Why I Voted for Trump

In the weeks leading up to the election, I heard many conservatives and moderates making the case for Harris on the grounds that a Harris administration would protect Constitutional rights and the rule of law. What startled me about these articles was that the reasons they gave for Harris were precisely the reasons why I voted for Trump.  Two of the most important issues for me were the rule of law and freedom of speech.

Free Speech

Democrats are utterly totalitarian on the issue of government speech control. Earlier this year Democrats in the New York government forced an independent media outlet to shut down because it published stories the Democrats didn’t like.

Leftists in the intelligence agencies pressured social media companies to censor content critical of leftist dogmas or Democrat politicians.

Democrats attempted to use the Department of Homeland Security to set up a Disinformation Governance Board. There is no objective standard to what counts as “misinformation” or “disinformation”; in practice it just means any information - true or false - that democrats do not like.

Most democrat voters haven’t heard about any of this because they live in a bubble.

The Rule of Law

Critics of Trump accuse him of violating the rule of law by “going after his political enemies.” They are referring to his threats to prosecute Hillary Clinton for violating her top secret clearance and indict Joe Biden for taking bribes.

That argument is confused. In 2015 the elite liberal consensus was that Hillary Clinton should not be prosecuted even though she had clearly committed a crime for which a commoner would be put in jail. The consensus liberal line was that regardless of her guilt, prosecuting a political candidate would be a “violation of a democratic principle that distinguishes free polities from authoritarian ones.” Trump actually adhered to that principle by deciding not to prosecute Clinton once he was in office.

As soon as the boot was on the other foot, Democrats immediately started to prosecute Trump for mishandling classified documents (the same offense of which Clinton was guilty) as well as other real and imagined offenses. Suddenly the elite liberal consensus line changed: people who committed crimes should be prosecuted even if they were major party political candidates.

Either major party candidates should enjoy immunity for crimes or they should not. If they should not, then prosecuting Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden would be the way to uphold the rule of law. It would be a grave violation of the law not to prosecute them. Even if you’re not 100% convinced that they’re guilty, that’s not for you to decide, it’s for a jury of their peers to decide. If we should uphold the democratic norm that major party candidates should enjoy immunity from prosecution, then the Democrats were the first to violate this norm by prosecuting Trump, and since the norm has already been broken, there’s no reason for Trump not to retaliate.

The Democrats’ conduct on this issue has been especially egregious because many of the charges on which they prosecuted Trump were baseless. While the case regarding his attempts to pressure Brad Raffensberger may have some legal basis, his New York conviction was based on completely phony charges. It is not illegal to pay hush money to a porn star. Even on the technicality of misfiling business records, the statute of limitations had elapsed, and District Attorney Bragg skirted around the statute of limitations based on a tenuous legal theory which would not have been upheld in any other context.

Critics claim that Trump will staff the Federal bureaucracy with partisans. In fact the Federal bureaucracy is already staffed with left wing partisans. Trump’s plan is to replace the left wing partisans with people who will adhere to the Constitution and actually do the job they are supposed to do. Trump is not politicizing the civil service. It is already politicized.

The two sides in this election seem to have been separated as much by different sets of facts as by different values. Some see Trump’s conduct on January 6^th 2021 as a disqualifying affront to the Constitution, but conservatives think that bedrock Constitutional principles like freedom of speech and the rule of law are under threat from a relentless attack by the Left. In such a dire situation, most conservatives saw Trump as the Constitution’s most effective albeit imperfect champion.