As a university professor, I generally applaud students who take the initiative to submit commentaries, but BYU student Tanner Day’s op-ed is so full of misinformation that it begs a response, if only to four of its most demonstrably false claims.
Day affirms that Trump promised “a safer world and a stronger economy, promises that he could make credibly because he had already been president”: Hardly.
In Trump’s first term, he sided with Russia against Ukraine and praised dictators around the globe; he fomented a violent insurrection; and his mismanagement of the pandemic plunged the country into the worst recession since the Great Depression.
“He is surrounded by fierce proponents of the Constitution and the rule of law.” Seriously?
Name one who isn’t a Democrat. The handful of Republicans in Congress who tried to hold Trump accountable in his two impeachments are gone; the Republican supermajority on the Supreme Court has granted him near total immunity for crimes committed in office; and his Cabinet appointments are sycophants and donors who, in exchange for power, are happy to let him do whatever he wants.
“Trump was viewed as the moderate in this election”: Not by the 51% of Americans who didn’t vote for him, nor by many of those who did, who supported Trump precisely because of his extremism.
“There will be an election in four years, and Trump will not be on the ballot”: Trump has mused repeatedly about staying in office indefinitely and has told Christians that “in four years, you won’t have to vote again.”
Sadly, Tanner Day’s degree of misinformation is indicative of how Trump won that demographic. Equally sadly, I fear that Day (along with the rest of us) is in for a rude awakening in a few months.
Blair Bateman, Midvale
