Why Trump Isn’t Scary (To Some, That Is)

Brendan Chase, Contributing Writer

As a young man approaching the age to be drafted, Donald Trump is definitely scary to me. Most of my friends are fearful too. His constant international disruption sparks these fears, and his never ending tweet storms build upon them. While a war is far from imminent, I just can’t help but notice other countries increase their military readiness. For example, last week China flew a nuclear-capable bomber over the South China Sea as a show of force. In addition, Trump continues to agitate a nuclear North Korea, without proposing any actionable plans.

Yet some people are not scared of a Trump Presidency, namely Vladimir Putin. Recent CIA assessments have shown that Russia not only meddled with the election, but did it with the intention of favoring Trump over Clinton. Just this week, NBC unsurprisingly found that Putin personally had a hand in orchestrating these attacks. While hacking both the Republican and Democratic National Committees, Russian sources only shared Democratic emails on Wikileaks. Despite lacking any incriminating content, these leaks only weakened the public’s view of Clinton’s trustworthiness, which was already under assault from the unrelenting misguided Republican attacks, but that argument is for another day.

Clearly, Putin and his government prefer Trump over Clinton. One of the reasons behind this may be Clinton and Obama’s “pivot to Asia” in an effort to hold Asian countries accountable for their actions. Now that Putin has Trump in office, he may feel that his actions like the illegal annexation of Crimea, Ukraine will go unchecked by the United States. During his campaign, Trump rarely mentioned holding Russia accountable, rather focusing on China and Mexico as his main adversaries.   Putin won not only Trump, but also Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson, who won Putin’s Order of Friendship Award. If a tangible award celebrating one’s relationship with Putin does not demonstrate their intimate ties, I do not know what does.

There could be another reason Russia never released the Republican’s documents though: leverage. I am not claiming the Russians are blackmailing the new administration, all I am saying is there is a possibility that holding on to potentially damaging RNC documents could buy Russia some extra influence in how Trump runs the country. Based on Trump’s Secretary of State pick, Russia would seem to be using this influence already.

As for other winners from Trump’s election, Wall Street seems to be quite pleased with his victory. Soaring over a thousand points since his win, promises of cutting regulation and aiding business, the DOW leaped with joy. Now that businessmen occupy the White House and the Cabinet, many CEOs can relax, knowing that annoying measures like minimum wage and the Affordable Care Act will soon be out of their way.

So far, Trump’s main achievement has been saving 1,000 jobs at Carrier, but the deeper one looks into the deal, the more apparent its flaws become. To start, 200 of the jobs he supposedly saved were not being moved to Mexico in the first place, bringing his count down to 800. More disturbingly, Trump is letting Carrier still send 1,000 jobs to Mexico, while offering them a massive tax break. However, they pledged to invest in the factories at home which sounds great. That is, until you realize that investment means automation, and in turn, cuts to those 800 people left. So in short, Trump gave Carrier a tax break to send 1,000 jobs to Mexico, and eventually thin out their American factories. What a deal for Carrier.

Seeing how Carrier played Trump, if I were an American CEO, I would threaten to leave the country to see what financial benefits I could reap from the new Administration. Rather than being punished for leaving, Trump rewards those who even keep some of their jobs. If I was still an American CEO, I would be looking forward to these next four years as the government will continue to serve me, and ignore my workers.

However, most of us are not CEOs or Wall Street bankers. Most of us are not the 1%. We are workers who will suffer when our jobs are sent away, or when we need to fight a war for the wealthy. We cannot confront Putin personally, we can only watch as our government plays a dangerous game with him. Yet we have a voice, and a vote. While most students at Hingham High lack the ability to vote currently, we will vote in the next Presidential election, and the Congressional races before that. When we do, and when we see how much sacrifice we have made for the greed at the top, we will be angry. With history on the side of progress, it is our role as young Americans to continue the struggle. Get ready Mr. Trump, because if you don’t focus on the working Americans, you’ll have quite a messy situation to deal with. But don’t worry, Putin has your back.