Do you know why you don’t trust Hillary Clinton — or did Twitter tell you not to trust her? Or even support her in general?
Twitter should be viewed the same way Wikipedia is: some stuff may be factual, but you need to take it with a grain of salt.
I’ve watched people with thousands of followers tweet something politically false and get the whole Twitter community riled up — like the thought-to-be picture of Bernie Sanders leading a segregation protest when he attended the University of Chicago. So many people tweeted that photo, and it got thousands of retweets and favorites. People expressed they were voting for Sanders because of it.
While it’s known that Sanders participated in the Civil Rights Movement, that photo may have been misidentified.
“To be honest, we are not 100 percent sure if it is [Sanders] or not,” Sanders campaign strategist Tad Devine told The Washington Post.
I see incidents like this happen on Twitter and Facebook all the time.
With that being said, don’t let something you see on social media alter or make up your opinion before you fact check and do your own background research.
Twitter loves to say Clinton never did anything for black people.
Just because she wasn’t trending on Twitter for bringing attention to racial discrimination in schools doesn’t mean it didn’t happen — because it did.
According to The New York Times, Clinton went undercover in the South to collect firsthand data on discrimination within private schools, and “they delivered their findings to Mrs. Edelman’s and other advocacy groups that were trying to pressure the Nixon administration.”
Everyone’s quick to look at the negative. People don’t trust her because of her emails — the same emails that the FBI has now cleared for the second time.
As the Huffington Post states, no one was concerned when George W. Bush or Mitt Romney’s administrations “lost” millions of emails. But when it’s the most qualified person to ever run a presidential campaign, then there’s a problem.
And it’s not only Republicans that don’t trust Clinton. It’s Democrats too.
Some are still so hung up on Bernie Sanders. Well, hello, your favorite person in the world has pleaded with you several times to vote for Clinton. Along with President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Sanders clearly trusts her to get the job done.
Cher addressed that Clinton may not be doing the best at rallying millennials, “But I’ve known her for a long time, and I think that she will do her best. And she’s a politician, but she will do her best. If you look at her from the beginning of her life till now, she’s worked hard for people.”
Who you really shouldn’t trust is the other guy.
According to PoliticusUSA, Donald Trump lied a minimum of 58 times in the first presidential debate, and at least 137 times throughout all 3 debates. He has been known for faulty business practices and mistreating his employees.
But you don’t trust Clinton?
According to USA Today, “Just two weeks before Election Day, at least 75 of the 4,000-plus lawsuits involving Trump and his businesses remain open, according to an ongoing, nationwide analysis of state and federal court records.”
These lawsuits range from real-estate disputes to public defamation.
And that’s facts.
A presidential election isn’t a time to be trendy. Do your research before you claim to hate a candidate and especially before you vote.
Tomorrow is the big day. Make a smart, well-thought-out decision. Not one based on 140 characters.
Clarke Perkins is a 20-year-old political science junior from New Orleans, Louisiana.