Books
13 Author Quotes About Donald Trump
Today, citizens across the nation wave goodbye to one of the most effective (and most beloved) president of the United States, and say hello to the least liked one in history. If these author quotes about Donald Trump are any indication about the country's attitude towards our new commander in chief, our overall feelings run from bad to worse.
Since Election Day in November, not to mention the months during the campaign leading up to it, several public literary figures have spoken out against Donald Trump, his threatening rhetoric, and his dangerous policies. Even before his official nomination, over 450 writers nationwide, including Amy Tan, Stephen King, Junot Diaz, and Cheryl Strayed, signed an collective statement opposing his candidacy on the grounds that Trump "deliberately appeals to the basest and most violent elements in society, who encourages aggression among his followers, shouts down opponents, intimidates dissenters, and denigrates women and minorities." But just because that warning wasn't heeded and his presidency is official and unavoidable, doesn't mean authors and writers are done speaking their mind.
On the news, the internet, and probably at your dining room table or in your workplace, you've heard people say, "Stop whining about Trump and give him a chance." But some of the most influential authors know that being silently compliant isn't the answer. Donald Trump may be the president, but that doesn't mean people have to blindly accept his agenda or his politics. In fact, it means the exact opposite: Now, more than ever, each and every citizen must be diligent watch dogs and protectors of our democracy.
For some people, that means attending the Women's March on Washington. For others, it means calling their local representatives to express concern about the incoming administration's controversial cabinet picks. An for some, like these outspoken writers, it means sharing author quotes about Donald Trump to make it clear that just because he is the president, doesn't mean is is everybody's president.
1. "Because the rise of a political candidate who deliberately appeals to the basest and most violent elements in society, who encourages aggression among his followers, shouts down opponents, intimidates dissenters, and denigrates women and minorities, demands, from each of us, an immediate and forceful response;
For all these reasons, we, the undersigned, as a matter of conscience, oppose, unequivocally, the candidacy of Donald J. Trump for the Presidency of the United States."
— Over 450 authors, "An Open Letter to the American People"
2. "Look towards the Republican Party in America and shudder. ‘Make America Great Again!’ cries a man who is fascist in all but name. His stubby fingers are currently within horrifyingly close reach of America’s nuclear codes. He achieved this pre-eminence by proposing crude, unworkable solutions to complex threats. Terrorism? ‘Ban all Muslims!’ Immigration? ‘Build a wall!’ He has the temperament of an unstable nightclub bouncer, jeers at violence when it breaks out at his rallies and wears his disdain for women and minorities with pride. God help America. God help us all."
3. "He is unfamiliar with where America’s tax rate stands in a global context. He has no understanding of what it would take to ensure that all Americans can receive health care without a federal mandate. He has no understanding of international relations and the travesty that is taking place in Syria or what the word “humanitarian” means. The list goes on, and on. It is crystal clear that a Trump presidency would lead both the United States and the rest of the world into a dystopia the likes of which even the darkest of novelists cannot fathom."
4. "The election of Donald Trump, like all elections, is an ending, the ending of one Presidency and the beginning of another. But, unlike most elections, Trump’s election is something different: it ends an era of American idealism, a high-mindedness of rhetoric, if not always of action, which has characterized most twentieth- and twenty-first-century American Presidencies, from F.D.R. to Eisenhower, from Reagan to Obama, from the New Deal order to the long era of civil rights."
5. "Trump is what happens in America every time it feels economically and politically threatened, and it encounters the limitations of its own white supremacists practices."
6. "He brings out the temper-tantrum-throwing willful brat in all of us. ‘Why can’t I do what I want? Why can’t I have what I want? Those other people are stopping me. Those other people have a bigger lollipop that I do, I’m going to take their lollipop away from them. … Hillary Clinton is a better man than Trump. She has more connection to the traditional male virtues. She has comported herself in a much more manly fashion. Ask any real alpha males that you’ll know and they’ll say of Trump, ‘This is the guy we didn’t like at school because he was a bully, but as soon as anyone pushed back at him he started to whine.’"
7. "Mr. Trump has promised a world where white men and rich men run the world their way, greed fueled by undaunted ignorance. He must make good on his promises, for his supporters will soon be hungry. He, the ambulant id, must nurse his own offspring, and feel their teeth."
8. "On Election Day, how eagerly so many white voters—both the poorly educated and the well educated—embraced the shame and fear sowed by Donald Trump. The candidate whose company has been sued by the Justice Department for not renting apartments to black people. The candidate who questioned whether Barack Obama was born in the United States, and who seemed to condone the beating of a Black Lives Matter protester at a campaign rally. The candidate who kept black workers off the floors of his casinos. The candidate who is beloved by David Duke and endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan."
9. "I think that [Trump]’s sort of the last stand of a sort of American male who feels like women have gotten out of their place and they’re letting in all these people that have the wrong skin colors. He speaks to those people. Trump is extremely popular* because people would like to have a world where you just didn’t question that the white American was at the top of the pecking order."
*Editors Note: Donald Trump has the lowest approval rating for an incoming president in modern times.
10. "Trump will go on trial in November accused of racketeering, and again in December accused of child rape. He is a sexual predator, hasn’t released his tax returns, and has used his foundation’s money to pay his legal fees. He has abused the family of a war hero and… oh, but let’s talk about some emails Hillary didn’t send from someone else’s computer, that weren’t a crime anyway, because that’s how to choose a president. Come on, America. Focus."
11. "Why support season of Shakespearean tragedy when you can fund actual, live tragedies with taxpayer money in the New Dark Age?"
