniacs whose main objectives are personal gain, not the welfare of the American people. And the sad thing is, we could have done much better than this.

[Featured Image by Evan Vucci/AP Images]