I'm begging a conservative to explain this to me
Donald Trump destroyed your party. Why defend him?
Donald Trump is not a conservative and the modern day GOP is not a conservative party. There are conservative people who support Trump and identify as Republicans, but the Republican Party and its leader are anything but conservative.
I have tried to get an answer to this paradoxical conundrum from any Republican willing to talk to me on social media to no avail. I don’t know whether that’s because I post about my disdain for Donald Trump so much and they see no value in interacting with me or they simply have no good answer and feel embarrassed by that fact. Either way, I will ask one more time: if you are a self-identified conservative or Republican and can give me a good answer about how you reconcile conservatism with Trump’s behaviors AND policies, I would like to talk to you. Call me, text me, email me, whatever. I’m interested.
Free Market Capitalism
Donald Trump is not governing as a free-market capitalist. He is using the levers of the government to benefit certain industries that his friends like Elon Musk work in. Musk is using his fake DOGE agency to try and cancel a Verizon contract with the FAA and hand that contract to his company Starlink instead. That is what we call crony capitalism and it is antithetical to the free market-based system we believe in in this country.
Trump is using the power of the government to threaten media businesses, law firms, and social media companies if they step out of line with the pro-Trump agenda. He is slapping tariffs on our economic competitors who undercut American workers, products, and industries while also using those tariffs as a cudgel to coerce our neighbors to the North and South and our Allies in Europe to go along with the pro-Trump agenda. Even if you believe his economic threats result in a net positive for your priorities as a Republican, you cannot argue that his approach is that of a free market capitalist.
Free Speech
Free speech is a core pillar of the American conservative movement. Free speech and free market capitalism are the bedrock from which conservatism was built. If you say free speech, free markets, and strong military in a mirror three times Ronald Reagan shows up behind you and hands you a Bud Heavy.
But free speech is not important to Trump. Oh, he LOVES to complain about censorship and how free speech is dead in this country, just like conservatives do, I’ll give him that. But as President he is as anti-free speech as you could be while still running a democratic nation. He removed the Associated Press’s White House press pool access because the international news organization didn’t call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. And it is the Gulf of Mexico. We’re not doing that nonsense. Sue me. (He might because he hates free speech).
He then announced that the White House, not the White House Correspondents Association, would decide which news outlets get access to press briefings. They have kicked outlets they don’t like out of the White House entirely and soon the only outlets left to report the news inside the White House will be pro-Trump media. Very pro First Amendment. And do we need to get into his threats against outlets like ABC, Comcast, and MSNBC? Here is a Trump quote about MSNBC — I want someone to defend it as pro-speech:
“This whole corrupt operation is nothing more than an illegal arm of the Democrat Party. They should be forced to pay vast sums of money for the damage they’ve done to our Country. Fake News is an UNPARDONABLE SIN!”
Donald Trump is not pro-free speech. He is pro-Trump speech.
Post-WWII Order and Russia Hawks
If you were born after 9/11 and Trump’s Grand Old Party is all you know, it may surprise you to learn that conservatives used to be the stanchest Russia hawks and biggest defenders of the neoliberal world order on the planet. You think I’m a shitlib for wanting to continue defending Ukraine? You should’ve seen Ronald Reagan, or George H. W. Bush, or John McCain. Those guys were complete neoliberal shills who wanted nothing more than to castrate the Soviet Union or Russia and project American power and influence on the entire planet.
But Donald Trump has reversed our 75+ years of being on the side of our democratic Allies in Western Europe and is instead opting for a strong pivot on his, let’s just say Axis, toward strongmen, dictators, and foes of a liberal world order. I will get too angry and sidetracked if I go through each of this man’s transgressions against conservative views on foreign policy so here’s a list of a few.
Threaten our friends with tariffs
Threaten to invade Greenland (a sovereign nation under Denmark’s protection)
Threaten to invade Canada (is this South Park?)
Threaten to invade Panama (this might be the closest he’s come to a conservative foreign policy objective)
Refuse to acknowledge that Russia began an illegal war of annexation by invading Ukraine
Siding with former KGB agent and murderous dictator of Russia Vladimir Putin over Ukraine
Forcing our United Nations Ambassador to vote, alongside North Korea, against a resolution condemning Russia’s illegal invasion (Iran and China abstained🙃)
Threatened to invade Gaza and turn it into a resort (I can’t believe I just typed those words)
Conservatives used to believe that America’s position as a global economic and military hegemon wasn’t just good for us here at home, it was good for the world. But don’t take my word for it. I would encourage everyone to read this article written by John McCain in 2008 about America’s role as a democratic force for good in building a 21st century world. He argues economic freedom and prosperity must prevail and a lasting international peace can be supported by the world’s established and budding democracies with America leading the way.
Much has changed since then. Democratic backsliding has happened all over the world, but it didn’t need to happen here. Instead of supporting and defending our Allies, Trump’s administration prefers a pre-WWII mindset in which might makes right. In Trump’s world, the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
This is a deeply alarming attempt at reshaping the world order, as despots and dictators with large militaries and greedy minds rarely remain on friendly terms for long. If America does not back her Allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, why would Japan stand by Article 9? Why wouldn’t more European nations like Poland or Finland seek nuclear weapons of their own?
This chaotic world order built on international realism throws more variables into the equation of avoiding great power conflict and a third World War. Trump’s approach will create more confusion, less trust, and more nations building their own offensive and defensive capabilities without our control or tracking of what is happening where. Conservatives like McCain believed that a world without America at the helm would be more dangerous, unpredictable, and violent—but that’s the world we’re headed toward.
Personal Freedom
Famous liberal cuck Grover Norquist said “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it to the bathroom and drown it in the tub.”
Norquist is as conservative as it gets. His entire personality is built around removing the government from your personal and financial life. He was so driven by this idea that he published a book in 2008 called Getting the Government's Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives.
Grover Norquist is the conservative’s conservative. He founded a movement he termed the “Leave Me Alone Coalition” and he believed the government needed to stay out of people’s personal lives at every turn. You might expect a conservative like him to support banning abortion, since he is a Christian religious conservative, but that’s not actually his position. In a 2004 PBS interview, Norquist stated that, if a pregnant woman is a person on her own and not two people, the government has no right to impose its will on her.
There are three Trump-nominated Supreme Court Justices currently serving on the Court in a 6-3 “conservative” majority. Yet in Dobbs v. Jackson, that court overturned fifty years of precedent under Roe v. Wade because the substantive right to an abortion was not “deeply rooted in our Nation’s history or tradition.”1 Notably, Norquist has never made public comment regarding that ruling, which also doesn’t even attempt to contend with the issue of whether or not a fetus is counted as a person with all rights that come along with such a designation.
Donald Trump bragged that he was “the guy [who] ended Roe v. Wade”. In a Time magazine interview, Trump said that, under the Dobbs decision he orchestrated, states could monitor pregnancies and prosecute women for obtaining abortions. So Trump’s governing approach to abortion is not conservative in that it necessitates the government be in your bedroom AND in your doctor’s office.
But what about his personal views? After all, one could certainly hold conservative personal views on abortion while acknowledging and complying with the law protecting an individual’s rights. Surprisingly, Joe Biden is actually a great example of someone who did just that.
But Donald Trump’s personal views on abortion are completely at odds with how he has governed and they’re at odds with American conservatism as well. In 1999 Trump said he was “pro-choice in every respect as far as it goes”. And it wasn’t until 2011—until he began stepping into the ring for president—that he began his anti-choice crusade.
I am not trying to argue that conservatives are pro-choice. I hope that’s clear. But I am saying that conservatives used to oppose the government coming into your life and telling you what to do regarding your personal choices. I’m not sure when Republicans became the party of using the government to force their beliefs onto people, but Trump helped lead the way in that charge.
Family Values
Traditional family values are another one of those core pillars of American conservatism. If you’ve read this far, I doubt you need me to spell out all the reasons why Donald Trump is the complete opposite of family values, so we will do bullet points again.
Divorced multiple times
Cheated on his wife with a porn star
Paid a woman to settle a lawsuit in which he was found liable for sexual abuse
Bragged about grabbing women by their genitals
Best friends with Jeffrey Epstein
In December 1986, Ronald Reagan called the family “the fundamental unit of American life” in a radio address to the nation on family values. During his signing of the “Promoting Safe and Stable Families” bill in 2002 George W. Bush called the family the “foundation of society.” Family values have been of utmost importance to conservatives for decades. And no matter how much you like Donald Trump you cannot argue that he has lived his life with conservative family values guiding him.
He is not Conservative. He is Donald Trump.
There is very very little conservative about Donald Trump. During his first term, he cut taxes for the wealthy without cutting costs elsewhere in the government, therefore ballooning our national debt by more than any president in history. He is not conservative on trade, economics, military, personal liberty, free speech, or family values. What he is, is Donald Trump.
Conservatives fought for a world that they believed supported their values and morals—Donald Trump fights for a world that is good for Donald Trump. He believes in nothing else. He wants three things in his life: money, power, and adoration. As president, he can have all three and keep himself out of jail to boot.
He has and will continue to say and do anything it takes in his quest for more money, power, and adoration. It has been shocking to watch him hijack the conservative movement and the Republican Party and replace it with his cult of personality in which all things are done in service of himself, yet here we are.
The Republican Party might as well be the Trump Party because what Trump wants is all that matters these days. Conservative values and priorities are gone. You may still get some of what you want under a Trump presidency, and I suppose that’s why so many have stuck by him— but as soon as it’s no longer good for him, he will turn on you without a second thought. Sure, Donald Trump will hurt poor people. He will hurt the media. He will hurt liberals. He will hurt immigrants. He will hurt women. And maybe that makes you feel good right now. But you had better pray to your god that he never comes for you. Because Donald Trump obliterated your party and took control of it for himself and his family. Once you’re of no use to him, he will hurt you, too.
That’s why I rail so hard against Republicans. I have no problem with conservatives who stick to a coherent worldview. But if the only thing you believe in is Donald Trump, then you’re just as lost as the rest of the party.
By the way, extend this logic out beyond abortion about what else wasn’t deeply rooted in our country’s traditions at the time the Constitution was created and you start getting into some REAL bad shit.