Op-ed by Summer Lane | Photo: Alamy
President Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and he is on track to do battle at the ballot box in November 2024 in the general election.
America seems to be poised to watch a national rerun starring Joe Biden and Donald Trump as they square off once again. As this politically unprecedented race unfolds, the nation – and the world – has never been so unnecessarily weakened.
As looming world powers like China, Russia, and Iran accumulate more weapons and grow bolder, the United States has begun to shrink into the background, losing its wealth, fettering away its sovereignty, and collapsing into a federally over-regulated patchwork of rising crime and inflation.
This uniquely volatile situation has ignited intense scrutiny for the presidential candidates in the race. Some voters may be hesitant to participate in a third election cycle featuring Donald Trump versus the establishment, but the Founding Fathers were clear that civic involvement is essential for preserving the republic.
Former President Thomas Jefferson correctly observed, “We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.”
In 2024, U.S. voters are heavily leaning toward voting for President Trump over Joe Biden, but there are some Americans who may be on the fence because they’re hung up on mainstream talking points or uninformed social media opinions.
Here are the top three commonly circulated arguments against voting for Trump, and why those arguments fall flat in the face of Trump’s record, actions, and fulfilled promises.
Trump isn’t ‘nice’ enough
This is a commonly reiterated sentiment among those who wish President Trump was more soft-spoken, but Trump himself has addressed this many times. During an interview with Newsmax this week, he talked about the “evil” and “sick” people who have consistently defamed and attacked him for years. “If I didn’t fight that with power and strength…these are evil people, these are sick people,” he said. “If I didn’t fight tough, if I didn’t fight nasty, and do it the way that I have to do it, I wouldn’t be interviewed right now.”
Trump has also slammed those who claimed in the past that his personality would thrust the nation into war. In fact, the president’s record while in office demonstrated just the opposite, because while he was in the White House, the U.S. experienced four years of unprecedented peace and economic prosperity.
“My personality kept us out of war,” Trump pointed out in January, noting that the violence and chaos unfurling around the world would have had “zero chance” of happening if he were in office now.
Trump is a tough guy who has been thrust into a tough situation. He has been attacked from all sides – by Democrats, by Republicans, by Hollywood, by global leaders, by the mainstream media, by the entertainment industry, by the justice system, and by the Biden White House.
To thrust a man into such an impossible situation and expect him not to fight back is a hollow argument at best, and a cruel one at most. President Trump has a right to defend himself from the attacks lobbed at him, and the American people should look at his success in the White House as evidence that not only is Trump a genuinely nice person, but he is a man who has proven that he can lead through peaceful strength.
Trump isn’t ‘Christian’ enough
Christians and people of faith in this country are quick to judge in America, and it is often the evangelical voters and suburban wives who seem to hastily foist the argument around that President Trump isn’t “Christian” enough to be president.
There are many rebuttals to this simple statement, but the first is the most obvious. Number one, America is not a theocracy – America is a constitutional republic that represents the will of a varied patchwork of belief systems and theological viewpoints. Indeed, America’s history and foundation are deeply rooted in Judeo-Christian values, and therefore it is integral that an American president respect that, but respect and iron-fisted theocratic governance are two different things.
Second, President Trump has always respected this faith-filled heritage, and while he was in office, he did more for Christians than any modern president had done in years. From appointing Supreme Court justices that affirmatively overturned Roe v. Wade to cutting the strangulating chokehold of the Johnson Amendment on American churches, Trump went to bat for people of faith while he was in the White House.
Trump has shown extreme reverence for people of faith in this country, and it is unfathomable, at times, that voting Christians would be unwilling to acknowledge this. There is no such thing as a perfect leader. Christianity itself teaches that there is not one perfect or sinless man living on earth today (Romans 3:10).
Dr. Ben Carson recently explained, “King David – who murdered, who committed adultery, who did all kinds of things – God said, ‘He’s a man after my own heart,’ because he repented and he sought redemption from God.”
President Trump has stated that he is a “proud Christian” and acknowledged that victory in 2024 can only come with the help of “the hand of our Lord, and the grace of Almighty God.”
Demanding that Trump be the “perfect Christian” is not only an impossible standard to set for any man, but it is also a gross misunderstanding of the hard work that Trump has done to protect religious freedom in this country.
Trump’s association with Operation Warp Speed
Perhaps the most contentious topic of all among hardline conservative voters when it comes to Trump is the Covid vaccine. Like it or not, the controversial issue has taken center stage for many voters, particularly among women.
While in the White House, Trump spearheaded an expedited Covid vaccine development initiative called Operation Warp Speed that ultimately yielded the treatment that is available today. It is important to note that, in 2020 and amidst the then-unknown dangers that the Covid virus represented, demand for a vaccine was high.
Trump told Megyn Kelly in 2023, “When this [virus] came in, nobody knew what the hell it was…it sounded like an ancient pandemic…we got word that bad things were happening in China, right around the Wuhan clinic…it came out of the Wuhan clinic…what we did was brand new.”
When Joe Biden took office, he almost immediately turned up the heat on the issue of medical freedom, pushing for nationwide vaccine mandates. The Associated Press reported that under Biden in 2021, over 100 million Americans would soon be forced to make a choice between keeping their jobs and being subject to vaccination.
Many Americans today are living in the fallout of Biden’s now-failed vaccine mandates, which drove U.S. servicemembers to lose their jobs, forced nurses to quit their positions, and presented American teachers with an impossible choice.
President Trump has been against vaccine mandates since the beginning, and it is integral to note that the vaccine mandate horror show was an exclusive hallmark of the Biden administration. Trump had no part in that. In fact, the vaccine itself was only barely available after a quick FDA approval in December 2020. Trump left office just one month later, long before any true data or side effects were available to the public for assessment. In retrospect, it’s easy to criticize anything or anyone, but the truth is that many vaccine critics today were once among the first people in line to receive the shot when it was approved.
In 2021, Trump called the vaccine mandates “horrible” and noted that it was a violation of religious freedom and medical freedom to force them upon the public.
Some people have fallaciously argued that Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a more viable choice than Trump in 2024 because of Kennedy’s long history as a vaccine “skeptic” and because he has questioned the ethicality and efficiency of the Covid vaccine.
Unfortunately, they ignore Kennedy’s otherwise radical left-leaning policies on climate change, social justice, and other issues like abortion. People also are quick to forget that Trump has been a vaccine skeptic himself. For example, in 2014, before running for president, he wrote on Twitter (now X), “I am being proven right about massive vaccinations – the doctors lied. Save our children & their future.”
He repeatedly raised his concerns about the frequency of childhood vaccinations, noting that he wasn’t “against” them, but rather, “I’m against them in 1 massive dose.”
It is clear that Trump is a thoughtful person on this issue, and his decision to kick start Operation Warp Speed was borne from an urgent and emergency need to supply the country with a treatment for a then-potentially deadly virus unleashed from China. At the heart of it all, Trump is a businessman who, as a populist leader, gave the people what they wanted in 2020.
Biden alone is responsible for the mandates that came later. Biden alone is responsible for propagating the vaccines themselves, despite their waning popularity. Finally, Trump himself has stated that as a prospective president again in 2025, he would maintain laser focus on keeping the staff around him mission oriented.
“I wasn’t, like, in the Washington establishment, I was a New York person [before his presidency],” he told Newsmax. He admitted that there were some personnel that he chose during his time in the White House that were a “mistake,” but pointed out that in the wake of his first term, he now knows the “upper levels” of Washington leadership better than anyone.
As such, he has vowed that he has “unbelievable” people waiting in the wings to join him for a potential second term, and Americans can rest assured that he will trim the fat on untrustworthy advisors (like Dr. Anthony Fauci) and focus, instead, on personnel that will maintain laser focus on his agenda of making America great again.
