INTERVIEW: Why I’d vote for Donald Trump

Unless you’ve been in a coma for the last six months, you probably haven’t missed Donald Trump’s repeatedly oafish, unsubstantiated outbursts. He’s called for a ban on Muslims entering the country, the deportation of over ten million people, likened Mexicans to sexual offenders and has been outwardly sexist to his Presidential competitors.

Despite all this, his support has been growing and growing amongst mostly white Americans, leading some polls by over 20 percent to be the Republican candidate for this year’s election. This is all incredibly surprising, and massively fascinating.

I’ll admit it. I’ve watched half hour videos of Trump at rallies, spouting a plume of nonsense to an audience that bow to his every word. I’ve seen him shout down reporters on CNN and Fox, and give wide-ranging and vague interviews that do nothing but reinforce the idea that he really does have no idea what he actually wants to do. Everything about his campaign, from a British perspective, is ridiculous, but at the same time is absorbingly entertaining. And it’s not just Trump himself but the show he sets up around him. Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Trump was a cacophony of stupid and uninformed bleating. It was the best thing I’ve watched this year. And I watched all of it.

It’s been the same way since he first announced his campaign. I’m in no way a Trump supporter but I can’t look away and it’s clear he commands exceptional loyalty. I spoke to John Connolly, a young Brit who is an open advocate of Trump, to learn why he likes Donald Trump, and to find out how he feels about Trump’s more controversial policies.

What was it that first attracted you to Trump?

There was a point when Trump used the phrase “silent majority”. That settled it for me. I’ve been involved with the conservative movement on both sides of the Atlantic and a bit of a gadfly on the think-tank and conservative/libertarian youth organisations scene. Recently I’ve become disenchanted and left wondering how much of what we do really matters and whether we reflect the people who actually vote for us. The answer is that we don’t.

Trump’s people aren’t concerned with the minutiae of different tax plans or who gets endorsed by the Beltway think-tanks. They’re not ideological conservatives, much less libertarians. But they are responding to the erosion of American institutions, a process begun with some malice on the part of the American left but never effectively halted by the Republican Party. Trump’s people are still our people, conservative in their hearts and guts. It’s up to the GOP to recognise them and embrace them, as opposed to turning their backs in embarrassment or spitting on them.

John: ‘I think a temporary ban of Muslims is supported by the silent majority’

What did you think about his plans to ban Muslims?

I think a temporary ban – which is what he was advocating – is both legally possible and supported by a silent majority of Americans. 

Do you not believe that a temporary ban on Muslims would ostracise the community already in the US? 

I’ve met a few Muslim expats from countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan who told me they are disturbed to see the way of life they wanted to escape from being imported to cities in the West. Perhaps people who think like this are small in number, but I hope more will realise the logic to it: if you import the Third World, you become the Third World.

Would you call the current status of Muslim tension a ‘problem’ like Trump does?

Unfortunately, many immigrants today adopt an unusual attitude, flying the flag of the countries that failed them and denigrating their hosts and agitate against the majority population. It’s not solely the fault of immigrants: westerners have become masochists and actively promote minority identity politics and culture. Bizarrely, surveys carried out by the sociologists Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut in Florida have found that children of immigrants are less likely to identify as American after leaving school than when they came in. I don’t want this to go on.

What would you do with the refugees in Calais?

We should just do what Australia did when it faced a spike in migrants by sea: commit to repatriate all those who arrive through illegal channels, and return them to the port from which they sailed from. We need to stop these people coming from Africa to the EU in the first place. We used to get Gaddafi to do the dirty work. Now we need to do it ourselves. Ferry them back immediately after they are apprehended, and blow up the criminal smuggler ships afterward. The flow will stop.

John backs Trump’s stance on the Second Amendment

Do you think Trump would have mass appeal in Britain?

He’s more of an American phenomenon. Americans get to the lowest common denominator. However, 71 percent of the voting-age population in the U.K. believe immigration is the most urgent problem facing the country and 76 percent want immigration reduced. Who speaks for them? There’s a massive gap between elite opinion on this matter –the opinion of big business, media moguls, trade union leaders, charity and quango heads – and everybody else. On no other issue is the gap as wide, and this is an existential matter of fundamental importance. It’s not healthy.

You say that Trump’s people aren’t concerned with things like tax plans but surely a President should be?

Of course, and Trump has released a position paper on tax. But you’d be surprised how little of this stuff matters to voters. And who can blame them? The GOP has been promising to secure the southern border for around 30 years. That hasn’t happened. The GOP has controlled the House every year since 1994 apart from 2007-11. I didn’t see National Review doing a symposium against consistent sell-outs like John Boehner.

Can Trump end bureaucracy?

On shrinking the state and it’s other traditional platforms, the GOP hasn’t achieved much since the Reagan era. Even then, Reagan went for the low-hanging fruit: the sky-high tax rates on the higher margins and the most oppressive of regulations and trade union shenanigans that were a product of their time. Any fiscal discipline had much more to do with Paul Volcker’s tight money policies. I think there should be statues of Volcker all over the country, for what it’s worth. Still, Reagan failed to eliminate even one major spending program.

Despite the rhetoric, the GOP is unlikely to go any further than this. Middle American economic interests have become linked to certain entitlement programs, the big ones that nobody’s going to abolish without a fight.

What other policies of Trump’s do you support other than immigration?

His position on the Second Amendment (the right to keep and bear arms) is quite sound and reflects traditional Republican views. Trump is also the only candidate really addressing Middle American concerns about stagnant wages and the hollowing of American industry. Thanks to Trump, elites are finally paying attention to blue-collar, white America. These are the people who abandoned the Democratic Party of their parents and grandparents and voted for Nixon and Reagan. They have since become discouraged with the post-NAFTA Republican Party, many of whose leading lights in the House and Senate are pushing for Amnesty for millions of illegals. We need to protect their interests and win them back.