{"id":107757,"date":"2020-10-19T16:32:57","date_gmt":"2020-10-19T23:32:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=107757"},"modified":"2020-10-19T16:32:57","modified_gmt":"2020-10-19T23:32:57","slug":"president-trump-is-a-horrible-person-with-a-horrible-record-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/10\/19\/president-trump-is-a-horrible-person-with-a-horrible-record-opinion\/","title":{"rendered":"President Trump is a horrible person with a horrible record | Opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andres Oppenheimer,Miami Herald<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

When people ask me why I\u2019m so critical of President Trump, I tell them that it\u2019s not just because \u2014 as I discovered first-hand when I interviewed him in 2013 \u2014 he\u2019s a horrible human being and a terrible role model for our children. It\u2019s for reasons that go far beyond his awful personality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t support Trump because his mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a world record of more than 218,000 deaths. With only 4 percent of the world\u2019s population, America has more than 20 percent of the world\u2019s COVID-19 deaths. The United States suffered many more COVID-19 deaths as a percentage of its population than Canada, Germany, South Korea and other wealthy countries. That\u2019s a fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And many of the U.S. deaths could have been prevented. Trump knew about the lethality of the pandemic early on \u2014he is on tape telling author Bob Woodward this in February \u2014 but chose to lie to the American people for fears that it would ruin his re-election chances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of leading by example, wearing a mask and preaching social distance, Trump has mocked people who do that. For selfish reasons, Trump neglected his main duty \u2014 to protect the American people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t support Trump because I can\u2019t back a candidate who has built his political career on racism and xenophobia. He started his 2016 campaign by falsely claiming that most Mexican undocumented immigrants are criminals and rapists; he separated immigrant children from their parents\u2019 and claimed that there are very fine people\u201d on both sides when neo-Nazi thugs clashed with protesters in Charlottesville.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emboldened by Trump\u2019s racist rhetoric, neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups are flourishing. There is a huge rise in anti-Hispanic, anti-Black, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States, according to the FBI. Trump\u2019s own former Defense Secretary (R) Gen. James Mattis said recently that his former boss is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t support Trump because his veiled threats not to recognize the results of the 2020 election if he loses, his constant verbal attacks against America\u2019s public servants and his daily claims that an independent press is the enemy of the people\u201d undermine America\u2019s democracy like nothing else we\u2019ve seen in our lifetimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t support Trump because his efforts to dismantle Obamacare without replacing it with any other plan threatens to leave millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions without health services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t support Trump because he is on the wrong side of the struggle to stop global warming, protect women\u2019s rights and pass gun-safety measures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t support Trump because his claims to have created the greatest economy on Earth are ludicrous. Before the pandemic, he had largely benefited from, and continued, the Obama years\u2019 recovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While former President Obama reduced unemployment from 10 percent in 2008 to 4.7 percent in 2016, Trump only further reduced it to 3.7 percent in early 2020. Since the start of the pandemic, it\u2019s back to nearly 8 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t support Trump because his foreign policy \u2014 except for helping forge a peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates \u2014 has been a string of failures. His Israeli-Palestinian peace plan never materialized, his love affair with North Korea resulted in nothing and his verbal attacks on European allies have left America more isolated than ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s worse, Trump\u2019s embrace of the dictators of North Korea, Russia, China, and Turkey has left the United States with no moral authority to lead any international efforts to restore democracy and defend human rights anywhere, including in Venezuela and Cuba.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Trump\u2019s own former National Security Adviser John Bolton told me, Trump\u2019s hard-line rhetoric against Cuba and Venezuela is political theater for domestic consumption. If Trump were serious about restoring democracy in Venezuela, he would have long put pressure on Russia \u2014 Venezuela\u2019s biggest backer \u2014 to stop helping that country\u2019s dictatorship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t support Trump because hardly a day goes by without him insulting our intelligence, claiming that the COVID-19 pandemic is almost over when U.S. coronavirus cases are once again on the rise or that Mexico will pay for his border wall, or re-tweeting crazy conspiracy theories such as the one alleging that Osama bin Laden\u2019s death was an Obama hoax.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump is not just a horrible person, a danger to public health and a serial liar. He\u2019s a threat to America\u2019s democracy. Another four years of Trump would turn this country into a banana republic. America needs a return to normalcy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t miss the Oppenheimer Presenta\u201d TV show at 8 p.m. E.T. Sunday on CNN en Espa\u00f1ol. Twitter: @oppenheimera<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andres Oppenheimer,Miami Herald When people ask me why I\u2019m so critical of President Trump, I tell them that it\u2019s not just because \u2014 as I discovered first-hand when I interviewed him in 2013 \u2014 he\u2019s a horrible human being and a terrible role model for our children. It\u2019s for reasons that go far beyond his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}