Donald Trump

Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at, Friday, Oct. 14, in Greensboro, N.C. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Alicia Colon

Commentary by columnist Alicia Colon

Many of the Republicans who will be voting for Donald Trump next month do not like him but they despise Hillary Clinton even more. He certainly wasn't my first choice. I wanted Rick Perry and when he dropped out, I was sure the winner would be either Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio. But as the primary process continued and polling became the operative tool, I began to suspect that the whole thing was rigged. When Gov. John Kasich came in as a late candidate that pushed Perry into the second tier debate group, my suspicions were confirmed that the media was promoting Donald Trump for the GOP nomination.

I still thought Trump as president was a horrible joke and it wasn't until I heard from my brother Joe, who is battling fourth stage cancer, that I started opening my mind to the possibility that Trump was somehow meant to be.

Joe is a former Marine being treated at a Veteran's Hospital in the state of Washington. He spoke passionately to me about how Trump was talking about every thing that needed to be said: Obamacare, the VA scandal, IRS corruption, criminal illegals, a corrupt DOJ and FBI covering up for Obama and Hillary. The Democrats and our president were afraid to use the word Islamic jihadists when naming terrorists; and he liked the fact that Donald Trump said that global warming is a hoax while Obama was claiming this was a bigger threat than terrorism. Mexico has a wall yet only Trump insists that we have one too, Joe continued. I had to beg him to slow down and take a deep breath because it was affecting his chemo and heart rate.

So even though I was reluctantly committed to voting for Trump, that didn't mean I was happy about doing so. It was clear that the media that had pushed him to the top of the GOP heap was now ready to savage him and since this onslaught had kept the GOP base home before, I was expecting the same result.

After I began a column in the Advance in 1998, I discovered that my conservatism was at odds with over 80 percent of the media. I had also found that a good portion of the electorate had only been exposed to a media that was both hostile and biased towards the right wing and thus getting the whole story out was quite a challenge. Few of these low-info voters understand the significance of Clinton's email scandal and Benghazi. She is ultimately responsible for the Libyan crisis because she backed the anti-Qaddafi rebels that led to his death and the destabilization of Libya. Everything that Hillary did as Secretary of State was totally self-serving and earned the Clintons millions of dollars for their Foundation. If she wins, the Supreme Court Justices she nominates will be dismantling the Bill of Rights and the progressive tyranny of the minority will reign.

With Donald Trump as the GOP candidate, the mainstream media was not only energized to defeat him they were getting funding from billionaires like George Soros and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Mr. Bezos bought the Washington Post and hired 20 extra reporters to dig up dirt on Trump. Predictably, negative Trump reports are coming out daily from the NY Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, and the mainstream media. They are all in the tank for Hillary and have abandoned any journalistic ethics.

But Donald Trump is neither a Mitt Romney nor any of the other genteel Republicans who refused to get down and dirty with the opposition and ended up losing the battle. He is a New Yorker and sometimes crude, crass and politically incorrect. What he is not is a racist or a homophobe. All one has to do is visit his establishments and see what he did when he took over the old Commodore Hotel and turned it into the Grand Hyatt. Most of the staff there are blacks, Hispanics, Asians, legal immigrants and gays making a very good living. Has anybody bothered asking Hillary how on earth she became a millionaire working for the government?

So when the media twists his words into something he never said and debate moderators are shills for Hillary, he stands and fights and punches back hard. That's what I've come to like about him and why he is drawing thousands to his rallies. We are sick and tired of mealy mouth politicians who betray us once we put them in office. So come Nov. 8th, I'll have no problem voting for him.

Abraham Lincoln was told by A. K. McClure, a Pennsylvania politician that he should get rid of General Grant. Lincoln took a long time before he answered, "I can't spare this man. He fights." If there's one thing this country needs in this very sick world, it's a leader who will fight. Go Trump.

Alicia Colon is a Stapleton resident and political columnist. Her weekly column appeared in the Advance from 1998-2001; New York Sun, 2002-2008; Irish Examiner USA, 2008-2011 and the Jewish World Review, 2011-present. A mother of six, and grandmother of 13, she loves Staten Island, moving here from Manhattan in 1978.