November 1, 2024: I’m voting for Trump

As a legal immigrant to the US, now US citizen, I just voted in my first US Presidential election. I voted for Trump/Vance and predict that Trump will win by a bigger margin than many thought possible. I’m cautiously excited about the prospect of a Trump presidency especially with the support of Elon Musk and what it could do for our country. This result will hopefully encourage some desparately needed deep soul searching in the Democratic party whose lack of succession planning, continued contempt for the electorate, woke ideology, lack of clear policy and lackluster campaign stacked the cards against them. It is a much less predictable path, but I do hope that Trump along with his transition team will have a wildly successful term that unleashes a new era of American and global progress.

On paper, I’m not your typical Trump voter - highly educated with an MBA, MPH and a doctorate living in Berkeley, California. In political conversations around here, most assume that you are a staunch democrat who is allergic to anything Trump related. Like many voters who would have traditionally have considered themselves Democrats, I was ready to be won over by the Democratic ticket. This was despite experiencing increasing crime in our area of California, a rapidly rising cost of living and an excruciating lived experience of burecracy and taxes associated with running a small business and most recently, building a home addition.

I found the Harris/Walz campaign to be tone-deaf, preferring to run on vibes, celebrity endorsements and anti-Trump sentiment than any real substance. The few policies that were made clear did not talk to our middle-class family with an infant and a small loss-making startup business. The core issues of immigration and the economy were brushed over, cementing the perception that it would be more of the same and certainly nothing to be inspired by. Their failure to fully acknowledge and own the immigration issues over the last four years showed their level of contempt for much of the American public; if they want to run on an open borders policy then I would much rather they were transparent about it rather than a backdoor policy that will have lasting implications for decades in to the future. Let me be clear that I am pro-Immigration and believe that we should make it easier for people to legally come to the US and contribute to the country, a policy that Trump seems to endorse, but this chaotic Hunger Games of border crossing serves no one, least not the migrants themselves.

Instead, I found was that I was won over by the Trump campaign. My impression of Trump’s 2017-2021 term when I was less invested in US politics as a visa holder was that it was nowhere near as bad as it was expected to be. This time, my impressions of Trump were initially formed through what I read in the mainstream media and were generally unfavorable. However after watching a few long-form interviews with him I found him to be straight talking, commonsensical and more nuanced in his thinking than most gave him credit for. Certainly compared to Harris, he was unscripted and was able to tackle any question that came at him. While he can be hyperbolic, my impression is that he uses this to hammer home a point. As I compared my notes from these interviews to what I read and heard in the mainstream media, I began to see the overwhelming negative bias in the mainstream media toward Trump to the extent there was a significant loss of credibility.

Trump has credibility on the border based on over a decade of consistent messaging and past action. His plan to tackle inflation has a chance of working by reducing gas costs (which have a pass through impact on everything), by doing away with unnecessary regulation and controlling immigration. Tarrifs do have the potential to be inflationary but Harris’ “20% sales tax” argument overly simplifies the issue. He has not been explicit in what tarrifs he would actually impose, but it is clear to me that this is a negotiation tactic and also a tool to re-shore much of the lost American manufacturing that COVID showed us is critical to national security interests.

Let me also mention a few areas where the Democrats primed the pump for desertion.

Finally, let me address a few areas where I do not necessarily agree with Trump’s agenda or am cautious on his emerging approach: