ON JANUARY 31, 2015 WE PUBLISHED AN ARTICLE BY STANFORD ERICKSON ON “WHY TRUMP’S VIEWS RESONATE.” MR. ERICKSON IS A THIRTY-YEAR MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL PRESS IN WASHINGTON, D.C AND A FORMER MEMBER OF THE OVERSEAS PRESS CLUB IN NEW YORK CITY.
Bill Britton, a contributing Vero Communique editor wrote this in response:
“Mr. Erickson,
I suppose your “owner’s mentality” is similar to other business-school jargon like “non-linear thinking,” “thinking outside the box,” and “non-silo mentality,” among others, all barriers to optimal organizational efficiency. Granted, Trump embraces this attribute in the extreme to the point where he wants to “own” the thinking of his supporters—and he does. In other words, they accept his ideas without question and simultaneously surrender their ability to think independently. To put it in everyday terms, it’s either his way or the highway (lemming mentality?).
Unlike you, I find certain of Trump’s ideas repugnant. His declaration that he’ll build a wall along the Mexican border and have that country pay for it is untenable. Imagine the outcry of ordinary Mexicans should President Enrique Peña Nieto say that Mexico will pay for Trump’s wall. Besides, Trump’s declaration is the height (depth?) of hypocrisy. At one of his building sites in Washington D.C., interviews with construction workers revealed that many of their coworkers were undocumented (see article in The Washington Post by Antonio Olivo on July 6, 2015). Trump has built his empire in no small part on the backs of Latinos, and Latinas now perform housekeeping duties for that empire.
Trump is the ultimate “birther.” He still implies that President Obama is not a citizen, despite all the documentation that affirms his citizenship. He has further leveraged his birther credentials by similarly claiming that Ted Cruz’s citizenship is in doubt. Is Marco Rubio next?
Of course, Trump’s most repugnant assertion is that John McCain is no hero “because he was captured.” This from a man who equates time spent in a military high school with McCain’s five years in a Vietcong prisoner-of-war camp where he was tortured repeatedly. And let’s not forget Trump’s military deferments during that same period.
Regards,
Bill Britton
Bill Britton
Vero Communiqué 
Mr. Britton, If you have run a medium to large scale business, you would know that there are ways to “get the Mexicans to pay for it” other than Mexican government writing a check for the construction project. It may not show up on the Mexican budget balance sheet – but through trade transactions, tariffs and the like, Mexico very well can pay for some or all of the wall.
And based on another article in this edition of the Communique it is my guess that those Latinos are very, very happy to have a job with Mr. Trump’s organization and are probably not part of the working poor the article reports on.
Lastly, I think many Americans would agree – not that Senator McCain doesn’t deserve our gratitude for his service – his service to our country did not give him the creditials to be a great Senator. In fact, he has been a terrible one. Just look at the condition of the Vets healthcare system while Senator McCain has been in office…for how many 6-year terms? He’s been there far longer than Prez Obama and I haven’t heard him make a national issue out of it as Trump has.
There are many things our current crop of establishment RINO’s should be ashamed of. And we’re happy that anyone, including Donald Trump is telling it like it is.
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Regarding “the wall” and Trump:
One characteristic that lies at the core of any bully is cowardice. At the core of those with an inflated ego is an inability to endure even moderate criticism. Donald Trump’s core is saturated with these two traits. His supporters discount this with these and similar remarks: “Oh, it’s just his way” or, “He really doesn’t mean what he says.”
Too many Americans have degraded the notions of decency, integrity, and charity: in a word, they no longer regard one’s simple humanity to be important when they choose their elected officials. Indeed, with apologies to Aldous Huxley, we are entering a Brave New World.
But speaking to you comments regarding “the wall,” conservative David Brook’s article in The New York Times more or less shatters the need for one (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/opinion/a-little-reality-on-immigration.html?ref=opinion&_r=0).
He writes, “Roughly 1.6 percent of immigrant males between ages 18 and 39 wind up incarcerated, compared with 3.3 percent of native-born American men of the same age. Among native-born men without a high school diploma, about 11 percent are incarcerated. Among similarly educated Mexican, Guatemalan and Salvadoran men here, only 2 or 3 percent get incarcerated.”
Brooks goes on by citing another statistic: “There are more Mexicans leaving the United States than coming in. According to the Pew Research Center, there was a net outflow of 140,000 from 2009 to 2014. If Trump builds his wall, he’ll lock more Mexican immigrants in than he’ll keep out.”
All of which begs the question: Where’s the problem?
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