Okay so you’ve possibly seen a lot about Trump recently. And by a lot I mean every single news article listed in the politics section of almost every single news site you can find. For all of Trump’s bluster against the media being for Clinton, they sure give him a lot of air time. It’s a cycle. Trump says something that he knows will make people angry and the media covers it. Extensively covers it.
Trump seems to have the idea that if he isn’t winning then everyone else has screwed up as evidenced by the resignation of his campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Trump isn’t the kind of guy to take responsibility for his own actions and, at the end of the day, it’s just impossible for him to keep his mouth shut.
Meanwhile, Clinton’s new message is “Hey! I’m not Donald Trump and that is why you should vote for me!” So it seems that the more Trump talks the more Clinton shuts up. It also means she can get away with a lot more. Has anyone noticed that she hasn’t held one single press conference in 269 days? For a presidential candidate, that’s a lot of days. That’s almost unprecedented.
The thing about press conferences is that they are unpredictable. There are no approved questions to answer and most of the time, you cannot assume what the press is going to ask. However, to put things in perspective, December 5, 2015 was her last press conference. That was before her primaries and before the terror attacks in Paris, Brussels, Nice and Orlando.
Her unwillingness to throw herself at the mercy of the press is understandable. It’s like willingly going in the den of a pack of wolves. However, she isn’t communicating with those whom it is really important to talk to. Her voters. She only looks like she is avoiding all the hard questions.
On the other hand, Trump can’t seem to stop speaking to his voters. I can only imagine that his campaign staff close their eyes in agony when he goes off script. “Oh please. Please not again. Did he really just say that all African Americans were living in poverty with no jobs and poor education?” After all, politicians don’t speak for themselves. They have staff for that kind of thing, but Trump wants everyone to know he has his own ideas, just not great ones.
Remember that time when the campaign messages were hope and freedom and dreams of butterflies in a prairie of flowers? Now it’s we are all going to hell in a handbasket and I’m the only one who can save you so vote for me! It’s a message that many people have either fallen for or criticized extensively and now we have two candidates that not very many people like. No one really thought we would be here at the beginning of the election season. I myself laughed when Trump announced he was running. So I was wrong.
When we think of a president, we think of the leader of our nation. The one who represents us to the rest of the world and who makes change happen. But I don’t want to be represented by someone that almost everyone says they can’t trust or someone who people don’t know whether to be offended at or just laugh at them. Someone who either blames the media for everything or someone who just ignores it all together. It seems normal for all of us to begin freaking out as we look towards an uncertain future. Our inner conspiracy theorist comes out as we question what we truly know about our nation and wonder who all is keeping secrets from the American public.
If it is any reassurance, I don’t think we need to freak out, even though it seems like we should all just pack up and move to Canada. My one year of French in high school claims that I wouldn’t survive a day there. We still have these things called Congress and the Senate and while there is an argument on whether they actually get anything done, they do exist and until it becomes time for budget talks, they are still up and running. Whoever the president is, Republican, Democrat or maybe even someone from the Green Party or an independent, they will have to pass through a very angry Congress and Senate and no executive order or veto can really change that. The Constitution is very complicated, but it is here to safeguard us from any chance of a corrupt government.
At the end of the day, I think we are all going to be okay. We are still a democracy and you still have a voice even if you feel it has been drowned out by the dominating figures in this world.
Laina Yost
Associate Editor