E26 – To Trump or Not to Trump?

<<Sorry! This is transcribed by AI. I didn’t have time to edit it!>>

What is up, my friends? Welcome to Speakeasy English, the number one podcast on the internet. If you only ask my mama. All right, welcome back to another episode. I appreciate you joining me here. This is Speakeasy English, a podcast 100% in English, spoken by a native English speaker. That’s me. My name is Brandon and I am your host. Remember, all of the transcripts are free and available on our website. Speakeasyenglish.club, that is, Speakeasyenglish.club. On this podcast, we talk about all sorts of things. I am passionate about learning languages and using podcasts to do that, and I’m also passionate about so many other things. One of those things includes politics and not the old boring politics of 20 years ago. I mean, the new and constantly changing dynamic situation in which we find ourselves now here in the United States. We spoke about this in our last episode and actually in our last two episodes. But because it is so important and because there is a major election coming up here in the United States, I thought I would continue this subject a little bit longer. So in the last episode, I talked about how in general I have conservative political views now. That means I lean right. I’m a little bit right of center. Center would be totally neutral. You don’t have opinions that favor one party or another. All of your opinions are very much in the middle. If you are to the left here, then you would most likely be a Democrat, and if you are to the right, then you would most likely be a Republican. The people in the middle, more or less like me, sometimes vote Democrat and sometimes vote Republican. It just depends on the candidate and their specific views. In my case, my political instincts. My natural views are generally more conservative than they are liberal, but I’m very much in the middle. So you would call somebody like me? Center right, meaning I’m close to the centre, I’m close to the middle, but I’m a little bit conservative now. As I mentioned last episode, I do have some very strong views that are liberal that are to the left, for example, when it comes to health care and women’s reproductive rights, I am very much in agreement with the Democrat Party. That is, I am pretty far to the left, pretty liberal on those topics. But when it comes to other topics like border security and immigration, um, when it comes to tax policy or when it comes to the right to bear arms, that means the right to own a gun. I am very much center, right. So I’m not far right. There are some very crazy people on the far, far right. I am not one of those, but I am center, right. Which means I’m toward the middle. But I do lean conservative. Okay, I’m sorry if that is all very boring, but in today’s political climate, I find it necessary to first make it clear what my opinions and what my political ideology looks like before I start discussing anything else. Okay, so I told you in the last episode that I do not personally support President Trump, even though I lean conservative and therefore I am mostly in agreement with a number of his policies. Of course, there are all sorts of crazy things he says and does that I do not agree with. But for example, when it comes to the need for a secure border and tighter immigration control, I agree with that when it comes to lowering taxes. For businesses. I agree with that. When it comes to tax policy and fiscal policy, I have many reasons for why I believe what I believe. My degree that is my education at university is in economics. And so while that is all very boring and I will not discuss it on the podcast, I do have good reasons for supporting certain aspects of Trump’s tax policy and economic policies. So if I agree with many of his policies, then why do I not support him? Well, let’s pause there and talk briefly about democracy. So I am blessed enough to live here in the United States, which is one of or at least it used to be, one of the world’s most stable and secure democracies. Why and how were we one of the world’s most secure democracies? Well, for a democracy to work, everyone must believe that it is legitimate. You must believe that your vote counts, and we must have the institutions to make sure that is true, that everyone is able to vote, and that we count the votes and report the votes. Fairley and all of our politicians respect the outcome, the results of those votes, and everyone agrees to peacefully transfer power to the next elected leader. Nobody tries to keep power if they lose, and nobody tries to convince the public that they need to rise up because of some sort of fraud or some conspiracy. No. Here in the United States, everyone respects the process of democracy. Everyone believes that the democracy we have is true and legitimate, and all of our leaders are committed to respecting that is adhering to and listening to the outcome of our elections, the results of our elections. Well, at least that’s how it was before Donald Trump. Trump began even before the 2016 election. That is the election where he first won the presidency and he defeated Hillary Clinton. Even before that election. He refused to say whether or not he would respect the outcome of the vote. That is, he refused to say whether or not he would accept the will of the American people. And remember, this is before any voting happened. So there was no reason to believe that the election would be compromised or untrustworthy in any way. So he started saying this before the very first presidential election that he was in. So back in 2016, and even after he won, he claimed that he should have won by more by millions more votes. But he claimed that the Democrats cheated and that is the only reason that it was even close. So in other words, he won and still claimed that he should have won by more and claimed that the other team cheated because he wanted to believe that he won by even more, and he also wanted to convince. His voters, his supporters, that our democracy is broken and even though he won, the other team is always trying to cheat. And so we need to never trust our democracy and to never trust the other party. This sort of language and behavior started back in 2016. Of course, in 2020, it escalated. That means it became even more serious. And after he lost the election in 2020, he immediately claimed that the election was stolen and that the Democrats cheated. And he provided dozens and dozens of potential explanations for this, including conspiracies about Chinese ballots and conspiracies about voting machines being hacked and stealing votes, and conspiracies about people sneaking in millions of fake, you know, fraudulent ballots for Joe Biden. And since that election, he continues to claim and he has now claimed, um, it must be thousands of times now that the last election was stolen. And I don’t mean metaphorically, he is saying that it was literally stolen, that fraud and cheating and fake ballots and all sorts of illegal activity from the Democrats. Store the election in 2020. Not only did he claim this in public, but he and his allies, his friends, his supporters filed over 60 lawsuits. That is, they went to court over 60 times, and they lost every single case that claimed that there was any sort of fraud or illegal activity happening. They lost every single case. And in fact, some of the lawyers that brought these cases, a lawyer is an attorney, a professional that practices law. Some of these lawyers have been fined that is made to pay money or even disbarred. That means they are no longer allowed to practice law in certain states because of these, what we call frivolous lawsuits or lawsuits for an improper purpose. That means if you file a lawsuit that you know is false, but you file it for a different reason. For example, if you just want to file a lawsuit so that you can get media attention so that you can get in the newspaper or on cable news, then you are filing a lawsuit that you know is false for an improper purpose. Many of these lawsuits were actually heard by judges that Donald Trump himself appointed. So these are not just liberal judges that are trying to hide the stolen election. Know many of these judges are conservative Republican judges that Donald Trump himself appointed. And yet they all agreed that there is zero evidence. That the election was stolen in any way, shape or form. In other words, he is lying. The election was not stolen and this is a lie. So as I was saying, democracy depends on everyone following the same rules. And one of those rules is a commitment to accepting election results and a commitment to a peaceful transfer of power. If you lose. And instead, Donald Trump has gone on a campaign for the last eight years to try and convince half of America that our democracy is fake and fraudulent and stolen. And to me, this is wildly unacceptable. So even if I agreed with every single policy of Donald Trump, I would still not vote for him because I believe that his. Undemocratic behaviour is a direct threat to American democracy itself. I don’t care if a candidate is in on the left, on the right, in the middle, somewhere else. That’s all fine. And I may or may not vote for those candidates on the left or the right. But what I cannot tolerate is someone lying and manipulating their supporters, claiming that something so sacred and so serious and so important, like our democratic process is fraudulent, is fake, is a lie that is unacceptable to say those things when you have zero proof and zero reason to actually believe that. And in fact, I don’t think he believes it. He is lying in order to manipulate his supporters. And in many cases, these are good people. These are friends of mine. These are family members of mine, and they believe what he is saying. So they now believe that our democracy is fake. They believe it based on zero evidence. But they trust him and they don’t believe that he would ever lie to them. And so he has complete control over their opinion. I don’t blame his supporters, and I don’t blame my friends and family that are part of that group. I blame Donald Trump and Donald Trump alone because he is the one spreading the lie. I do not blame the victims that he has been able to convince. Now here is another question why would so many people believe him? Well, that is a very complex question that we could spend hours and hours discussing without even scratching the surface. I will say, though, that the left, the the Democrats and the far left have done an absolutely horrible job at listening to the very real concerns of rural Americans and blue collar Americans. That means rural Americans live not in the cities, but further away. Um, many times they are farmers or they live in the mountains. Those are rural communities, and blue collar Americans means workers. That’s workers that work in factories or work in construction, building houses, people that use their hands and work for a living every day. The Left and Democrats spent decades looking down on these people and disrespecting them and pretending like their concerns were stupid or backwards or outdated. That general disrespect, combined with a number of cultural issues, created the environment where many of these people were desperate for a strong savior, for a strong man to come out and represent their interests. And right on cue, enter Donald Trump. And so, while I do not support the man, I am very aware that the concerns and the pain held by many of his supporters are real. They have very real concerns that Democrats and the left have ignored for decades. And so it’s very easy to say I don’t understand. I don’t understand how anyone could support him, but that is not helpful. There are very real reasons why people are supporting Donald Trump, and if we want to address those concerns, then we need to listen to the concerns. Donald Trump is not the answer, but that doesn’t mean there is no question, right? Donald Trump is not the answer. But that does not mean that we can ignore the concerns and the causes that led to his political success. We have to address those concerns, or else another Donald Trump will continue rising up. And that is the dynamic right now in the United States and our political environment. Okay. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode. I hope you enjoy these conversations. Please forgive me for giving this very oversimplified explanation of our current situation. Unfortunately, there is no way for me to give the entire perspective in a short podcast like this, but I hope that I was able to teach you a few things and at least give you some good English material that you can listen to and help to become even more fluent. Okay, be sure to listen to each episode multiple times, and if you have a moment, please leave me a five star review that will help immensely at reaching other English learners just like you. All right, thank you so much and we will see you next time. Cheers.