Today the country is more divided than it has ever been 

before in my lifetime. Growing up I witnessed all the 

Civil Rights protests and marches. I got to witness 

the protests against the War in Vietnam. The whole 

world was watching during the protests at the 1968 

Democratic Convention. We are much more divided 

today than we even were back then. Why is America

so divided? One name, Donald Trump. Our division 

is so bad it has divided many families that were close 

knit families before Trump. How could one man do that? 

I saw an online discussion where one person posted a meme that stated “The question is no longer about his character. The question now is whether character matters to you”. He got a reply back from a Trump supporter stating” His character matters bc it is in that character I believe he has the leadership, knowledge, passion, wisdom, experience, compassion, integrity that will lead us on the path towards a more safe, secure, healthy, prosperous, free world than the direction that we are heading”. It is a well thought out answer but I can’t believe the person writing it was very well informed. She couldn’t possibly have been talking about Donald Trump and if she is she must be living on a completely different planet than I do. 

Character and morals used to matter in this country. Respect used to be a word that carried a lot of weight here. Respect was something that used to be earned. There have been men and women that I have respected over time but very few politicians. I respected John McCain. He was the whole package to me. He wasn’t always right but he was always someone that believed in our Constitution and our Republic. Patriotism was not just a word to him, it was the way he lived. I respect Jimmy Carter. The older I get the more I realize what a great treasure to this country he has been. A great patriot who served his country, a humble honest man, and a person that didn’t talk about his faith but lived it every day. I respect Lyndon Johnson because he committed political suicide to do the right thing when it came to Civil Rights. I respected George H W Bush because he ended Desert Storm when the goal was accomplished and ended any more needless death.I do believe character matters so I actually look. By looking I do my own research. Writing about Trump's Character will probably take more than one article. 

First I am going to look at Trump's legal problems before he ran for office. There is a lot out there. The first thing I came across was that Trump and his father were investigated by Federal Investigators on housing discrimination from 1972 to 1975. It was settled out of court with no admission of guilt but the Trump organization had to run ads pledging not to discriminate. The Human Rights Division of New York City had testers. When a Black New Yorker was turned down for service and racial bias was suspected their tester, who was White, would be dispatched to see if she received different treatment. In this case a Black man in search of an apartment in Brooklyn in 1972 saw a sign on a building: “apartment for rent”. He met with the superintendent and the superintendent said that the apartment was already rented and he had forgotten to take down the sign. When the tester went to the same building she was welcomed with open arms and showed every aspect of the apartment that they had told the black man was rented. That is not a good look for a future President to have that wants to lead as diverse of a Nation as ours.

In the 80s he was investigated for his hiring practices, Namely hiring illegal Polish workers to demolish the buildings at the site where Trump Towers sits. In the 2016 primary debates Marco Rubio stated that Trump had hired illegal workers and he had to pay a million dollar or so judgment. Rubio said “that’s a fact. people can look it up. I’m sure people are Googling it right now, Trump Polish workers,” Trump yelled “Wrong Wrong”, Well Rubio is mostly right. Sometime between 1979 and 1980, Trump hired a contractor to demolish an old building in Midtown Manhattan to make way for Trump Tower. The contractor signed in workers from a local union and, to meet Trump but, they also brought on about 200 undocumented laborers from Poland dubbed the “Polish Brigade”. The Polish employees were off-the-books, working 12 hour shifts seven days a week for 4 to 5 dollars an hour, with no overtime. Some workers were never paid what they were owed. In 1983, union members sued the union boss, Trump and his contractor for cheating the union out of pension and welfare funds by hiring the undocumented Polish workers. Appearing in court in 1990, Trump blamed the violations on the contractor and denied knowing the Polish workers were undocumented. “Nobody’s proven to me that they were illegal” stated Trump even though there was testimony contrary to that. A year later Manhattan Judge Charles Stewart ruled against Trump. Saying that his representative knew the Polish workers were doing the demolition work and that his company participated in a “conspiracy” to cheat the union. 

In 1998 Federal regulators spent years looking into allegations of money laundering at Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. They ended up fining his company $10 million in 2015 for failing to maintain proper controls against laundering and failing to report suspicious transactions. The casino admitted to willful and repeated violations of the Bank Secrecy Act. In a statement from the FinCEN Director stated that “Like all casinos in the Country, Trump Taj Mahal has a duty to help protect our financial system from being exploited by criminals, terrorist, and other bad actors, Far from meeting these expectations, poor compliance practices over many years, left the casino and our financial system unacceptably exposed.”

The State of New York sued Trump, alleging his Trump University defrauded more than 5,000 people. Trump was found personally liable. He settled for $25 million in fines. The Judge overseeing the two California cases, Gonzalo Curiel, was a subject Trump spent several minutes on at a rally denouncing the Judge’s decisions in the case, calling him a hater and questioning his impartiality because of his Hispanic heritage. Trump uses that same MO today that he did back then. 

Now this is just the beginning of my search on whether Trump has the Character to lead. There were more like his mob connections with building materials and mob rental practices but hey, this one is too long already. To me, he is a man that even as a young man in the 70s didn’t believe the rules applied to him. His money and the privilege he got from that money was how he abused our judicial system and is how he is abusing it to this day. I have read nothing that says to me this man has the character and integrity to lead anything. What makes people see character and integrity when there is none. 

Just a note, Today Trump just stated that he 

took care of our economy like he took 

care of his own businesses. After looking 

at some of his businesses criminal behavior 

I just don’t think he should be trusted 

with our economy.