Could Trump win the 2024 presidential elections despite his past legal troubles?
Rallies packed with cheering supporters. Patriotic colors of red, white, and blue filling the streets. The presidential elections happening once every four years. The streets are filled with opportunity, and so much excitement for change. But most of these times, this joy can come with a lot of confusion at the ballot box. Every presidential election a new batch of candidates comes in, and it is up to the people to make a decision. But in 2024, it will be different because former president Donald Trump is going against current president Joe Biden. I am going to be discussing if Trump should once again become the next president of the United States of America.
The Trump and Ukraine Scandal
Trump is always one to accuse people without really knowing what he is talking about. Most of the time, he doesn’t even have evidence to back up his argument. We also see that Trump can get very defensive of his political status and will do anything to protect himself. So when these two personal traits were combined on July 25, 2019, it resulted in the former president’s first impeachment Channel 4 News. In July, the president made a phone call to the newly-elected president of Ukraine. Because of the short time until the 2020 elections, Trump was interested in his democratic opponent, Biden, and his son, Hunter Biden. Trump asked the president to launch an investigation on them because of Hunter’s history working with a corrupt company in Ukraine. Trump believed that Biden covered up Hunter’s trail, and illegally helped Hunter. According to Vox, Trump even held back $400 million of military aid for Ukraine, and temporarily blocked military aid to Ukraine, so that the president could listen to him. Later, Congress decided to impeach Trump, and he became the third president in history to ever be impeached.
The Insurrection of the Capital
It is clear that Trump is a very determined orator. He gives fiery speeches, with bold claims, and a deep desire that resonates with countless people. However, sometimes it is said he takes it a bit too far. On January 6th, 2021, then-president Trump led a rally of hundreds of thousands of people in Washington, D.C. in order to “peacefully” sway the elections in his favor, by proposing that the elections were rigged. Trump gave a fiery speech to motivate supporters to march toward the Capitol, during which he famously stated, “We will never give up, we will never concede. It doesn’t happen, you don’t concede when there’s theft involved.”
This event, known as the Insurrection of the Capital New York times, had Trump supporters storming the Capitol while Congress was having a session to certify the outcome of the elections. Although this was meant to be a peaceful protest, the chaos led to five people losing their lives on that fateful day and many more were injured. Congress later blamed President Trump for insisting on the insurrection of the capital, and was impeached again toward the end of his presidency, making him the first president of the U.S. to be impeached twice.
The Russia scandal
This next scandal is huge, and even hard to believe when first reading about it. During the 2016 election, people began to take notice of a website called “Wikileaks.org.” Why? Well, that’s because it held highly classified information, and emails, sent and received by former presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. The emails seemed directed to her, making people believe that the hacker was trying to influence the 2016 elections to Trump’s favor. But looking past the content of the leaks, people began to wonder, where did they come from? According to BBC News, the U.S. Director of National intelligence, James Clapper, believed, “based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s most senior officials could have authorized these activities.” Now, everybody was pointing their fingers at Russia, but even then, the Kremlin denied the statements, and called them “nonsense.” But wait, where was Trump’s involvement in all of this? Well, this part was rather debated. Whether Trump was involved in the hijack of the elections is not conclusive. However, we do know that, according to The Washington Post, the Obama administration said that, “Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability.” Trump, “immediately rejected that conclusion.” Whether Trump was aware of the hijack of the elections or not, may never be known, but even today, people always have their opinions.
Trump withholds classified documents
Trump can do a lot of things, but who would have thought one of them was stealing classified, secret, and top secret information even after his first term ended? It all started when toward the end of Trump’s term, all of his legal documents were to be handed over to the National Archive. However, instead of being sent there, they were actually sent to Trump’s residence in Mar-a-Lago. According to the Washington Post, after the National Archive reported some documents as missing, Trump returned over a dozen boxes of classified, secret, and top secret documents. After these boxes were found, some documents were still reported missing even though Trump claimed that there were no more. Later, the FBI received a search warrant to search the residence of Mar-a-Lago and found over 100 documents hidden in various places, such as Trump’s bathroom, his bedroom, and a ballroom. Trump was also caught on audio revealing information about the Pentagon to unclassified people during a golf tournament in New Jersey. Also, according to Fact Check, Trump claimed that he had declassified all of the documents before he left office. However, at the time this article is being written, the case is yet to be decided and it may leave people wondering, “What is going to happen to Trump, and will it affect his campaign? If so, how?”
But what about people’s opinions?
In Columbia Secondary School, or CSS, we have gathered a few people to share their feelings about Trump’s actions, and whether he should be elected as president. When asked if Trump should be our next president, Conrad Merkel, a CSS student, replied, “No, I think that with all the legal troubles he is in, it is very clear that he does some very bad things.” He also believes Trump has a very “nativist prejudice.” Another CSS student, Matthew Fernandez, also has some opinions that he is anxious to share. When asked if he thinks Trump should be our next president, he said, “I don’t feel like he shouldn’t be president mainly because of the bad things he has done.” Because of this, he also said that Trump’s many lawsuits are “deserved.”
The presidential election of 2020 was rather close. It was not like Biden was extremely capable, but at the same time, it was not that Trump was not worthy of being president at all. This chart on CNN.com depicts just how close the 2020 presidential elections were.
With how close the votes can get, it is all up to the people, and even one vote can turn the tides between one presidential candidate and another. Every vote counts.
Students of the Sidewalk 