Donald Trump for Sixth Grade Class President

Samantha PerezTHE SANTA CLARAOctober 1, 2015

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]t the Republican GOP debate, one of the questions was, “Would you trust Donald Trump with the nuclear codes?” Rand Paul had a fair answer: “I’m very concerned about having him in charge of the nuclear weapons because I think his response, his real response is to attack people on their appearance, short, tall, fat, ugly. My goodness, that happened in junior high. Are we not way above that? Would we not all be worried to have someone like that in charge of the nuclear arsenal?”

At first, I thought it was a little extreme that Rand Paul was comparing one of the presidential nominees to someone in junior high, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was probably the most genuine thing said on that stage.

The other day, I was hanging out with two of my younger cousins, both of which are in junior high. They hadn’t seen each other in a while, and once they saw each other they immediately high fived, which morphed into some sort of “bro-shake.” I kept trying to remember where I’d seen that gesture before, and then it came to me: on stage at the Republican GOP debate.

Yes, Donald Trump was in fact high-fiving the two opponents on either side of him during a debate that would help decide who is going to lead our country for the next four years.

Remember when you were in junior high and you had a slight scuffle with another person in your class that may have led to some shoving or hair pulling?

The teacher would have pulled you two aside and forced you to work on something together in order for you to get along. It seems Donald Trump has taken this idea and decided to apply it to his foreign relations policy. Donald Trump’s plan, ladies and gentlemen: “I would get along with him [Putin]. I believe — and I may be wrong, in which case I’d probably have to take a different path — but I would get along with a lot of the world leaders that this country is not getting along with.”

“Get along,” may have worked in sixth grade, but I highly doubt that it will work when we need to negotiate arms with Russia or Iran. If “getting along with people,” was the answer to our problems, America would be far better off nominating Kermit the Frog as president than Donald Trump.

Between the conflicts arising in the Middle East and the mounting tension the United States is experiencing with Russia, we need someone who has a lot of experience with foreign policy as well as a concrete plan to better many of our relations.

Think back again to when you were in junior high and you had that fort or tree house where only a chosen few were allowed.

Under no circumstances was anyone else accepted into your fort even if they had somehow found out the secret password. Donald Trump’s immigration policy is essentially the same thing: “I will build a great wall — and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me — and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”

It does not matter how hard you’ve worked to get to America or how bad your living conditions are from which you came. It doesn’t matter if you are willing to do the jobs that no one wants to do but have to be done. It doesn’t matter if you’ve lived in the U.S. for years and have made a life for yourself in honorable fashion. Now that he wants to end birthright citizenship, it doesn’t matter if you were born here. You’re going back to wherever you came from — oh but don’t worry, you’ll come back somehow, even though the only way to legally enter the country from Mexico requires moving up a ten year waiting list.

There’s only one password to get into Donald Trump’s exclusive fort, and it is “wealthy and white.”

So now for the million dollar question, how is Donald Trump different from a student in junior high?

Two concrete things come to my mind. The first is that kids in junior high have much better insults. Between calling Marco Rubio a clown, insulting Rand Paul’s appearance and implying Megyn Kelly must have been on her period when she expressed anger, it is obvious Donald Trump needs to work on his trash talking skills. If you are going to go the verbal hostility route during a presidential campaign, at least be original.

The second difference is I’d probably be more likely to elect the kid in junior high than Donald Trump for president.

Samantha Perez is a freshman English and political science double major.