He gives his reasons in the Washington Post:
So why, given the response it gets me from colleagues and friends, do I support Trump?
Ask yourself: Are you better off than you were a decade ago? Is the United States better off? Is the world safer? Is this country on the right track? I am among the nearly two-thirds of Americans who answer no.
We’re in the seventh year of the slowest economic recovery since 1949. The proportion of working-age adults who are employed is the lowest in decades. Young African Americans face an unemployment rate of over 20 percent. The national debt has almost doubled; an American baby born today already owes more than $60,000. We’ve lost our Standard & Poor’s AAA credit rating. Cities and states face debt and pension crises of their own. Meanwhile, business profits and durable goods orders are down, productivity is sluggish and 2 percent growth is the new normal. Economic inequality has increased; incomesare down; prices are up.
The Middle East is in shambles. We gratuitously overthrew a stable government in Libya, creating a terrorist haven and getting our ambassador killed. We threw away victories in Iraq and Afghanistan. Syria is a humanitarian disaster. We sabotaged Iran’s Green Revolution and halted sanctions, propping up and then funding with planeloads of cash a leadingglobal sponsor of terrorism actively seeking nuclear weapons — all in a quest to reach an agreement so adverse to U.S. interests that it was not even submitted to the Senate. Iran is reportedly already violating it.
This is not bad luck. It results directly from policies of the Obama administration that Clinton wants to continue. The problem is not implementation, but deep inadequacies in her progressive worldview. It’s a worldview I encounter up close on campus, a worldview that intrigues intellectuals with its promise of rationality and tempts them with the possibility of power. As Dostoevsky warned, however, in practice, it indulges the moral narcissism of an elite and encourages disrespect for everyone else.
[Meet Trump’s Pennsylvania supporters]
Progressives try to counter corporate economic power by centralizing political power in executive-branch agencies. They try to cure centralization with more centralization. But this leads to elitism and regulatory capture. When corporations, well-funded nonprofits or well-connected donors team up with government agencies, the rest of us lose. The federal government is the ultimate monopoly. The administrative state is largely unaccountable; you can’t vote the regulators out of office. Under the Obama administration, federal regulations have strangled some industries outright and curtailed innovation in others. No one voted to destroy the coal industry or stop enforcing immigration law. Clinton promises more of the same. She promises to appoint Supreme Court justices who will remove the Bill of Rights’s safeguards against excessive government power. She shows contempt for ordinary people, their rights and their concerns, treating any who oppose her as enemies. Only Trump promises to rein in the excesses of the administrative state and return us to constitutional governance. He pledges to issue a moratorium on new regulations and to reduce “the anchor dragging us down,” the regulatory burden whose growth since 1980 has cost us as much as one-fourth of our gross national product.
Finally, progressivism rests on an implausible view of international relations. It seeks to diminish the nation-state and the reach of American power. The Obama-Clinton policy requires us to push traditional allies away and seek relationships with avowed enemies. Protecting Americans from harm andmaintaining state secrets are evidently a low priority. Trump would bring a much-needed dose of realism to foreign policy, restoring damaged friendships with Britain and Israel, restoring the integrity of our borders and protecting U.S. interests in international agreements.
Trump has been giving serious speeches detailing his vision on the economy,foreign policy, crime, immigration and other central issues facing the country. He has been explaining policies that would strengthen the United States, revive the economy, and restore our social capital, especially in inner cities. Clinton, meanwhile, has been doing her best to distract us from the issues. Admittedly, Trump offers her many such opportunities. But our country’s direction is too important to decide on the basis of who is more vulgar than whom. Clinton’s policies portend nothing but a weaker economy, a weaker society and a weaker America. I want a president who’s on our side. I plan to vote for someone who can change course and return us once again to the task of making America great.
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