Anti-Asian crimes are not due to white culture

Over the past week, I’ve watched and read about Asians fearing for their lives, even afraid to jog in a relatively safe part of the Bay area due to possible harassment.  It’s unnerving. Anti-Asian crime is real. It’s jumped significantly compared to overall hate crime in the past year. As an Asian-American, I don’t want to live in fear. So what matters to me is to understand what is happening.  

I’m not a criminologist, but my intuition tells me that the intent behind a crime should matter as much as the identity of the victim. If we are to understand how to help prevent crime in the future, we have to understand why they are happening in the first place. 

That’s why it’s infuriating to see how these vile acts are being used as propaganda to further a narrative. I’m talking about the causal connection between crimes against Asians and white supremacy, and by extension Republicans or what’s broadly referred to as white culture and privilege. Once again, Democrats are hijacking a narrative for political gain. And even more infuriatingly, they are choosing to select the incidents that fit their narrative and that work towards their ends, and conveniently deselecting the incidents that don’t.

It isn’t helpful to frame the issue in a way that doesn’t seek to find a solution for everyone.  Following the horrific mass killing in Atlanta where six of the victims were Asian, USA Today ran an article with the headline: “Stop Asian hate; Stop black hate; Stop all hate.” According to the article, hate crimes can only be perpetrated against “non-white” groups, and the Atlanta shootings “presents a chance for communities of color to effectively address the common enemy of white supremacy.” We don’t know if this was a hate crime, and hate crimes can most certainly be committed against any group. 

Preliminary police reports showed the suspect, who had a sex addiction driven by his religious guilt, wanted to eliminate the temptation at the spas he frequented. These parlors were listed in a “red light district” and were linked to sexual services. It appears we could possibly blame oppressive religious indoctrination or an oversexualized society. But to immediately blame it on white supremacy without truly understanding the underlying facts and potentials of the case creates division in a place where we should be seeking healing.

This narrative applied indiscriminately obfuscates what’s really happening. It’s abusive, dehumanizing, degrading and dangerous because it’s confusing the issue and leading us all down a path that will increase, not decrease, hate. 

“Stop Asian Hate” is the latest rage bubble against whiteness. It’s replacing the rage bubble of 2020, which was BLM. And as I mentioned in my book Unequally Yoked, BLM replaced the rage bubble of #metoo. We are continually inflating rage bubbles against the status quo, and with each one, the number of aggrieved gets larger and larger. 

Lest someone calls me “tone deaf” and says “We should despise all hate crimes, but 2021 is the moment to stand up in solidarity for anti-Asian hate!” Sure. I stand with that. But I don’t stand with defaulting to racism as the prime mover of evil in our society. Things are a lot more complex than that. 

Factless based claims

On March 18, CNN had a scathing and hyperbolic headline: White Supremacy and Hate are Haunting Asians. Yet the first line of the article reads: “It’s immaterial whether the accused killer in the Atlanta spa shootings admits to a racist motivation.” 

Daily Show Trevor Noah also dismissed the probability that the Atlanta shootings could be driven by sex or religious guilt. “Murders speak louder than your words,” he stated while suggesting white culture was to blame. 

The cultish icon of the woke age, Ibram X. Kendi tweeted: “Locking arms with Asian Americans facing this lethal wave of anti-Asian terror. Their struggle is my struggle. Our struggle is against racism and White supremacist domestic terror.”

The New York Times editorial board, along with the Washington Post, have written that the rise in anti-Asian sentiment is due to Donald Trump’s calling of COVID-19 the “Wuhan virus.” Never mind that the first known case came from Wuhan, China and the World Health Organization is now in China investigating the source. 

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said there was “no question” that Trump’s rhetoric led to anti-Asian hate crimes. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Ca) told MSNBC host Chris Hayes that the killings were “the culmination of a whole year’s worth of hate stoked by xenophobia of Donald Trump.” In another Hayes interview, a black feminist and activist suggested that white supremacists and the Trump administration “created a rhetorically-violent environment for Asian American folks, blamed them for this pandemic, ginned up the public and created this context for things to be unsafe.” During a recent congressional hearing, Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) said Asians are fighting hate and bigotry because “anti-Asian rhetoric like China virus and Kung flu” have left Asians “traumatized and fearful for their lives.”

Is the person behind rhetoric to blame?

Rhetoric can certainly influence. But is the person behind the rhetoric to blame? Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La) was shot by a gunman who was inspired by Bernie Sanders. Is Sanders to blame? In the shooting of five white officers in 2016 by a black gunman who told police he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers, should we blame Obama, who had riled racial tensions?  

There are a lot of crimes out there, every day. White on white, Asian on Asian, black on black, black on Asian. It isn’t just white people. Yet when it isn’t white perpetrators it’s cast in a different light. 

When a black 19-year-old killed an 84-yr-old Asian man last month, why did CNN report that there was “lack of evidence pointing solely to anti-Asian bigotry” and the suspect was a man preying on the vulnerable and elderly? What about the Asian stylist punched in the face by a black woman hurling racial slurs?  Last year, a video caught two men dragging an Asian woman and in another video a black man assaulted an elderly Asian man. Are these anti-Asian crimes? What about hate crimes in general? In upstate NY this month, two black teens were arrested for allegedly setting an elderly white man on fire. Is this a racist crime? Reports of the the Boulder shooting that left 10 white people dead refers to the non-white male suspect whose family emigrated from Syria as having mental illness. Why isn’t this investigated as a hate crime? Search “Boulder or Colorado shootings'' and most reports refer to the problem of mental illness or loose gun laws. Search for “Atlanta shootings” and most reports refer to the problem of racism. Something’s not right.

By Trevor’s logic, all crimes are racist because intent doesn’t matter. 

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistic report in 2018 titled: Criminal Victimization, white Americans were not the largest perpetrator of crimes against Asians. The percentage of whites and Asians carrying out crimes against Asians were the same: 24 percent, whereas blacks committed 27.5 percent of those crimes. These are not categorized as racially-motivated crimes. We don’t know the motives or intent. But if we are to apply the same standards the media is applying to the Atlanta shootings, then yes all of these are racially-motivated crimes.

The point is we’re not addressing the problem

There is an anti-Asian problem. I get it. As an immigrant, I recall being the only Asian in a very white school where some of the white kids weren’t sure if they could be friends with me because I was “oriental.” In another neighborhood, I was chased down by three black kids because I was different from them too. I don’t doubt this type of unfamiliarity with people drives some to do bad things. 

But there’s questions to ask: Are Asians being targeted because many are successful? Are they being targeted because Asian women are sexualized? Who’s committing the crimes and what is their motive? Is the 24/7 news media hype machine causing more hate crimes? Is it a combination of the above that’s been exacerbated by lockdowns that are driving everyone insane? (In 2020, murders rose 35 percent in the Bay Area while homicides jumped  nearly 40% in NYC and up 50% in Chicago.) 

As I’ve also said in the past, if American culture is so racist, why are Asians doing so well? They account for under 6 percent of the population yet the household median income for Asian Americans is 38 percent greater than the national median income. At Apple, 23 percent of the highest paying tech jobs are held by Asian. Even in 2010, a decade ago, Asians made up more than half of the Bay Area workforce, which included high-paying tech and engineering jobs. 

If Republicans are so racist, why did the Trump administration sue Yale for discriminating against Asians in college admissions? If the current administration is not racist, why did they drop this lawsuit that discriminates against Asians? When a school drops a program for high-performing kids solely because many who qualified were Asians and whites, why is this not racist?

Democrats, like Kendi, will say because “If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist.” They’ll say their progressive discriminatory policies enabled Asians and people of color to succeed, therefore they’re not racist. I agree and disagree. Democrats and Republicans both have laid the groundwork for such policies. Republicans were just as much behind affirmative action (which are a form of preferential, or said differently “discriminatory”). Their goals aligned in wanting equal opportunity and safety nets. But I don’t subscribe to the notion that discrimation until there are equal outcomes is a good thing, that’s called communism. It doesn’t work. 

This is why the current political battle isn’t between Republicans vs. Democrats. It’s actually Republicans against socialists. Socialists are on the move and in fact have a toe, and possibly a foot, in the White House since the White House is also promulgating the same racist narrative. The socialists have found a magical hammer, racism, and they can use it to hammer any political nail. If you defend America’s traditional values, capitalism and the Judeo-Christian ethos whose goal is not equal outcomes, you are racist. Essentially the entire Republican party is racist. Equal outcomes taken to its logical end doesn’t make sense.

Socialists want more power in the hands of their government and to use that platform to shape our values, ethos and definition of equity. Inflating rage bubbles has become their go-to political strategy. Select incidents that fit the narrative; re-cast those that don’t; spin the media and social media machine; call everything that contradicts the narrative bigotted and move the social agenda forward. Rinse and repeat.

As an immigrant who’s had success in America, I like America’s traditional values and capitalism. They’ve changed my life. I was given an opportunity to create an amazing life that would not have been available to me in any other country of the world. I’m grateful for America. But rage bubbles distract me from being grateful. They drive me and many to fill ourselves with hate and resentment so we forget the blessings that inspire us. 

Not all media are complicit. NBC News legal analyst explained why the Atlanta shootings are “not being classified as a hate crime. But these reports are few. We need more of this and less emotion. Yes, America needs to work on race. We always will need to. But what leads to crime isn’t just racism. We won’t find those underlying cracks in our foundation if we are so myopic. 

Rage bubbles move us backward, not forward. 

Image source on social media: Vox

Behind Obama’s epistemological crisis: Ego and Animus between Obama and Trump played a big role

Obama was recently interviewed about his new memoir when he made an arousing observation: “If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work. And by definition our democracy doesn’t work. We are entering into an epistemological crisis.”   

Epistemology is the perfect ten dollar word for the crisis. When history is written, we could indeed have different versions of truth depending on which news channels, newspapers or books historians use as reference. Yet the New York Times has already rewritten history with its 1619 Project, claiming the one we know is false so at closer inspection Obama might have been more perspicacious if he recognized that the crisis he speaks of has already been well entered into. Despite many believing the reality distortion started when Donald Trump became president,  Obama had a hand in shaping this. Like a social stealth bomber, he is hard to see coming as he eloquently glides in to deliver his rhetorical payload. It is in the aftermath that the carnage becomes visible. Trump takes the blame for a situation of Obama’s making.   

But before we dive into their competing truth narratives, we have to talk about the odium that seeded the animus. As long-standing enemies, the visceral contempt and simultaneous jealousy between Obama and Trump have been akin to parents undergoing a high-conflict divorce. It’s no wonder the kids are not alright and have vehemently taken sides.

Seeding contempt

Obama’s scorn, initially driven by Trump’s doltish and relentless accusation that Obama wasn’t born in the United States, was famously revealed during a 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, in which he made the entire room burst into raucous laughter at the expense of Trump. Obama’s insults stung: "[Trump] can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?" 

Fast forward a decade, the fervent ill-will remains. As Esquire’s Charles P. Pence so astutely pointed out in his post: President Obama has set up light housekeeping in Donald Trump’s cerebellum, Obama is showing his “snarkmaster” personality as he takes joy trolling Trump. 

Evidence of that was on display when Obama toured the country this fall, seemingly spending more time mocking Trump than praising Biden.

In the memoir interview, Obama continued his assault, saying he’s not surprised that Americans voted in a right-wing populist, but “I would have expected somebody a little more appealing.” He also emasculated Trump by portraying him as less than manly. “There was a code… the code of masculinity that I grew up with that harkens back to the 30s and 40s and before that. There’s a notion that a man is true to his word, that he takes responsibility, that he doesn’t complain, that he isn’t a bully -- in fact he defends the vulnerable against bullies. And so even if you are someone who is annoyed by wokeness and political correctness and wants men to be men again and is tired about everyone complaining about the patriarch, I thought that the model wouldn’t be Richie Rich--the complaining, lying, doesn’t-take-responsibility-for-anything type of figure.”

In between his snarkiness, Obama’s rhetorical prowess seduces many into believing the benevolent president of hope isn’t a mean-spirited vengeful bully, notwithstanding his endless derision. He’s rendered honest, accurate, witty and justified. It is why Obama could so easily fly below the radar and insidiously charge up the national narrative’s divisive rhetoric on race without anyone knowing what hit them. It helped that news outlets and tech distribution platforms have become extensions of the liberal party.

Media silos promoting competing narratives

Trump is assailed for calling much of mainstream media fake news. The Trumpian style of astute observations distilled down to a label, while sometimes viewed as bullying, is also perceived as incisive. But make no mistake, Obama was first to call fake, accusing Fox News of purveying conspiracy theories that demonized him. Obama just used a lot of words.

“The issue was not a lack of schmoozing,” Obama said, referring to the gridlock he believed Republicans created. “The issue was that they found it politically advantageous to demonize me and the Democratic Party. This was amplified by media outlets like Fox News. Their voters believed this, and over time Republicans became so successful in their demonization that it became very difficult for them to compromise, or even be seen being friendly.” Obama sees Fox News everywhere just as the right sees CNN in every airport. “If Fox News isn’t on every television in every barbershop and VFW hall, then it might be a Sinclair-owned station, and the presuppositions that exist there, about who I am and what I believe, are so fundamentally different, have changed so much, that it’s difficult to break through. I come out of this book very worried about the degree to which we do not have a common baseline of fact and a common story.”

He then goes on to blame right-wing media for shaping the Republican party. “I’ve said this before: The problem facing the Republican Party, the conservative movement, whatever you want to call it, goes back to the attitudes of the base—attitudes that have been shaped by right-wing media. And so essentially what Republican elected officials have done is to say to themselves that in order to survive, we have to go along with conspiracy theorizing, false assertion, fantasies that Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh and others in that echo chamber have concocted, because people believe them.”

One can only surmise that Fox’s rising popularity and criticism of Obama, motivated other outlets to come to the defense of him and the progressive ticket against right-wing lies. When Trump came into office the media’s criticism and defense of the presidency became more apparent and partisan, albeit in reverse. Like children guarding their favored parent, the media accelerated their transformation into political activists fighting fiercely for their version of truth to prevail. 

Why racism is 2020’s epistemological crisis

There are many different truth claims that Obama is likely referring to. The most recent debates have been focused on the efficacy of mask wearing and lockdowns and the prevalence of voter fraud. But the current definitive argument on truth involves the nature of racism: It is systemic in our culture and institutions, victimizing blacks until equal outcomes are achieved. Or it is a manifestation of human sin irrespective of external systems. 

Trump champions the latter because anyone can be racist. Obama champions the former because he can lay the racism accusation at the feet of conservatives. As the popular election memes say: “Trump supporters may not be racist, but they certainly decided it wasn’t a deal killer.” Race has become the social and political kill switch for debate and conversation. If you step out of the approved narrative, you are no longer with us, and you have moved from binary 1 to a 0. You may not be a racist, but you’ve decided racism isn’t a “deal killer.” Which, by the way, is just a passive aggressive way of calling you a racist. 

The fact that Obama was the very first black American to become president always made  “race” hard to ignore though many, like myself believed Obama’s presidency meant a new racial order. But Obama and Hillary weren’t inclusive, they labeled (deplorables) and bullied in their own silky smooth way, and they lost the national mandate in the process. Michelle Obama also seemed to play a significant role in cultivating the systemic racism meme. If Obama’s reference to her is any clue, she appears to harbor a lot of resentment. Michelle was the target of malign emails by Republican officials who compared her to “animals,” he said. Obama also noted that Michelle “tends to be a little bit more pessimistic about human nature.”  The core themes of her public presence, including her less-than-hopeful speech at the 2020 DNC, seem to have become “white flight”, white supremacy and systemic racism. 

Those issues are important, but they aren’t the center of the national zeitgeist. Even Obama hinted as much. In the memoir interview Obama makes an important statement, though it’s lost in the discussion of today, that he’s not sure if Trump’s 2016 win was based on racism or an anti-liberalism strain. “It’s difficult to clearly say how much of this was race, as opposed to opposition to liberalism,” he said. I believe Obama sees the underlying truth, that Republicans aren’t stepping over racism, they are stepping away from liberalism. 

My sense is that in 2016, race played a much smaller role than anti-liberalism, anti-establishment and anti-Hillaryism. Yet Obama’s thin-skin when it comes to microaggressions amplifies race. While he likes to quip that Trump “ain’t all that tough” because he can’t take the media heat. Obama cries a river when he’s the target of their ire. 

“What I think is indisputable is that I signified a shift in power. Just my mere presence worried folks, in some cases explicitly, in some cases subconsciously… And then there were folks around to exploit that and tap into that. If a Fox News talking head asks, when Michelle and I dap, give each other a fist bump, ‘Is that a terrorist fist bump?,’ that’s not a particularly subtle reference. If there’s a sign in opposition to the ACA in which I’m dressed as an African witch doctor with a bone through my nose, that’s not a hard thing to interpret.”  

Obama was referring to then Fox News reporter E.D. Hill’s gaffe reference to the fist bump Obama gave his wife in 2008. As for the witch doctor image, it was made by a NJ store owner who doctored a photo and placed it on his store window. Hill’s blunder was insensitive and the doctored photo was clearly inappropriate. But it is important to not take the exception and package them as the norm, that’s how we get to now highly polarized views with no clear path back to a shared understanding that most of the people on both sides are good and decent and want largely the same things - but with slightly different views on how to allocate the resources to get them. 

To be clear, Trump didn’t help matters. When he started making the so-called “birther” allegations against Obama, he also tried to delegitimize his intelligence by questioning how he got into Harvard. These insults became the basis of the “racist” narrative that began to take shape a decade ago. “Racist code underlies Trump’s rise,” wrote Politico. NPR published: “Confronting Trump’s coded racism.” 

By the time Trump decided to run for office in 2015, the racism narrative took off, much of which I talk about in my book Unequally Yoked. By dint of association or support of Trump, a person was labeled racist, even though Trump’s policies weren’t racist, and in fact many would argue upward mobility by minorities advanced significantly under his administration. Even some of his staunchest critics took issue with the racist label. Hendrik Hertzberg, a liberal political commentator opined that Trump’s contempt for Obama is more anti-elitist than racist. "Obama's erudition, his ivy-league-ness, his urbanity, his citizen-of-the-worldness, his foreign-sounding name, his respect for the authority of reason and science, his 'aristocratic' 'aloofness' (all of which I love, of course) are equally or more part of the package," Hertzberg told NPR, adding that racism is the latest evidence that conservative’s have a problem with the truth. 

“The dismaying truth is that birtherism is part of a larger pattern of rejection of reality that has taken hold of intimidating segments of one of the two political parties,” wrote Hertzberg. “It is akin to the view that global warming is a hoax, or that the budget can be balanced through spending cuts alone, or that contraception causes abortion, or that evolution is just another theory, on part with the theory that the earth is six thousand years old.”

We do live in an epistemological crisis if we hold on to our truth claims with such vigor. We live in a crisis if Al Sharpton, who promulgated the famous Tawana Brawley hoax, is scolding the country on MSNBC that “we’re now in a nation where facts don’t matter. You make up facts. And not only do you have an alternative reality, how do you debate someone that is dealing with a totally fictitious premise?” We live in a crisis when Joe Biden says it’s “time to heal” and “not to divide but unify” when many from his party want to cancel Trump supporters. As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich tweeted: “When this nightmare is over, we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It would erase Trump’s lies, comfort those who have been harmed by his hatefulness, and name every official, politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe.” I’m not sure that’s how Nelson Mandela would have tweeted it.  

Obama’s epistemological solution

So what to do about this crisis Obama has identified? One can take Obama’s antidote to fight discouragement with gallows humor and “laughter to fight off despair.” Or we can embrace one indisputable truth: black Americans are free, and the fact that Trump doubled the votes of this racial group suggests many of them think the victim narrative is an overplayed fiction.  

Obama has succinctly captured the current national crisis. He has hinted that he knows the underlying challenges for Democrats aren’t racism, but some aspects of liberalism. He’s even questioned the efficacy of the woke movement. This is good. But not good enough if racism blinds his ability to pursue the truth. To wit: On the “The Breakfast Club” radio show, Obama showed how little he understood the many Hispanic evangelicals who don’t like the anti-capitalist leanings of the left. “There are a lot of evangelical Hispanics who, you know, the fact that Trump says racist things about Mexicans or puts detainees, you know, undocumented workers in cages — they think that’s less important than the fact that he supports their views on gay marriage or abortion,” Obama said. 

Obama’s words were a lost opportunity that threw more fuel on the race fire and ignored reality.  

To address this epistemological crisis, there’s one more move he and his wife can make on the national chess board: articulate the other side and acknowledge their reality. If the Obamas want to go high, as Michelle lectures many to do, and become the pan-American voice they clearly aspire to be, then they have to move beyond packaging corner-case incidents as systemic racism, and use their prodigious gifts of articulation to explain both sides of the issues confronting our nation. 

In other words, Obama can use his gift of communication skills to articulate why an anti-capitalism stance is hurting his party, and embrace the indisputable truth: black Americans are free, and the fact that Trump doubled the votes of this racial group suggests many of them think the victim narrative is an overplayed fiction.  

Why I'm voting for Trump in 2020

I’m voting for Donald Trump. It’s largely a moral choice. For my friends who are also voting for Trump, but fear to share your hand, I thought I'd share my thoughts because I know you want them to be said. The left’s sanctimonious accusations that anyone who votes for him is debauched with no conscience has been so insulting that it has only served to move more people like me to the right. This overused failed syllogism delegitimizes half the country. Constant derision is exhausting. A Christian friend of mine wrote that those who’d vote for Trump wouldn’t be forgiven. Not particularly Christian.

My vote in 2016 wasn’t so much “for” Trump, it was “against” Hillary Clinton’s duplicity. 

This time around I’m voting for Trump because character and decency still matter. Democrats are not the party of unity and honor that they tout themselves to be. They are not the paragon of morality. When Michelle Obama lectured the country during the DNC that our leaders are encouraging white supremacy while those rioting and looting on the street were justified, that wasn’t “going high” as she so frequently lectures others to do, it was a clinic on going low. Harris and Biden are carrying forward that unrepentant pharisaical division. 

Evangelical John Piper wrote this to admonish those voting for Trump: “I find it bewildering that Christians can be so sure that greater damage will be done by bad judges, bad laws, and bad policies than is being done by the culture-infecting spread of the gangrene of sinful self-exaltation, and boasting, and strife-stirring.” As a Christian, I would pose the same statement to him. Piper also wrote: “Forgiveness through Christ is always possible where there is repentance and childlike trust in Jesus. But where humble repentance is absent, the sins condemn.”

After seeing throughout the last four years the dishonorable, arrogant, reprehensible and unprecedented media-enabled coup attempts to get rid of Trump, I would say repentance is definitely called for but there’s little likelihood we’ll get that from Democrats.

So I’m excited to cast my ballot for Trump. Yes he lacks humility and is narcissistic. Perhaps those are qualities needed to withstand and survive incessant attacks, not just on him, but his supporters. For Biden and Harris to be part of that scheme hardly makes them more honorable and humble. Worse yet, if they do get into office, they’ll be aided by a media apparatus and an educational system that will always package their agenda and image as compassionate, selfless and moderate. Let’s not be fooled, Harris will bring us closer to the radical left. Non-partisan govtrak ranked her the “most liberal compared to All senators.” 

At the final presidential debate, Joe Biden blamed Trump for the COVID deaths. How does this make him honest? Did Biden’s plan also sound any different than what this administration is already doing?    

I moderated a panel at Vator’s event called Healthcare in Politics, where government officials, innovators and healthcare policy wonks cried the same meme: We should have had a coordinated national policy against COVID! After I shared the numerous ways the federal government did respond (travel ban, FDA’s easing of rules to get the private sector to produce tests, national Shelter in Place and social distancing guidelines, $2.2 trillion relief package, CMS telehealth deregulation, etc.), I asked what could have been added to those initiatives. The basic response was - “We should have had a national mask mandate.” Oh! Of course! Genius. I’m switching parties now! [Watch the video of the panel.] Nonetheless, on April 3, Trump announced the CDC recommended everyone wear masks. 

The Hunter Biden scandal is also replete with evidence, not of the younger Biden’s dalliances though there’s many, but of the media’s irresponsible protective coverage of the story. 

First Facebook and Twitter suppressed the distribution of the New York Post article that unearthed emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop, emails the FBI has independently confirmed as authentic and the Biden campaign has not denied as genuine.

Much of the media has ignored the very real possibility that Joe Biden might have crafted national policy to enrich his son or that he might even have benefitted himself. I’m not accusing Biden of this. But at least, there’s enough to investigate. Yet, the media is doing nothing of the sort but everything in their might to debunk it. There’s an endless supply of analysis and opinion, like this one from MSNBC: “Trump’s desperate ‘Bidengate’ Hail Mary keeps backfiring.” But you can see the left-leaning tendencies even from supposed objective reporting, such as this piece on CNN: The anatomy of the New York Post’s dubious story. 

The most disconcerting admission of non-coverage came from NPR, whose Managing Editor for News Terence Samule said the outlet didn’t want to “waste” time on “stories that are not real stories.” Fortunately, some of my friends who are centrist see this blatant disregard for objectivity and truth-seeking. 

Where was this type of reporting when it came to Russian collusion? The Democrats and their media allies were happy to run with it for years even though the FBI in January 2017 clearly admitted that the document [Steele dossier] that was the basis for the investigation and surveillance on the Trump campaign was flawed and uncorroborated. One piece of evidence came from former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s testimony in 2017. “I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.”

The double-standard reporting principles have been a winning strategy for Biden, if the polls are accurate. This is a sad state of affairs. The press is a critical part of the checks and balances in our governing process - often referred to as the “fourth branch” of government.  If the press continues to kowtow to the Democrats and we lose the “final check” on the system, we are surely setting a course for tyranny.

Additionally, Biden’s manipulation of Trump’s words betrays his lack of dignity. Here’s what Biden said during the debate. “He started off his campaign coming down the escalator saying he’s getting rid of those Mexican rapists. He’s banned Muslims because they’re Muslims…” This is not true and honest and well-read people know it. It’s just one of the repeated lies about Trump I wrote about and deconstructed in my book Unequally Yoked.  

For those who like to say that Trump was impeached for “Abuse of Power” then let’s at least apply the same standard to Obama, who could have been impeached for the same reason when he asked Dmitry Medvedev to tell Putin to ease up on missile defense until after the election.  

Trump’s sexual misconduct allegations are horrific and disgusting, but let’s not sweep under the rug the more than dozen sexual assault allegations against Biden. Also, I’m sure if half the men in this country were caught on a hot mic, their locker room talk might sound similarly gross. Preachers have confessed their obsession with pornography. Can you forgive them?

Many accuse Trump to be an indefatigable prevaricator. As I’ve said many times, when everyone is counting, it’s hard not to find some embellishment here and there. But to say Trump lied 360 times by saying “the economy is the best in history” isn’t a lie when you consider unemployment was the lowest in 50 years (pre-Covid) and the stock market was and continues to set record highs.  When Obama said in 2016 that “America’s economy is not just better than it was eight years ago” you could argue that it wasn’t better off since he doubled the deficit to $19 trillion up from $10 trillion when he took office. Was Obama lying? The lie narrative is simply at best a half truth. 

The question isn’t: Is Donald Trump a liar? The question is: Who isn’t?

The question isn’t: Is Trump immoral? The question is: Who is not?  

The question isn’t: Does Donald Trump share our Christian faith? The question is: Have his policies reflected what some Christians stand for? 

So here’s why I’m voting for him in 2020. His transparency has been net refreshing, if only to get Democrats in a tizzy and to expose their hypocrisy.

I’ll start with the policy wins I am excited about:

Non-political Judges -- I am for originalists judges. Judges who look at the Constitution based on its original intent and understanding when it was ratified. Trump appointed 53 appeals court judges and 3 Supreme Court judges. Republican-nominated judges tend to vote based on the law and not politics. Out of the 67 decisions made by the Supreme Court in the 2019 term, four justices appointed by Democrats voted together 51 times while Republican-nominated judges only voted together 37 times, according to Ben Shapiro. 

Deregulation -- For all the talk of Trump ushering in a Hitler-like authoritarian government, the left is bringing us far closer to a Marxist and Stalin totalitarian regime. To use Joe Biden’s favorite line, “Come on, Man!” The Democrats have embraced the self-admitted Marxist organization Black Lives Matter. The left controls the media and wants to control even more of the economy through initiatives like the Green New Deal. Trump wants to move power away from an unaccountable administrative state. He added the fewest regulations compared to Obama and G.W. Bush in the first two years and initiated 243 deregulatory items. Source: Cato

Anti-abortion initiatives -- I am for women to have rights. But I’m also for women and men to be accountable for their actions, and there have been many unintended and unfortunate consequences for allowing abortion to be too easily accessible. I’m for prudence when it comes to making a heart-wrenching decision like abortion. And I’m not alone. If Americans are pretty split on being pro-choice and pro-abortion, then we shouldn’t have abortion be a federally funded procedure. 

Trump supported a “Born Alive Act” - institute penalties and jail time for healthcare providers who do not provide medical care to a child born alive due to a botched abortion. The care would be to preserve life, just like any child born. Democrats say “infanticide” is already illegal in every state. The bill failed in the Senate. Sen. Harris was against this bill. If there is no need for federal law to save these born alive babies, then the same argument can be applied to abortions. There is no need for a federal law if there is already state laws that support  abortion. Trump also backed “No-taxable funding for abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act of 2019.” HHS created Conscience and Religious Freedom Division fights for doctors, nurse and healthcare providers who don’t want to participate in abortions. (source) Harris is just a tool for Planned Parenthood, advocating many of their policies, including federal right for healthcare providers to provide abortions free limitations and bans (such as getting ultrasounds and follow state medical procedures, like waiting periods. This is part of the Women’s Health Protection Act. Biden/Harris would also eliminate the Hyde amendment, which would ban federal funding for abortions.  

Economy -- Admittedly, the economy under Obama was recovering tepidly and Trump’s policies one could argue just continued the slow growth. But under Trump there were several quarters of 3-plus percent growth. (source) Pre-Covid, Trump created more manufacturing jobs and lowered the unemployment rate more than Obama. In the last 30 months of Obama’s term, manufacturing employment grew by 185,000 or 1.5 percent. In Trump’s first 30 months, 499,000 jobs were added, up 4 percent. Comparing these two periods, Trump added 314,000 more jobs. (source) Unemployment was 7.8 percent for Obama Sep 2012 (re-election) down from 10 percent in October 2009; Unemployment under Trump was 7.9 percent Sep 2012 down from 14.7 percent in April. But it also trended to 3.6-3.9 percent in 2018/2019. Blue-color jobs also grew 3.3%,  

The stock market did go up from sub-7000 during the Great Recession amid the Obama years. Trump then continued the gains, largely due to tax cuts and a deregulatory environment. Trump tax cuts helped corporations spend $1 trillion in stock buybacks. More than half of Americans are invested directly into stocks. When we came to America, my family didn’t own any stocks. We didn’t own any property. We lived in a studio apartment. Stocks and property are not entirely generational wealth mechanisms. 

Trump has shown more fiscal constraint over Obama, at least prior to COVID. Obama entered with $10.6 trillion in total debt and left owing $19.9 trillion - about $1.6 trillion each year. Debt to GDP under Obama was 77.3% and up to 103.6 percent by the time he left. By 2019, that debt rose to $22 trillion under Trump, making the debt-to-GDP ratio 104%. Yet we saw a lot of gains in GDP and the stock market during this period. On Oct. 1, 2020, it hit $26.5 trillion, making the ratio surge to 136%. But this is largely due to COVID-19. 

Tax cuts - I’m generally for tax cuts and supply-side economics. Americans paid about $64 billion less in federal income taxes in the first year when the tax cut was signed into law. The sharpest drops in payments went to taxpayers earning between $25k and $100k a year.  Taxpayers making between $40k to $500k saw a roughly 15% tax reduction while those making over $1 million saw a 4% tax reduction. Also, the top 50 percent of all taxpayers pay 97% of all individual income taxes. While the bottom 50 percent pay the 2.8%. The top 1% paid 39% of all individual income taxes. (source)

The Middle East wins --  Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, unwound the Iran nuclear deal (a move highly supported by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice). Even the Brookings Institute, not exactly your conservative think tank, rebuked the Iran deal. “The presumed trigger for a possible Middle East nuclear weapons competition is Iran, which has violated nonproliferation obligations, conducted activities relevant to the development of nuclear weapons.” Their activity raised concerns among other countries. Trump’s team, led by Jared Kushner, brokered relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, as well as Bahrain and Israel -- creating a network of peace. The last time there was a reconciliation between an Arab state and Israel was in 1994 with Jordan. The four Arab countries that recognize Israel are Bahrain, UAE, Jordan and Egypt. 

Police reform and addressing underserved communities: 
Black women terminate pregnancies via abortion at far higher rates than other women. Some call it “black genocide.” While there are pro-life Democrats, Republicans are far more explicit and supportive of anti-abortion and pro-life policies. There’s a large body of research that shows the benefit of Charter Schools for lower-income and black families. More Republicans embrace Charter Schools than Democrats. The Trump administration has provided hundreds of millions  of dollars for historically black colleges and at the same time forgiven hundreds of millions of dollars of loans. There was criminal justice reform with the First Step Act (FSA), which was signed into law in 2018, and referred to by The New Yorker as “one of the most significant criminal-justice-reform bills in decades.” The FSA appears to be successfully reducing sentences, something social justice warriors are fighting for. Ben Carson proposed reducing regulatory hurdles for affordable housing, and the list goes on. This isn’t all talk. Prior to COVID-19 unemployment for black and Hispanic Americans had dropped to its lowest point in history. We can’t ignore progress just because it doesn’t fit a narrative. 

Democrat’s double standards 

Impeachment farce - Trump was impeached on two counts: Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress. Firstly, Congress didn’t vote on an impeachment inquiry, Pelosi just started it. It’s not unconstitutional to not have a vote, but unprecedented. Republicans were also not allowed to issue subpoenas and at times have been denied the ability to cross-examine. Additionally, Democrats abandoned using the courts to compel witnesses, something they had at their disposal. They just sent subpoenas, which Trump had every right to ignore. As for Abuse of Power because he asked a foreign leader to investigate corruption, presidents do that all the time. President Obama asked Dmitry Medvedev to tell Putin to ease up on missile defense until after the election. Even Romney criticized Obama for wanting political favor to help him win re-election. (source: wsj)   

Russian collusion illusion -- Robert Mueller’s final report in April 2019 concluded that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. His two-year tax-payer-funded probe cost $30-plus trillion. Mueller didn’t find any evidence for criminal indictments. “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” Former Dir. of National Intelligence James Clapper testified: “I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/​conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.” source.

Most egregious abuse of power was the use of the Steele Dossier. Christopher Steele, a former British spy, was financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC to find dirt against Trump. He came up with a report that came largely from one “primary subsource,” according to the Justice Department. When agents investigated the source said there was no basis for those allegations, they were not factual, only business intelligence. Yet FBI interviews in January 2017 showed the FBI used the dossier as the basis for warrants to surveil Trump aid Carter Page during the 2016 campaign, according to the Justice Department. There’s nearly 60 pages of notes from the interviews making it clear the FBI knew the dossier had spurious information (as early as 2017). The FBI didn’t even corroborate the allegations prior to Page being surveilled in October 2016. Even the source said the information was business intelligence but nothing factual. 

In February 2017, one of the FBI investigators wrote an internal FBI analysis saying “we are unaware of ANY Trump advisors engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials.” Yet the NYTimes still wrote articles “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence.” Moreover, they used the dossier to renew surveillance warrants. (source: wsj) 

I wrote my book Unequally Yoked to largely deconstruct how the media has misrepresented Trump. In the last four years, I’ve seen a false narrative explode into mainstream consciousness as the postmodern moral polarity view is being adopted and canceling out those who do not embrace the left’s version of right. Ad hominem has not only been permitted, it’s been a concerted strategy. Complex truths are turned into simple falsehoods. I’d love Trump to win if only so more people can see this hypocrisy. But it’s coming out. Truth always out distances deceit. 

Cancel culture can’t go on ad infinitum or no one will be left to cancel. I’m proud to be voting for Trump.