Honesty and integrity, decision making that benefits the people and someone who listens to the people: these are the traits of a good leader. President Donald Trump is not a good leader and should no longer be tolerated.

Honesty and integrity place a crucial role in leadership. As the CEO magazine tells us, “Honesty is a leader’s most valuable and most valued leadership quality; it serves as the gateway for trust and inspiration.”

Trump has lied to us on more than one occasion. For example, he claimed that he built his multi-billion dollar empire through his own means. This is a lie. A special tax fraud investigation in the New York Times based on tax returns and financial records revealed that Donald Trump received the equivalent of $413 million from his father’s real estate empire in tax schemes dating back to his childhood.

When citizens lose faith in their leader, they start to become suspicious of the leader’s actions. Citizens won’t agree with the leader and follow his direction. In this case, if a leader doesn’t have his people’s trust, then people will be less inclined to believe the leader’s motives for passing the law.

On Oct. 21, 2018, the Trump administration revealed its attempt to define gender as a binary determined at birth and based on genitalia. According to The Williams Institute, this affects 1.4 million adults in the US who identify as transgender. Trump’s actions show his disregard and lack of empathy for his people. Trump’s decision is one that harms his people, reversing the efforts and difficult decisions that these 1.4 million adults made to come out. Not only does this disregard put a lot of emotional pressure on people who are transgender but it’s also bad for two reasons. First, by targeting a major faction of the LGBTQ+ body, others in the group will start to have fears of being targeted themselves. Second, The Williams Institute tells us that the LGBTQ+ body is comprised of approximately nine million people. This is an outrageous amount of people to neglect by making a rash and poorly thought out decision.

To make matters worse, this isn’t the only time that Trump has made rash decisions affecting both millions of people and other significant figures. Furthermore, it’s not just his own people that he’s affecting. On Oct. 18, 2018, Trump tweeted “In addition to stopping all payments to these countries, which seem to have almost no control over their population, I must, in the strongest of terms, ask Mexico to stop this onslaught — and if unable to do so I will call up the U.S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!” This would affect a caravan of more than 3,000 immigrants from places like Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

The date was Oct. 9, 2018. Trump’s disregarded protestors rallied against the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh. He refused to listen to the crowd, believing the protestors to be ‘paid protesters’ during Kavanaugh confirmation who ‘haven’t gotten their checks’.

Also, in Trump’s infamous phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky, Trump asks Zelensky “to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.” What exactly was this favor? It was “to have the Attorney General call [Zelensky] or [Zelensky’s] people and…get to the bottom of it” using Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity technology company. The “it” is unknown but it is generally accepted that Trump was asking Zelensky to look into potential political opponent Joe Biden.

Trump was clearly trying to use his power unlawfully – having another country investigate into a political opponent. So not only does Trump not care about his own people, but he’s also only fixated on himself and how he can stay in the position that he is in.

Let’s change that. Trump possesses none of the traits of a good leader and has shown this to us. It is only natural that we show him we won’t obey his antics any longer. Impeachment will do this for us. Impeachment is the answer.

Opinion articles written by staff members represent their personal views. The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent WSPN as a publication.