I Listened to a Trump Supporter

> So to her, the idea of a border wall is a non-issue. I pressed her on the issue, and she said she thinks, “It’s a waste of money. If someone wants to cross the border, they’re gonna cross the border.”

It's actually worse than a waste of money. This was covered a couple of weeks ago on "Adam Ruins Everything", when they did a show on immigration.

It turns out that whenever we tighten border controls to make it harder to get across the border illegally, the number of illegal immigrants living here goes up. The reason for that rather counterintuitive result is that a good fraction of illegal immigrants are people who come here legally, such as on a tourist visa, and then simply do not leave when their visa expires.

Tighter border controls don't stop these people from coming in, but they do stop many of them from leaving. With the border as it is today, there is a steady flow of illegal immigrants in both directions. You can come in to work here illegally, save up some money, and go home to help your family there, and then come back for more work.

If the border is tight enough that you don't think you'll be able to cross it back into the US illegally if you go home to Mexico, you are more likely to take up permanent illegal residence in the US. You'll come in the first time legally, and just stay.

It's such a sad situation. Large segments of the population have been genuinely suffering and the problems being quite mathematical, makes it so that no one sees that the culprits are monetary hawks deliberately pushing people into poverty to maintain their precious sub 2% inflation. People turn to blaming each other or visible groups. They want retributive justice more than a solution because they can no longer trust promises that the situation will be improved. The situation is slowly getting better in the US but it took way too long, did serious damage to people's livelihood and in Europe and elsewhere around the world, things are still catastrophic.

Here is my attempt at explaining the macroeconomic situation:

https://medium.com/@b.essiambre/the-world-deserves-a-pay-rai...

Democrats want us to vote for the lesser evil. I'm afraid that is what will get Trump into the White House.

As someone who grew up in the Rust Belt, my feelings about Trump are very similar to those described by the interview subject. I'm sure there are many from my community who feel similarly.

There are many problems with Trump, but his anti-free-trade policies alone are enough to make me seriously consider voting for him, regardless of the obvious issues with both Trump as a person, and the rest of his platform. That should tell you a lot about the amount of economic pain free trade has caused to the place where I grew up -- basically my hometown's area's been in a depression for as long as I can remember, things still haven't recovered from waves of plant closings stretching back to the 1980's.

The irony of this article is that the only person seriously talking about providing relief to people like this woman is Hillary Clinton. And while the author seems to want to debunk the notion that Trump supporters are racists, his subject's comments about "the blacks" would seem only to reinforce that impression.

Both from comments from the woman portrayed in the piece as well as a comment from the author ("...we’re going to see another neck-and-neck election in 2020, and in 2024, and in 2028"), to me it almost seems like there could be more opportunities for independent candidates in the near future. I wonder of more people like the woman portrayed keep thinking "well X hasn't helped me, and Y isn't helping me, maybe i'll take a shot with Z; at this point what will it hurt?"

So the author believes Trump supporters must be economically hurt, or racists.

A photo from Trump DC hotel opening to show you how racist is Trump:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CsKi8cbWYAAHoy8.jpg:large

" This is not a person who is stupid or racist. She knows Bush caused the economy collapse with his irresponsible tax policies and wars. "

good lord. can we please stop crediting and blaming presidents for everything under the sun? if we didn't have a president, the economy would cycle.