Why I am endorsing Donald J. Trump for president

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

One’s opinion of people, one’s creeds, beliefs and opinions come from deep in one’s past. They may change, but those changes are infrequent.  

I started working in industrial jobs in the spring of 1970. Before that, I had worked summers as a teenager helping on farms, including my dad’s, but one must say my formal career started in late March 1970.

At that time mid-level managers, like my boss, were “graduates” of World War II. My boss had been a colonel in the Army in the European theater. He took no prisoners. He would have laughed at the idea of work/life balance and many other policies and principles that people whine about today.  

As my career developed, and especially in the past 30-plus years, I have worked with industrial developers and as an expert witness in very large construction projects. Like my boss of 50 years ago, these people take no prisoners, either, even to this day.

My parents grew up during the Great Depression and always believed in lifting one’s self by your own bootstraps, no government handouts. Many of my viewpoints come from them.

I have always believed capitalism is the best economic system, and that it should be lightly regulated. I think consumer activism and the independent legal profession are all we need to keep companies in line. Massive government regulations on top of this are redundant and financially burdensome to everyone, producers and consumers.

Take corporate income taxes. Who pays them? You do when you buy their goods and services because there simply is no one else to pay them.

So, I have spent half a column explaining where I come from for I think this is necessary in order to understand my endorsement of Donald Trump for president.

First off then, Donald Trump’s bombastic style is identical to that of most of the people, developers and lawyers, who have paid my salary for the last 54 years. You might say I am used to it, and it bothers me not in the least. It comes with the territory.

I have no idea how shady Trump’s business dealings have been, but I can relate this. In one of the trade publications in which I write weekly each August, I write a serialized column called "Pulp Rats,” which is a thinly disguised chronicle of the shenanigans I have seen in the pulp and paper industry in my career.  

To give you a taste, I have a former client who has served time in a federal prison for lying on loan documents. While he was in prison, he tried to develop a project in a small northern city using his same on old tricks. The town officials, including their judiciary, forced him to leave town under threat of more prosecution.  

Donald Trump is a Sunday school teacher compared to this guy.

I liked in his last term of office, that Donald Trump was focused on eliminating regulations. We need much more of this. We shouldn’t and can’t expect the government to bail us out of every problem in life.

Donald Trump wants to shrink the federal government and I do, too – by a lot. In the Constitution, the tasks of the federal government are delineated as protecting the border and promoting free trade between the states. That’s it.  

Up until the time of President Wilson, a bit more than 100 years ago, we funded the federal government only with import tariffs – that is how small it was. Wilson brought us the income tax.

Could we get back there? No, but I think Donald Trump is the only candidate that can take us in that direction.

There have been 14 presidents since I was born, including Donald Trump in his first term. Donald Trump is the most honest one of the bunch.

I will vote for Donald Trump for the third time this fall.

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press. He may be reached at jthompson@taii.com.

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