Presidential election polls predict next week’s election to be close. RealClearPolitics’ polling averages show former President Donald Trump running ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris by roughly one percent in top battleground state averages, and Harris ahead in national averages by the same amount.
What this means is that every group of voters is important – including my fellow Latter-day Saints (LDS) in battleground states like Arizona, where they make up six percent of the population. As numerous media outlets have reported, the LDS vote in swing states is critical to both candidates.
As a result, voices in the liberal media have attempted for months to drive a wedge between Trump and LDS voters by citing out-of-context quotes and pushing false narratives. They’ve argued LDS voters’ reputation for being “nice” means they should care more about getting along than enacting policy aligned with their values.
Take, for instance, one recent opinion piece in The Washington Post which declared, “Mormon voters in the West can save the GOP from Trump.” The New York Times similarly reported that Trump is “dividing Arizona’s crucial [LDS] vote.”
But LDS voters shouldn’t fall for these bald-faced manipulation efforts.
Liberal voices make these arguments because they know that Trump’s policy accomplishments align with LDS principles far more than Harris’s record. As an active LDS church member – and former Trump administration staffer – I am voting for Trump because of what I’ve seen him accomplish, and what I know he will accomplish in his second term.
A review of Trump and Harris’s records side-by-side is a more intellectually honest evaluation than the political theater recently perpetrated by malicious voices in the media.
In the years that I worked for the Trump administration, I was impressed most by the former president’s unceasing determination to keep his promises to the American people. His senior political advisors kept large whiteboards in the West Wing listing all of Trump’s campaign promises and his plans to fulfill them.
One of those promises that meant a great deal to me and many religious Americans was Trump’s pledge to appoint originalist and textualist justices to the Supreme Court to correct the legal fiction that was Roe v. Wade. This case burdened America for nearly five decades, mandating all states allow elective abortion rather than empowering the voters to decide on abortion policy themselves.
Despite enormous pressure against him, Trump kept his promise, and the power to legislate on abortion has now been returned to the people, where it always belonged.
Contrast this with Harris’s record of broken oaths. In 2008, many people of faith—including Latter-day Saints—worked to pass Proposition 8 in California, a state constitutional ballot initiative defining marriage as the union between a man and a woman. Regardless of one’s personal feelings toward the issue, the fact is that a majority of voters supported this initiative.
But federal courts struck it down. Why? Because then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris ignored the will of the voters and refused to defend Proposition 8, even though that was her sworn duty. She could have recused herself. But instead, she left Proposition 8—which is part of the California Constitution—defenseless.
How can religious Americans trust Harris to faithfully fulfill the presidential oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States – including the First Amendment’s religious liberty clause – to “the best of (her) ability,” when in the past she’s willfully abandoned her promises and obligations to her constituents?
Harris and Trump’s records also sharply contrast on the economy. Working parents are struggling to put food on the table because of crushing inflation.
Harris played a prominent role in passing enormous government spending packages which contributed to persistent inflation. As vice president, she was the tie-breaking vote in the Senate for both the American Rescue Plan Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. This sky-high amount of government spending is the primary cause of the increased inflation which, consequently, is burdening American family budgets.
Harris said that if she is elected she will build an “opportunity economy” focused on lowering grocery prices for families. But why hasn’t she done this already as vice president?
So far, Harris’s role in Bidenomics has produced compounding inflation. The cost of eggs has gone up by 53 percent, baby food has increased by 30 percent, milk is up 17 percent, and gas is up 35 percent. Prices in nearly every sector of American life have increased by double digits as a result of this mismanagement by Harris and Biden
Conversely, Trump unleashed an economic boom during his time in office that broke records. Unemployment reached 3.5 percent, the lowest in a half-century. He signed into law the largest tax reform package in history, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Unemployment for women reached a 70-year low and an all-time low for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, veterans, individuals with disabilities, and those without a high school diploma.
Deregulation efforts by Trump further unleashed American oil and natural gas production to achieve energy independence for the first time since the 1950s. The data shows our economy better helped everyday Americans under Trump’s leadership.
Serious voters will ask themselves: Is my family budget better off now or four years ago under the Trump administration?
A second Trump administration would be aligned with most Americans’ values and priorities for the country. The majority of undecided voters I’ve talked to agree with Trump’s policies when I present them without mentioning his name.
Try it yourself: Do you agree that America should avoid starting new wars through a foreign policy of peace through strength? Would you support a ban on biological males competing in women’s sports? Is our country safer if we incentivize immigrants to come here legally by ensuring unlawful border crossing is not an option?
Many more Americans would vote for Trump if it wasn’t for false media-driven narratives. In 2017, left-leaning news anchors edited Trump’s comments on the Charlottesville protests. They incessantly played a short clip of Trump saying, “You also had people that were very fine people, on both sides,” suggesting he supported those who turned violent.
Biden used this narrative against Trump in a 2019 video announcing his presidential campaign. However, the media reporting was intentionally deceptive. A full review of the transcript shows Trump condemning the violence and expressing concern for those who were there peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights.
This media narrative has been discredited for years. But this didn’t stop Harris from repeating it in last month’s presidential debate.
Why would she inflame tensions by repeating a long-ago debunked media narrative? Because Harris’s policy record pales in comparison to the accomplishments and objective results of Trump’s leadership as president.
Elections have consequences, as one president was apt to remind the country. In the end, politicians are public servants. That’s it.
Policy is the fundamental work of politicians as they exercise the powers of your government. A candidate’s bid for office should be evaluated on whether their record of action serves you, the American people.
Trump has demonstrated his dogged persistence to fulfill his policy promises to the people. As a president should.
I’ll be voting for him and, if you agree with his policy record, you should too.
Joshua Lee is a writer and communications consultant. He has served in the White House, NASA, and in nearly all levels of state and local government. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Houston Chronicle, Deseret News, and AMAC among other publications.
