Editor’s Note: This piece is one of three opinion articles concerning the Nov. 3 election, with the others advocating for Gloria La Riva and Joe Biden. They do not reflect the views of the University Press.

I have supported Donald Trump since 2015, when the brash, New York business tycoon rode down the escalator of the famous Trump Tower to announce his candidacy in the upcoming election. Despite him needing to find a better spa for his spray tan, I was eager to Make America Great Again. I also understood that not everybody felt the same way. Many close friends and family question my support for Trump, but, rather than question me about his policies, they attack the President with ignorant and baseless claims of bigotry and racism.
Frankly, the main argument I receive is, “Orange Man bad.” He’s a bigot, he’s racist, homophobic, etc.

Allow me to respond.

In the 1990s, when Donald Trump bought Mar-a-Lago, his famous West Palm Beach golf club, Trump sued the city to allow African Americans, Jews, and openly gay couples to become members, claiming “the town commission sought to protect the discriminatory policies of many of the town’s other private social clubs.” Mar-A-Lago was the first club in West Palm Beach to allow blacks and gay couples to golf there, and one of the only ones to allow Jews.

‘Orange Man’ is the first sitting president to visit the Western Wall in Jerusalem. He has recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and he moved the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv. Most recently, the President also signed the Abraham Accords–the largest multinational peace agreement in the Middle East–between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the Kingdom of Bahrain, a move that has prompted several other nations to consider peace in the region.

Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation states, in a 2017 op-ed published in the Chicago Tribune, “the sad paradox of Obama’s presidency is that a president who was going to lift up Black America economically didn’t deliver.” Instead, in 2018, Trump signed the First Step Act—an attempt to undo the 1994 Crime Bill that Joe Biden so fervently supported—which helps previously incarcerated individuals reenter society and reforms the federal prison system. President Trump has also been a staunch advocate for school choice, a policy that gives poor and minority families better options for educating their children.

‘Orange Man’ is also the only U.S. President to enter office on a pro-gay marriage platform–Barack Obama flip-flopped on the issue for over 10 years before taking office. In 2020, Donald Trump appointed Richard Grenell to serve as Acting Director of National Intelligence, making him the first openly gay man to serve in any president’s Cabinet, and he made Grenell the Special Presidential Envoy to the Serbia and Kosovo Peace Negotiations. Grenell previously served as U.S. Ambassador to Germany from 2018-19; together, they have vowed to work on decriminalizing homosexuality around the world.

Trump signed an executive order in August 2020 designating $35 million to combat human trafficking in the United States; according to an article published in the Journal of Trauma Practice, approximately one-third of all human trafficking in the United States comes from Latin America, and most of this occurs at our southern border. Whatever you make the man out to be in your imagination, the facts prove that his administration and policies are fair, inclusive, and effective.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) mentions that, under Trump, unemployment rates hit historic lows before COVID-19: 5.6 percent among African Americans, 2.8 percent among Asian Americans, 4.2 percent among Hispanic Americans, and 3.5 percent nationally. Many people will argue that these numbers are due to President Obama, but what they won’t tell you is, after reaching ten percent in 2009, it took more than six years to return to a normal level, and then stagnate for the last year-and-a-half of his presidency. As soon as Donald Trump took office, things started looking up. Conversely, after COVID-19 wrecked the economy and caused unemployment to skyrocket to higher than it ever was under Obama, rates under Trump had fallen to the same as Obama’s at the end of his first term. Unemployment under Obama dropped 5.3 percent over seven years, 10 percent in October 2009 to 4.7 in January 2017, when Trump took office; under Trump, it has dropped 6.8 percent in six months (14.7 percent in April 2020 to 7.9 in September 2020), and the stock market has crushed record after record.

In 2009, the country faced a far less fatal virus than COVID-19. According to Fox News, the Obama administration asked states to stop testing people for swine flu in mid-2009, not even halfway through the WHO-defined “pandemic.” Currently, COVID-19 has infected over 8 million Americans and killed over 229,000*; however, H1N1 infected almost 61 million Americans and killed more than 12 thousand—about 7.5 times the infection rate of COVID, but only 6 percent of the deaths. Former Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, said at the time that their successful H1N1 response “just had to do with luck.” As Vice President Mike Pence pointed out on Oct. 8, “if the swine flu had been as lethal as the coronavirus . . . we would have lost 2 million American lives.” Yeah, I’d say they got lucky.

Even health experts, like Dr. Anthony Fauci, have called Trump’s response to coronavirus “impressive,” saying about his White House Task Force in March, “I can’t imagine . . . that anybody could be doing more”–a quote that has since been taken out of context. Joe Biden called Trump’s decisions “hysterical xenophobia” and “fear-mongering.” Respectfully, Mr. Vice President, you are in no position to judge the President’s handling of this pandemic.

I support Donald Trump because he’s an American fighting for the American people. While he’s spent most of his life in the public eye, he doesn’t answer to anyone but us. He doesn’t bow to the will of politicians and lobbyists, he doesn’t compromise in his beliefs or actions, and he doesn’t make empty promises, like so many lifelong politicians do.

Donald Trump has accomplished many things in his first four years: he moved the U.S. embassy back to Jerusalem, he’s building a stronger border, he is fighting illegal immigration and human trafficking, and he’s just getting started.

So many people only pay attention to what President Trump says and how he says it, rather than what he does. The same goes for Joe Biden.

Start focusing on what’s actually being done rather than what the media and social media tell you is being done.

People tell me, “Orange Man bad.” I say, “Orange Man good.”

*Numbers were accurate as of 10/30
Madison Hinz is a guest columnist for the University Press and the Vice President of FAU College Republicans. For more information about this and FAU College Republicans, email [email protected].