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Inside the Trump campaign

In the weeks and months since Labor Day, it has been my honor and privilege to work for and serve the President Elect of the United States Donald Trump.

My interest in Trump’s campaign as an observer and a supporter goes back to the very beginning, to the infamous pictures of Trump and his family descending the escalators at Trump Tower in June 2015. While Trump’s direct language caught my interest as he announced his candidacy that day, I had little idea that in just over a year I would be riding that very same escalator into work every morning.

My personal role in the Trump campaign began in voter services, where I logged incoming mail, as each piece of mail sent to the campaign was responded to.

I read the stories of hundreds every day, all of whom were desperate for Trump to win. People who had been left behind and forgotten, who felt that Trump was the only candidate speaking directly to them and their concerns. People without a reliable paycheck donated amounts as small as $5 to help the man they believed in. These are people who just want a better future for themselves and their families.

After working with voter services for several weeks, I transferred to the communications department. I was moved to the War Room, which is the center of all communications activity. During the latter stages of the race, the War Room worked nearly 24/7. I continue to work there during the presidential transition, monitoring news for both positive and negative stories.

Hundreds of millions of advertising dollars were spent by Trump’s opponents, both fellow Republicans in the primaries and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the general election, with the sole purpose of besmirching Trump’s character. Partisan advertising is to be expected, and its effects were felt on both candidates. What is not expected, however, is a partisan media.

Wikileaks published over 50,000 of Clinton’s Campaign Chairman John Podesta’s emails, some of which showed evidence of favorable treatment from journalists from Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Even CNN, which is assumed to be centrist, was in on the racket. During the Democratic primaries, debate questions were allegedly leaked to Clinton on more than one occasion.

All of these connections comprised a coordinated effort to render Trump unelectable, and it almost worked. However, the mainstream media did not account for the plummeting public trust in news coverage. On November 9 the supposed experts were just as surprised as the people relying on their coverage for information.

In the aftermath of the election, I was disappointed, but unsurprised, to see the results of a poll of 315 High School students conducted by the Government and Political Theory class that showed only 17 percent of students favoring Trump. What was perhaps more disappointing, and less expected, was that of the 53 faculty members polled, all voted for Hillary Clinton.

ASL is a school that says it champions diversity, which in my 7 years as a student there, stood as a fair statement. The liberal faculty consensus shown by this poll, suggests ASL is not as diverse as it claims to be. Yes, there is diversity in ethnicity, race, religion and appearance at ASL, no one can dispute that. But is there diversity of thought and ideas at ASL? This poll says there is not, which is frankly disappointing and indicative of troublesome hiring patterns for the school.

I am not saying that all faculty should be rabid Trump supporters, far from it, but I do find it astounding that not a single of the 53 polled faculty members has a strain of conservative ideology to bring to the table. Were there no economics teachers in favor of the deregulated, lower taxed economy that Trump was offering? Were there no social studies teachers sympathetic to the rise in anti-globalization sentiment seen across the world, mirrored by candidates like Trump, Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage? Does no teacher see the faults in Obamacare that Trump pointed out?

For a rigorous academic debate about the merits of any political ideology, manifest in economics or any other school of thought, ASL should provide both sides of the argument, which is apparently not happening.

Groupthink and confirmation bias of liberal sensibilities is a big part of why Trump won this election. It is too easy for people who do not like Trump to dismiss his supporters as racists. That also defies logic and data, it is the opposite of what I found in countless letters I read, and is not a winning political position either. 

To say Trump won because of racist America, is to ignore the facts. Trump could not have won Florida without large Cuban-American and Haitian-American support. Trump could not have won Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Iowa without winning the support of people who voted for President Obama 4 and 8 years ago. What the mainstream media missed was that Trump’s movement was not a racial movement, but it was a movement to restore government honesty and fidelity to the American people.

Members of the ASL community may believe Trump’s Presidency will see a new rise in deliberate, institutional racism. However, in his victory speech, Trump stated his victory was a “movement comprised of Americans from all races, religions, backgrounds and beliefs, who want and expect our government to serve the people, and serve the people it will.”

President Elect Trump has no ulterior motives or special interests, all he has is a debt of gratitude and loyalty to the American people who elected him their President. Trump will enter office full of new, bright ideas, excited to “Make America Great Again” for every single American in the country.

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