My Canadian friend asked on my Facebook thread today, “I don’t get it. Are people just voting by color? How can anyone vote for Trump? He lies about everything.”

I didn’t want to get too in the weeds in my response to her, but she’s also kind enough and fun enough to deserve a more thorough answer than the one I could squeeze out in the comments. I have been so focused on encouraging people to not judge each other by their political votes and to find ways to argue in good faith, that I suppose I haven’t really laid out my own positions that clearly. I hate preaching to the choir. I want to persuade, and unfortunately it has been my observation that many liberals won’t even allow you to begin a conversation if you too clearly identify with non-progressive positions. Persuasion requires people I disagree with to come to the table, and it might not be fair, but getting liberals to come to the table usually means muting my own political pronouncements.

But my friend deserves more than my “Kira Davis, Pundit” treatment. She deserves an explanation. So here is why – as someone who did not vote for Trump in 2016 – I am voting for Trump in 2020.

I’m voting for Trump because it is my job to look beyond the headlines.

I know how headlines and chyrons are manipulated for your clicks. I know because in one way or another every one of us massages headlines for maximum clicks and views. It’s how most of us get paid. I also know what the President says in relation to what gets reported. That’s because it’s my job. If I were an uniformed viewer and just depended on headlines to tell the story, I’d be terrified too. To hear CNN tell it (and in my friend’s case, CBC) you’d think Americans were dropping dead of COVID in the streets second-to-second, we’re all walking around with guns strapped to our hips, and President Trump has already set up concentration camps for…well, whomever it is the “smartest people in the room” are saying he hates now. I know that’s not true because I read everything and also I’m living it. I read to the last paragraph, I watch the President live instead of just reading the recaps of his comments. I’m informed and I’m an insider in the industry. I know that factual details of a story are typically buried in the last two paragraphs, because we all know you’ll never read that far. I say all this to say that I don’t worry about the “Trump is a racist/liar!!!!” thing because I’m fully informed as to what is a lie coming out of his mouth and what is a lie that’s been shoved into a headline. I don’t base my votes on headlines. I never have.

I’m voting for Trump because I think he is best guardian of our economy.

Six months ago I would have told you Trump would win in a landslide with these historic economic numbers. COVID knocked us all on our asses, but the economy was chugging along so well that as states begin their slow march to full reopening, the bounce-back has been insane. There is every indication that Americans are excited to buy, sell and conduct business as usual. I couldn’t have predicted that, but I believe that Trump’s economic policies are the best chance for growth.

I’m voting for Trump because I’ve never in my life seen a President who actually seems to want to listen to Black voters.

The Platinum Plan is not necessarily my favorite. I’m a small government conservative voter. I don’t like spending. Period. But what I love about Trump’s plan, his work on Opportunity Zones with Senator Tim Scott, and his executive orders on criminal justice reform, is that he doesn’t seem to be playing the typical game GOP and Democrat politicians have been playing with us for years. If justice reform and Opportunity Zones were the only things he was able to push through, that’s already far and above what Democrat politicians have done in the last 20 years, despite telling us every four years that a Republican vote is a vote for racism. They take our votes for granted because we give without ever asking for anything in return. There’s a reason Ice Cube met with Trump and not Biden and it has nothing to do with Ice Cube’s personal politics. He said he’d meet with anyone who was willing to hear him out on his ideas for lifting Black America. Biden said no. Trump said yes. That’s kind of a big deal. Obama was our first Black president and Black unemployment skyrocketed under his administration. It has declined dramatically under Trump. I’m voting for Black prosperity, or at least a shot at it. I’m also voting to shock Democrats out of their malaise. Stop taking us for granted. Show up and get the job done or quit yer bitchin.

I’m voting for Trump because I’m voting for law and order.

I’m looking at Biden supporters and protesters burning down their own cities, looting their own stores, destroying their own neighborhoods with no intervention from their Democrat mayors and governors. It isn’t Trump supporters who have been destroying American cities all summer, and it isn’t Trump supporters municipalities are worrying about as they board up their retail areas. Remember when the usual suspects in the Headline Media were calling people protesting lockdowns “murderers” and irresponsible maniacs? Those folks went home for the summer and Black Lives Matter protesters took over and there’s nary a word about their crowd sizes, their violence or their insanity. I’m voting against rewarding that behavior. My vote is all I have to express how I feel about the gross injustice of allowing rioters free rein while people are still barred from holding their dying loved ones in nursing homes.

I’m voting for Trump because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are poor candidates.

I did tell my friend that I found it a rather naive position to assume that one candidate is always honest and good and the other is always evil. She assumed people were voting on “color” but it seems to me her assumption was based on “color.” To reiterate, I’ve been doing this job for too long to be this naive about who represents what. I have no problem with anyone who wants to believe Trump is the devil incarnate. This is your right. Be my guest. I do have a problem when people then in turn assume that means a vote for Biden/Harris is a virtuous vote. I’m voting against their policies, their political positions on issues that are important to me, and their corruption. To assume that Biden is not corrupt just because he’s “blue”…again, that’s just silly. It’s my job to know what’s going on and to opine about it, which I do. But I know my tiny voice is not worth much against an onslaught of headlines that make it seem like one thing when it is really another. I have news for all of you out there who think your media is objective…they are not. They are just like me, just like you. They are people with hopes and opinions and biases and those things bleed into their work. That’s not a bad thing, but it is a thing and it’s only bad if you’re trying to pretend you have no bias.

I’m voting for Trump because I think he deserves a chance to finish the job.

I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 because I didn’t believe he was conservative enough. I wanted a wall on the border, lower taxes, some originalist Supreme Court picks and a President who would at least endorse school choice. I wanted a President who would reverse some of this disastrous foreign policy when it came to China. I didn’t think Trump was that guy. I was wrong. He is that guy and he’s a guy who did way more than I imagined he would. His inroads into hearing and acting on concerns from Black voters I find to be especially persuasive. I’m not keen to change horses mid-race. I think Trump deserves to see this through, and then we’ll be in a Democrat election cycle and we can watch them undo it all for eight years until the next Republican cycle and so on and so forth.

So, my dear Canadian friend. I hope this helps. I don’t expect you to read this and go, “Oh wow! Everyone should vote for Trump now!” No, of course not. I still expect you to think of him as you always have, but I hope I’ve given you some sort of alternative view, so that you know that not every American thinks they’re voting for all the horrible stuff you think Trump stands for. They don’t see him that way at all and I encourage you and everyone who is confused to at the very least seek some alternative sources of information. Not because I think you are stupid, but because I think it will help you feel better about the process and feel better about people. There are plenty of justifiable reasons to vote Trump that have nothing to do with hashtag Literally Hitler™.

It is my sincere and fervent hope that reason and thoughtfulness will be the biggest winner today.