On Nov. 15, in a speech at his Mar-a-Lago resort, former President Donald Trump declared his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
Trending on Twitter, many college students announced they would vote for him in the next presidential election due to the number of relief funds and “bandemic” and stimulus checks he disbursed during his time in the White House.
“I joked and tweeted when is Trump voting again because we were in better financial times with trump in office,” said Essence Ross. Ross is a second-year psychology student at Florida A&M University. Ross has expressed her concern about inflation and other events that have taken place since Biden’s presidency began in 2021, but said she wouldn’t cast her vote for Trump again.
“Yes, Trump was giving out check after check to those in need due to COVID, but it doesn’t change the person he is,” Ross said.
According to C-SPAN, Trump discussed his agenda for the election, with a strong focus on border security and law enforcement. He explicitly called for the death sentence to be applied to drug traffickers found guilty, as it does in several Asian countries like Singapore. “The Twitter jokes weren’t funny at all. I’m not a big fan of Trump’s no matter how much money he tried to throw at Americans,” said FAMU senior student Kalai Simmons.
NCLS stated that to provide Americans with vital pandemic help and to maintain government operations through September 2021, Congress approved a $900 billion COVID relief and a $1.4 trillion government financing plan. Households affected by the epidemic received more than 472 million payments, totaling $803 billion in financial assistance.
Simmons expressed her concern about how easily manipulated college students can be when money is involved. For example, Simmons brought President Biden’s pledge to forgive $10,000 of student loan debt for low-to middle-income borrowers into the discussion. “Money is something that traps a handful of people especially broke college students when it comes to the government support, their going to use that to their advantage,” Simmons said.
On social media, many people made comments about voting for Trump because of how much benefits and assistance they received during his presidency. In an unscientific poll to see how many FAMU students planned on supporting Trump just for those reasons, 85% out of 300 said they were not voting for Trump, while 15% voted yes. When asked why, they all commented, “Because of the funds and benefits.”