The Grio
In an interview on Steve Harvey’s radio show, President Obama said that anyone who votes for a third party candidate or stays at home is casting their ballot for the Republican nominee.
“The stakes in this election are so high,” Obama said last week. “You know, you have some of Trump’s aides on record saying that their main agenda — they don’t really have much of an agenda, but to the extent they have one — is to basically eliminate the Obama presidency, to reverse everything that we have accomplished […] All the work we’ve done over the last eight years is on the ballot.”
With increased media scrutiny on Donald Trump’s record, including his financial dealings, his tax returns and foundation, his die-hard surrogates are coming to his defense. However, as Trump’s surrogates continue to blunder, flounder and fall over themselves, they are not doing the GOP nominee any good and are only exposing his flaws.
Trump’s most vocal surrogates came to his defense in the midst of controversy over his tax avoidance and reports that the candidate’s 1995 tax returns showed a nearly $1 billion loss that would have allowed him to avoid paying personal income taxes for up to 18 years. While Democrats used the revelation as evidence of Trump’s poor business acumen and schemes by some wealthy folks to avoid paying their fair share, the Trump camp pointed to this a a virtue.
Meanwhile, with the spotlight on Trump’s woes and his high unpopularity, some are considering whether a vote for the Green or Libertarian parties is a vote for Trump.
The president’s statements are a reminder of Ralph Nader’s independent presidential run in 2000, which some attribute to Al Gore’s loss over Bush. Still, one can point to other factors, including Al Gore himself — who lost his home state of Tennessee and arguably ran an uninspiring campaign — the electoral college, the sketchy and faulty vote tallying in Jeb Bush’s Florida, and the Supreme Court, who effectively selected Bush as the winner.
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