January 14, 2025
How to Prevent Candidates Like Trump from Becoming President
By John Myers
By Huifen Li
“Funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently…”A statement that was reposted on October 30, 2024 by Donald Trump on the social media platform ‘X’ in order to bring his political opponent, Kamala Harris, and his former political opponent, Hillary Clinton, down. Not only is this a vile and cruel insinuation that women can only come to power if they provide sexual favors for men, but the post also suggests that Harris and Clinton are unremarkable and their accomplishments were not achieved through their own means. Trump, knowing this, reposts this degrading quote anyway.
This kind of “disrespectful politics” seeks to tear down one’s political opponent, using whatever means possible to bring to light their “wrongdoings.” By throwing out allegation after allegation, Trump successfully claimed a second term in the position as President of the United States.
As they say, “any publicity is good publicity.” Trump proves this statement true again, following his reelection in November 2024. By garnering public attention through the bold statements he has posted and reposted on X, it should come as no surprise that his name has become more well known, making him a popular candidate that won by a landslide.
Behavior like this should not be encouraged or condoned. The rise in disrespectful politics has made way for more extreme polarization in the US and normalizes the idea that political candidates should resort to slandering and defamation of their opponent instead of projecting their plans on what they should be doing to help the country. If all anyone can focus on is the newest wild statement a candidate has said, that will naturally overshadow everything else.
By paying so much attention to someone like Trump who does not actually deserve it, they naturally gather more attention as people begin to wonder why they are getting so much of it. All the while, those that are more deserving of the spotlight do not get the chance to say their piece since they are not as disrespectful and vile as their opponent.
Another factor, relating to disrespectful politics, that led to Trump’s victory was his encouragement for his supporters to essentially attack Harris. Trump not only went after Harris himself – constantly calling her intelligence into question, even calling her “mentally impaired” at one point according to an article from CNN news – but also told his supporters to call her out for being a bad Vice President- even though her power as Vice President is highly limited/
In order to prevent candidates like Trump from winning the presidential election, the normalization of disrespectful politics must come to an end. However, we must not fight fire with fire, combating disrespectful statements with ones of our own. By “flaming” or highly criticizing them, we encourage disrespectful politics as the entire basis of it is bringing another person down. Instead, it would be best to not give an attention seeker the attention they so desire, ignoring them as a way of showing them that we do not condone their actions, and choose the next best candidate.
