None of us are perfect, including famed economist Ben Stein. This is the man who once called Barack Obama the most racist president, after all. But for all his business and economic policy acumen, you wouldn’t think that Stein would criticize another presidential candidate’s economic proposals, and then say that he’s voting for him anyway, would you? But that’s what Stein has done, when it comes to Donald Trump. He has given up.
In an interview with the Guardian, Stein first says that Trump is a mediocre businessman, that he inherited his wealth and connections, and made a few good deals during a prosperous time. He says that even if Trump were a good businessman, “that doesn’t mean he would be a great steward of the US economy.”
So, good businessman or not, would Trump be “a great steward of the US economy?” No, Stein says, before adding that Trump and the rest of America need to learn how beneficial free trade is:
If the regular folks think that China came along in the middle of the night and stole all their jobs, then nothing could be further from the truth. It’s just nonsense. I think Trump is popular because he says: I am going to go to China and get those jobs back. But he is not going to be able to do that. And any attempt to try would be a disaster.
So Ben Stein agrees with a lot of people: Donald Trump has some bad ideas for how to Make America Great Again. You would think that this would stop Stein from voting for Trump, but you would be mistaken.
I’ll vote for him, by the way. I’ll vote for him because I think he does personify a kind of national pride which I think has been lacking in the Obama days and would be terribly lacking under Bernie Sanders and terribly lacking under Hillary Clinton. But I think his economics is way, way out of whack and he seriously needs some education about it.
Stein is following Paul Ryan and other establishment figures who are getting on the Trump train, even if it’s arguable whether he will be a president of substance. For everybody’s bellyaching over the past year about Trump becoming the Republican nominee for president, people are certainly falling in line after he became the presumptive Republican nominee.
(via The Guardian)