Why I Cannot Respect Choosing To Vote For Trump

As Americans, we have the luxury of living in a country where we get to vote for our leaders. Unlike many countries, we have a representative government, and gerrymandering and other shady tactics notwithstanding, we have the privilege of choosing who we cast our votes for. This was a truly revolutionary system when our founders created it 244 years ago, and it has generally served us well. Despite its flaws, it has been a model to countless countries around the world, and I am deeply thankful that we have such a system.

Like most Americans, I cherish being able to go to my polling station to cast my vote, to the point of considering it a moral obligation. I have the freedom to vote for whichever candidates and issues I want, which is something I truly treasure. Part of exercising this right, however, is respecting that not everyone will vote the same way you do. We have a fantastically diverse country, and a wide array of political ideologies is naturally present. I gladly respect peoples’ right to vote for candidates and issues I disagree with, even when my opposition is vehement.

That being said, respecting peoples’ voting choices isn’t something that extends infinitely or unconditionally. There are times when we cannot and should not respect the choice someone makes. There are times when a candidate or issue is so grossly amoral that morality demands we not respect the choice to vote for them.

This year’s presidential election is one of those times.

On November 3^rd, we’re tasked with choosing between Donald Trump, Joe Biden, or a third party candidate (such as Libertarian Jo Jorgensen or Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins) for our next President. None of the choices are particularly good, but Trump stands out from the rest because of his bigotry, greed, vindictiveness, incompetence, and narcissism.  His presidency has been marred by failure after failure and by his inability to actually lead. His actions, policies, and rhetoric have been offensive and damaging to both American citizens and to our reputation abroad. He is quite possibly the most dangerous man to ever hold the office of presidency in this country, and a full list of the reasons why could easily fill several books. As such, though I respect the right of people to vote for whomever they please, I cannot and will not respect a vote for Trump.

Now, because someone will inevitably attack me for it, yes, I have opposed Trump since he declared his candidacy (though I did give him a chance after he was inaugurated, which he blew within about a day). I am a Liberal and I tend to vote Democrat (though not exclusively; I refuse to register for or align with a political party because I believe that, as Washington foretold in his Farewell Address, that they are in fact the source of our problems). But my refusal to respect a vote for Trump isn’t out of partisanship or bias towards him or the Republican Party; it’s born from morality’s obligation to oppose anyone who is fundamentally un-American and a threat to democracy itself.

This isn’t about politics or political leanings. This is about right and wrong, and what is best for our country. I cannot respect a vote for Trump because voting for him is a signal that you either support or have no problem with things that are offensive, amoral, and antithetical to our country’s values and laws.

Here’s a brief rundown of just SOME of the things I’m talking about, broken down into categories of Corruption, Malfeasant Policies, Bigotry, Treatment of the Military and Veterans, and Other Actions and Behaviors:

Corruption

• He was impeached for trying to coerce a foreign country into interfering in this year’s election (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Donald_Trump)
•  He is currently interfering in the election by spreading disinformation about mail-in voting, which has been proven over decades to be safe and effective, with a lower rate of fraud than in-person voting
  
• He is also interfering by intentionally withholding funds from the Postal Service in order to make it more difficult to process mailed ballots
  
• He is currently suing Nevada and New Jersey over plans to expand mail-in voting, and has even floated delaying the election due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic
• He frequently fires Inspector Generals and other government watchdogs, because they were investigating him, his administration, or people close to him
  
• He fired an FBI Director, the Deputy Director of the FBI, the Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and numerous other officials simply because they weren’t doing enough to protect him and/or his friends against investigations or because they were investigating him, his businesses, and/or his friends
  
• He repeatedly called for the firing of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, and tried to order his firing simply because Mueller was investigating him
  
• Many high-level positions in his administration, including several cabinet positions, are filled with people in an “Acting”capacity instead of someone formally nominated and confirmed by the Senate; this is an intentional end-run around Congress by Trump (who’s actually admitted to this), and it’s completely antithetical to the spirit of the Constitution
  
• As of this writing, the Department of Homeland Security has NO SENATE CONFIRMED LEADERSHIP, which is truly abhorrent, and a federal court has ruled that the current leadership wasn’t even legally appointed 
• He frequently appoints people with absolutely no experience to high-level positions simply because they either donated to him (such as the scandal-embroiled current Postmaster General Louis DeJoy) or publicly laud him
  
• This includes dozens of judges, most of whom were nonetheless confirmed by the Senate on party lines (a few, such as one who was barely out of law school and had no courtroom experience whatsoever, withdrew their nominations after they became rightfully contentious); seven of those confirmed were rated “Not Qualified” by the American Bar Association, which should be an instant disqualification in itself 
•  He appointed his daughter and son-in-law to advisory positions in the White House, which is a clear case of nepotism 
•  Despite promising to do so (and holding a hilariously theatrical press conference in which he claimed to do so), he’s never actually divested himself from his business interests, and is in fact making a great deal of money off of the presidency
  
• He rented an entire floor of Trump Tower to the Secret Service, and when he plays golf at his resorts (which he does about every other weekend), they are forced to pay for rooms; this means that taxpayer dollars are literally flowing right into Trump’s pockets
  
• He floated the idea of having the G7 meeting at his Mar-a-Lago resort, which would be a BLATANT violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution
  
• He has made tens of millions of dollars from foreign officials, political committees, and fellow Republicans who used his properties for various events and lodging
  
• He ordered our Ambassador to Britain to try to get the British Open moved to his Turnberry golf course
  
• Speaking of Turnberry, he has rerouted Air Forceplanes to use a nearby airport for refueling, despite the fact that it’s hundreds of miles out of the way; this is purely to help drive up business at Turnberry by having military personnel stay there overnight
  
• He, along with numerous people in his administration (including his daughter and his wife), has violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits government officials from using their position for political purposes, on countless occasions; he in fact did it just this week, attacking Joe Biden and Kamala Harris during an official, government-funded press conference
  
• During this week’s Republican National Convention, Trump has used various parts of the White House for ceremonies and speeches broadcast at the RNC, which is a BLATANT violation of the Hatch Act, as was Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s decision to speak while on a government trip to Jerusalem

Malfeasant Policies

• He suggested that he plans to station federal law enforcement at polling stations in order to prevent voter fraud; it isn’t likely he would actually do this, given how blatantly illegal it is, but the sheer fact that he’s even floating such an idea is terrifying and disgusting in itself
  
• He has issued Executive Orders to effectively BAN both TikTok and WeChat in the United States, which is a severe infringement on First Amendment rights (TikTok is currently suing to block this order)
  
• He has failed to adequately respond to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in nearly 6 million confirmed cases and nearly 180,000 deaths as of this writing
  
• In a particularly shameful failure, hundreds of millions of dollars were promised to Native American tribes, who have been hit particularly hard by COVID, to help with treatment and prevention, and they were held up for no legitimate reason until a federal court ordered the treasury to release the funds
  
• He consistently attacks science and promotes conspiracy theories and dubious treatments that have quite literally killed people 
• He is clearly supportive of the repeatedly debunked QAnon conspiracy theory, as evidenced by his retweets of QAnon supporters and his endorsement of political candidates that are hardcore adherents to the theory
• He has pulled the United States out of numerous international treaties and agreements, including the Paris Climate Accord and the Iran Nuclear Deal, using reasoning based on lies and conspiracy theories, which makes our country and the world fundamentally less safe and also makes it far less likely that even our allies will trust us going forward
  
• He has added nearly $7 trillion to the National Debt and has more than quintupled the budget deficit, despite pledging to eliminate both
  
• He failed to adequately respond when Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Maria, and tried to blame his failed response on the local government and even threatened to pull emergency funding and workers out of Puerto Rico after they called out his terrible response
  
• He has literally put thousands of immigrant children at the border into cages, which is a violation of both domestic and international law as well as basic morality, which has resulted in the deaths of at least six childrenand leaving countless children with clear signs of PTSD
  
• He sent Federal troops into American cities to assault and illegally detain peaceful protestors; dozens of protesters were literally abducted off the streets by law enforcement agents in unmarked vans that refused to identify themselves and didn’t display any kind of agency insignia on their uniforms
  
• He had peaceful protesters teargassed and assaulted, WITHOUT CAUSE, simply so he could pose for a photo in front of St.John’s Church
  
• He has made it more difficult for students who are sexually assaulted to obtain justice by changing the way Title IX is enforced to give a blatant advantage to the accused
  
• His tax overhaul gave a trillion dollar tax break to himself and his wealthy friends, and the burden of paying for that break fell squarely on the middle class and small businesses 
• The new tax code eliminated nearly all deductions and also changed the income thresholds of the various tax brackets, which means that most middle class taxpayers ended up seeing a substantial deduction in their tax refund, and many ended up owing; many that normally owe ended up paying substantially more than normal
• The loss of deductions has also severely impacted small businesses, as they depend heavily on those deductions to help lessen their tax burden; even with the business tax rate being lowered, a lot of small businesses actually saw a net INCREASE in taxes owed because they no longer had deductions to mitigate that debt

Bigotry

• He has been endorsed in this election by racists and white supremacists such as:
  
•  David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan; he was endorsed by the same in 2016, along with the official newspaper of the KKK (Trump denounced the 2016 endorsements, though he took a suspiciously long time to denounce Duke’s endorsement)
  
• Patrick Casey, current leader of Identity Evropa, a neo-Nazi white supremacist group
  
• Milo Yiannopoulos, who, in addition to being a transphobic white supremacist, also advocates for violence against journalists (he claims his remarks are “jokes”, which, even if true, is no defense because such remarks are unconscionable regardless of context)
  
• Laura Loomer, a candidate for the House of Representatives who is known for being a conspiracy theorist with a history of truly vile racism
  
• Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist who was permanently banned from YouTube for hate speech
  
• Andrew Anglin, a neo-Nazi and the founder of the website “The Daily Stormer”, a website that spreads anti-Semitism and neo-Nazi propaganda
  
• He constantly attacks immigrants and other countries and refers to various ethnicities and minorities using offensive stereotypes and racist language:
  
• He began his 2016 campaign with racism by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” and “thugs”, and frequently calls them “bad hombres”, which recently got him suspended from Twitch
  
• In one conversation in the Oval Office, he called Afghanistan a “terrorist haven”, suggested that Haitians “all have AIDS” and that Nigerians live in “huts"
  
• He referred to El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, and numerous African countries as “shithole countries"
  
• He constantly refers to Senator Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas” (he even did this while giving an award to a Native American veteran on live television, which many Native American tribes, as well as the National Congress of American Indians, condemn as a racial slur, in order to mock her debunked claim of Cherokee ancestry (for which she has apologized)
  
• In continuing attacks on her, Trump has also referred to the Trail of Tears and the Wounded Knee massacre in what he clearly thinks were jokes, but were in actuality incredibly racist remarks that caused great offense to Native Americans
  
• He said that The Squad (Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib), whom he glories in attacking, should “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came”; this is a racist attack that has been used for centuries to belittle immigrants and minorities
  
• He suggested that Jewish people who vote for Democrats are “disloyal”
  
• When U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel issued a ruling against his border wall, Trump attacked him, claiming that his Mexican heritage made him biased
  
• Lest we forget, he was one of the most prominent supporters of the racist (and thoroughly and repeatedly debunked) “Birther” conspiracy theory, which alleged that former president Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States
  
• His supporters have revived this theory to attack Senator and Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris, and when asked about it in an interview, he seemed to support it
  
• He regularly uses racist and derisive language and symbols, such as:
  
• He continues to refer to COVID-19 as “China Virus” and “Chinese Virus”, as well as “Kung Flu”, which has led to increased bigotry towards people of Asian descent
  
• In response to the ongoing protests over the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, he said “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”, a phrase with a history of racism that actually advocates police brutality, the very thing these protests were formed to stop
  
• He used a Nazi symbol in ads put on Facebook and Twitter
  
• He has repeatedly referred to journalist Chuck Todd (host of NBC’s “Meet The Press”) as “Sleepy Eyes”, which isn’t a slur per se, but has been used by white nationalists and Nazis as a physical trait by which to “identify” Jewish people
  
• He frequently derides gang members and other criminals as “animals”, a term steeped in a history of racism
  
• During the 2018 midterms, he ran an ad disparaging the caravan of migrants fleeing unimaginable violence that was so racist that even Fox News refused to air it
  
• He frequently claimed that the aforementioned caravan was bringing disease to the U.S. (an age-old tactic used to disparage minorities) and claimed, with zero evidence, that people of Middle Eastern descent were traveling with the caravan in order to sneak into the country; the clear implication was that he was painting them as would-be terrorists that we had to stop before they got here
  
• He has supported and defended white supremacists, white nationalists, and other racists, including:
  
• Stephen Miller, who is a white nationalist, and one of his top advisers
  
• Former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, one of the most virulent racists to hold office in decades, whom he pardoned for ignoring orders to stop his racial profiling and illegal detainment of Latinx people; this action was condemned by the ACLU, Constitutional scholars, and by members of Trump’s own party
  
• The white supremacists who marched on Charlottesville; he refused to repudiate them, instead calling them “very fine people”
  
• Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was once denied a Federal Judgeship on the grounds that he was too racist
  
• Former Breitbart Editor Steve Bannon, who was his campaign head and White House Chief Strategist
  
• He frequently retweets white supremacists, including one account with the handle “White Genocide” (a reference to a repugnantly racist conspiracy theory that has absolutely no merit whatsoever)
  
• Disgraced former Judge Roy Moore, who has also been accused of several cases of sexual assault
  
• He has made it far more difficult for immigrants fleeing unimaginable violence to seek asylum, and in many cases, has deported them, resulting in numerous deaths
  
• During his campaign, he called for a “total and complete shutdown of all Muslims” entering the country, and he has repeatedly tried to enforced such a ban via Executive Order, and has unfortunately succeeded to some degree
  
• He has a history of some of the most vile misogyny imaginable, including but not limited to:
  
• Bragging about sexually assaulting women, saying “I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
  
• Paying off at least two women to cover up extramarital affairs and then lying about doing so
  
• Retweeting posts calling Hillary Clinton a “skank”, fat shaming Stacey Abrams, and attacking Nancy Pelosi’s looks
  
• He is a sexual predator, having been accused of sexually assaulting at least 65 different women; he denied several of the claims by suggesting the women weren’t physically attractive enough for him to assault
  
• Going out of his way to attack the physical appearance of women, such as calling Stormy Daniels “Horseface” and saying of Carly Fiorina “Look at that face. Would anybody vote for that?”
  
• Going out of his way to attack women who criticize him or ask him tough questions, calling them “nasty” (an insult he particularly enjoys hurling at female journalists), “dogs”, “slobs”, and “fat pigs”, among other lurid insults
  
• After being called out for such behavior in a debate by Megyn Kelly, he later said “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her – wherever”, with a clear implication to what the final word meant
  
• Saying “That must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees” to a contestant on “The Apprentice
  
• Bragging on multiple occasions about barging into changing rooms at the beauty pageants he produces purely to see the contestants, many of whom were underage, in the nude
  
• Suggesting that sexual assault in the military was the inevitable consequence of putting men and women together
  
• Calling a lawyer “disgusting” for wanting to take a brief break during proceedings to pump breast milk for her daughter
  
• He has lusted over his own daughter for years
  
• Mocking sexual assault survivor Dr. Christine Blasey Ford when she couldn’t remember every minute detail of night she was assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh (this is particularly disgusting because, as any trauma survivor will tell you, memory gaps are a common occurrence; Dr. Ford, who is a psychologist, even explained this in her testimony by laying out precisely how memory works and why trauma almost always leaves gaps)
  
• He has consistently pushed policies and used rhetoric that are incredibly damaging and offensive to the LGBTQ+ community, including:
  
• Instituting a ban on transgender people serving in the military
  
• Appointing numerous people to judgeships and to positions in his administration that are vehemently opposed to LGBTQ+ rights (some nominees eventually withdrew themselves from consideration, but most sailed through the Senate, despite having records that drip with bigotry)
  
• Allowing HUD Secretary Ben Carson to impose a rule that would allow homeless shelters to deny access to transgender and gender nonconforming people, despite the fact that such groups experience a disproportionately high percentage of homelessness
  
• HUD has even published a pamphlet on how to “recognize” transgender women so that they can be discriminated against
  
• Supporting allowing foster care programs and adoption agencies to discriminate against LGBTQ+ families
  
• Arguing that employers and businesses should be free to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people
  
• Supporting allowing doctors and hospitals to refuse to provide care to LGBTQ+ people, which no reputable doctor would do anyway as it would be a direct violation of the Hippocratic Oath and basic human decency
  
• Rescinding guidance requiring schools to treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity, which only increases harassment and discrimination
  
• Rolling back protections for transgender prisoners, which means they will now be put in the wrong prisons, severely increasing their risk of sexual assault
  
• Literally changing the definition of sex to exclude transgender people to one that isn’t even backed by science
  
• Erasing information on LGBTQ+ rights from nearly all government websites
  
• Opposing the Equality Act, which would grant anti-discrimination protection to LGBTQ+ people (the bill is currently languishing in the Senate, and sadly shows no signs of moving forward)
  
• He has pushed policies and used rhetoric and actions that are offensive, demeaning, and denigrating to people with disabilities and mental illnesses (such as myself; I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder and PTSD), including:
  
• Mocking a reporter that has a physical disability
  
• Referring to Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “Nervous Nancy”, as well as saying that she has “a lot of mental problems”, statements which increase the stigma on those who have anxiety disorders and other mental illnesses
  
• Frequently labeling critics as “crazy”, “whacko”, and “sick”, terms that are denigrating to people with mental illnesses
  
• Suggesting we build mental institutions (read: asylums) to treat mental illness
  
• Saying that the Paralympics are “tough to watch” and trying to completely eliminate funding for the Special Olympics
  
• Trying repeatedly to undermine Social Security disability benefits, and has also tried to cut funding to programs that many disabled people heavily depend on, such as Medicaid, food stamps, and Meals on Wheels
  
• Proposing that the government survey social media profiles of disabled people to determine whether they actually needed their benefits
  
• Calling former Attorney General Jeff Sessions“mentally retarded”, which is a HIGHLY offensive phrase

Treatment of the Military and Veterans

• He acts with hostility and disrespect towards our military and our veterans, something that I, as someone from a family with a long, rich history of military service dating all the way back to the Revolutionary War, find truly intolerable, infuriating and offensive. This includes, but is not limited to:
  
• The aforementioned ban on transgender people in the military
  
• Instituting a policy that allowed the DOD to kick people with HIV out of the military purely because they have HIV; fortunately, this policy was partially blocked by the courts earlier this year
  
• Attacking multiple Gold Star Families, calling them liars, and hurling a disgusting anti-Muslim stereotype at one family
  
• Suggesting that veterans who commit suicide are weak, saying they “can’t handle it”
  
• Repeatedly attacking the late John McCain and claiming that he wasn’t a hero “because he was captured”
  
• After a botched mission in Yemen that resulted in the death of Senior Chief Petty Officer William Owens (as well as the deaths of dozens of innocent women and children and the escape of the target), he blamed the leaders who oversaw the mission instead of accepting responsibility for authorizing the mission in the first place
  
• Pardoning Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who was convicted of truly heinous crimes by a jury of his peers in a trial that included testimony from his comrades, who called him “toxic” and “evil”
  
• He has repeatedly attacked NATO as “obsolete” and has suggested leaving the organization or cutting its funding
  
• Insulting a group of Generals who was briefing him, calling them “losers”, “dopes”, and “babies"
  
• Brutally attacking Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, which culminated in Vindman’s promotion being blocked and his forced retirement from a lifetime of military service, purely because he testified against Trump during the impeachment hearings
  
• After an Iranian missile attack left numerous soldiers with mild brain injuries, Trump claimed they simply had “headaches”
  
• In the 2018 midterm elections, he urged Florida to disregard mail-in ballots, which includes countless ballots from military members serving abroad
  
• Frequently referring to the military as “my military” and military leaders as “my generals”, which implies that he considers them his to do with whatever he pleases
  
• He has yet to take any action over Russia paying bounties to have American soldiers killed

Other Actions and Behaviors

• He continues to attack the news media as “the enemy of the people”
  
• He is particularly vicious to female journalists, especially those of color; in once instance, he attacked three female African American reporters in three days, calling their questions “stupid” and “racist”, and calling one of them “a loser"
• He has called for multiple news outlets to be shut down simply because they reported the truth about his corruption and incompetence
• He has also ordered the revocation of press credentials to a few reporters who were critical of him and his administration while granting credentials to media outlets such as Newsmax, OANN, and Breitbart that deal in nothing but lies and propaganda
  
• He is pathologically incapable of telling the truth; as of this writing, he’s told over 20,000 lies, including at least 100 in just 37 minutes in a recent Axios interview
  
• He cozies up to dictators such as Putin and Kim Jong-un (Trump’s 2016 campaign was actually endorsed by DPRK Today, North Korea’s state media outlet, and he has been endorsed this year by Rodrigo Duterte, the dictatorial president of the Philippines) while insulting, attacking, and alienating our closest allies
  
• He is a schoolyard bully, frequently lobbing childish insults and giving “nicknames” to anyone who criticizes him, something I, as someone who was severely bullied as a child, find deeply offensive
  
• He claims credit for things he had nothing to with (such as the Veterans’ Choice program) and refuses to accept responsibility for his numerous failures, preferring to blame anyone he can think of (Obama, despite having been out of office for nearly four years, is one of his favorite targets)
  
• He clearly has no understanding of history because nearly every time he cites some historical fact, he mangles it; just recently, he said that “the [Spanish flu] pandemic of 1917 ended the second World War”
  

This list is obscenely long, and it’s by no means exhaustive. Some will almost certainly attack me for using a Gish Gallop, which is a logical fallacy. But this is untrue because that particularly fallacy relies on an overwhelming list of points that are either completely untrue or too weak to stand on their own. I made sure to research every point I brought up to ensure both accuracy and strength, and attached links for further information. I’ve also left out a great many examples simply because I don’t wish this essay to go on ad infinitum.

My base point is this: literally any one of the dozens of horrific things referenced above should be a non-starter for any voter. Any one of these things by itself makes a person completely unqualified to serve as president because it shows that they don’t have the character, the temperament, or the intelligence to lead us. However, I could still respect someone choosing to vote for a candidate who had done just one or two of these things; many of our presidents have committed gross breaches of trust and crimes while in office (both the presidency and in other offices they served in during their careers), and it’s not possible to find a truly clean presidential candidate in today’s political landscape.

But voting for Trump isn’t just excusing one or two bad actions. It’s excusing ALL of what I’ve listed above, which is only a fraction of the uncountable number of heinous things he’s done.

It’s excusing a level of misogyny rarely seen and the fact that he is a sexual predator.

It’s excusing virulent racism and bigotry that has won him endorsements by multiple white supremacists and a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

It’s excusing his utter incompetence and narcissism on a scale we've never seen before.

It’s excusing corruption on a scale that makes Nixon look like a pickpocket.

It’s excusing his outright contempt for our troops and veterans.

It’s excusing the tearing apart of immigrant families and the caging of children.

It’s excusing his trampling of the First Amendment.

It’s excusing his flagrant and frequent abuses of power.

It’s excusing taking away healthcare from tens of millions of Americans.

It’s excusing denying LGBTQ+ people jobs, healthcare, and adoptions purely because of who they are.

It’s excusing a level of lying that has never been seen.

It’s excusing the fact that even now, as I write this essay, he is trying to interfere in the upcoming election by sabotaging the Postal Service, which is also having catastrophic effects on businesses and will likely cost lives as people are unable to get their medications delivered in a timely manner.

It’s excusing his failure to adequately respond to ANY crisis under his watch, most notably the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

No one should be okay with ANY of this. To vote for Trump despite such a massive list of abhorrent and unconscionable behavior, a list that, even while admittedly incomplete, irrefutably proves that he’s antithetical to everything we as Americans are supposed to value and treasure, cannot and should not be respected. Voting for Trump shows that one either hates Democrats so much that they're willing to excuse anything in order to keep Republicans in power or that they actually support and endorse the appalling and amoral things Trump has done. I’m honestly not sure it’s possible to measure which of these is worse, but it doesn’t matter because neither is a legitimate reason to vote for such a dangerous monster.

I won’t tell people who to vote for. We should all listen to the facts and make our own decisions. But voting for Trump is fundamentally amoral, and I cannot and will not respect the choice to do so, and I find it hard to respect any person who makes such a choice.