I understand Donald Trump’s appeal. His name is practically synonymous with power, wealth, and business prowess. He has worked hard and strategically to further equate it with a stance against political correctness and backroom politics. He has publicly promised the financially struggling classes that he will use his experience with business and financial success to overturn the foundation of an economy that has slighted them by burying people in debt and ignoring their lack of access to health care and steady pay. He has shined an intense light on issues that many Americans feel haven’t been given enough attention – such as ISIS and immigration. Again, I completely understand his appeal.

But the financial pedestal that the American people have propped him on is not what it appears to be. By evading taxes, declaring bankruptcy multiple times, and refusing to pay employees that he hired to build the structures that advertise his name throughout major cities, he has managed to keep a business and brand built for him by his father’s efforts. Essentially, he used the loopholes accessible solely to people with an exorbitant amount of money to build an empire that wasn’t his to begin with on the backs of the American people he claims to care so much about.

He has participated in the exploitation of laborers in outside countries to manufacture his own products at a lower price and then condemned the American economy for allowing business owners in our country to do so on national television.

He has hired undocumented immigrants to assist in the building of his business structures and then stood up at political podiums to address the major immigration problem plaguing his blessed nation, roaring about a wall that Mexico owes us to keep out millions of people he has labeled as rapists and deviants based entirely on racial discrimination.

He has been accused of rape, been proven to treat women with no respect, utilizing the kind of demeaning and hypersexual mannerisms that consistently contribute to America’s very real rape culture, and then used presidential debate time to label this behavior as acceptable by calling it the kind of locker room talk that innocently happens every day.

He has built a certain amount of trust within millions of American voters by calling himself the only candidate who is not an underhanded, scheming politician who lies to the American people in order to further his own agenda. But based on the facts I have listed and described above, is this not exactly what Trump embodies? Is he not a proven hypocrite? Is he not the highest example of a candidate who lies and manipulates in order to further his own agenda? How can the American people truly believe that a vote for this candidate is a vote for someone who means what he says, who will put the needs of the people before his own personal beliefs, and who has even properly prepared for the kind of responsibility that the American president holds?

Again, I understand the appeal that this man has built for himself. But I beg those of you who feel he is the best choice in this election to look further into what he truly stands for. I'm not talking about what he has told you he stands for, I'm talking about what he has been truly proven to stand for.

Don't let the shallow words of one man take away your ability to think for yourselves. Take the time to understand what your vote truly means before handing it to someone who has lied time and time again in order to steal it from you.