Tag: millennial
5 Cringe-Worthy Moments From The Trump Brothers’ Millennial Town Hall

5 Cringe-Worthy Moments From The Trump Brothers’ Millennial Town Hall

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

The Trump brothers returned to Fox News for a town hall meeting on November 2, eager to woo millennial voters. Unfortunately, they may have missed the mark. Here are five of the most cringe-worthy moments from the excruciating special.

1. Eric Trump: The American dream is dying, these are scary times for… (What age group am I addressing?)

“Sixty-six percent of millennials want to be small business owners or be entrepreneurs,” one town hall attendee told Eric Trump. “How will future President Trump address this issue and support aspiring small business owners?”

But Eric Trump didn’t want to answer that question. “The American Dream is dying,” Eric told her, paraphrasing his father’s talking point. “These are scary, scary times for your generation that’s just entering the workforce.”

Way to dodge the question and engage in a little disingenuous fear mongering. Does Eric Trump not realize he’s in the same generation, and that millions in this age group have been part of the workforce for nearly two decades? Not to mention, as of 2016, millennials are old enough to run for President. Then again, most millennials are not born with all the privileges of a Trump son, so no wonder he does not relate to the common folk.

2. Sean Hannity: Multi-national companies do bad things (And what is the Trump Organization?)

Fox News host Hannity brought up the issues of multi-national companies outsourcing labor and dodging the corporate tax rate. Ironically, Trump’s products have been made in a dozen countries and we don’t even know how much Trump actually pays in taxes because he won’t release his tax returns.

3. Donald Trump Jr.’s great investment idea has nothing to do with his father’s proposals or philosophy.

“Just think of what we could do with that money,” Donald Trump Jr. told Hannity regarding taxes. “We could give our kids a better education.”

Well, we could, if say people like Donald Trump paid their taxes and corporate tax loopholes were closed, which doesn’t seem to be a big theme of the Trump campaign.

Even before Trump Jr. insisted that third world countries outperform the U.S. in education (they don’t), this was already a terrible point. Education is hardly a strong suit for Trump. His most damaging scandal prior to the release of the 2005 Hollywood Access tape was his fraudulent Trump University. Then there’s Trump’s proclamation that he “loves the poorly educated,” because they tend to support him, when white. Although, like Trump Jr., who is fairly well educated, poorly educated Americans probably don’t know the difference between second and third world countries either.

4. Hillary Clinton may be behind Obama with respect to millennial support, but Donald Trump’s numbers are far lower.

“They’re trying to do everything they can to make Hillary Clinton more attractive to younger voters and guess what? The latest poll had her at 42% of youth support. At the lowest level, Barack Obama had 66%,” Charles Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA pointed out. True, Hillary Clinton trails Obama with this demographic, but she’s also ahead of Obama with women. And then there is the fact that Clinton is not running against Obama. She’s running against the Trump boys’ daddy. And according to an October 26 poll, Donald Trump is backed by just 21 percent of voters 18-29.

5. Donald Trump Jr.: Go to trade school, don’t get a 5-year underwater basket-weaving degree

“Agriculture is awesome. We have to encourage people to take up those kinds of jobs,” Trump Jr. said in response to an audience member’s question regarding what she called “lack of intellectual rigor” among Americans.

Trump Jr. went on to tout the importance of trade jobs.

“There’s guys that I know that go get vocational training… and they have probably much higher paying salaries than they would if they got their underwater basket weaving degree for five years.”

But college graduates overall earn far more than their non-college educated peers. And while annual income varies greatly between degrees, there’s no college in the country that offers a five year underwater basket weaving degree. We checked.

Alexandra Rosenmann is an AlterNet associate editor. Follow her @alexpreditor.

IMAGE: Getty Images / Robyn Beck

Poll: Millennial Generation Less Religious, More Liberal Than Older Ones

Poll: Millennial Generation Less Religious, More Liberal Than Older Ones

By David Lauter, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Members of the huge millennial generation are less religious, less likely to call themselves “patriotic” and significantly more liberal than older generations, new research shows.

Although adults aged 18-33 are much more likely to call themselves political independents than their elders are, they are also far more likely to vote Democratic. Their views favoring activist government, as well as their stands on social issues such as gay rights, reinforce that voting behavior, an extensive study by the Pew Research Center shows.

The youngest generation of adults, born after 1980, has the most optimism about the country. That comes despite the economic difficulties many of them have experienced since entering the workforce. And it stands in contrast with some previous generations: Baby boomers, for example, born between 1946 and 1964, were less optimistic than their elders at this stage of their lives.

The millennials are also the only generation of adults with more people who identify themselves as liberals than as conservatives. Just less than one-third of millennials call themselves liberals while about one-quarter identify as conservative. And nearly half say they have become more liberal as they have aged, with 57 percent saying their views on social issues have become more liberal over time.

By contrast, among members of the baby boom generation, 41 percent call themselves conservative and only 21 percent identify as liberals. And baby boomers are more likely to say that growing older has made them more conservative. On this and most other issues, the views of Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980) fall between those of the baby boom and millennial generations, and the views of those born before the baby boom are more conservative.

The liberal views of the youngest adult generation show up on a range of issues. Nearly seven in 10 say they support same-sex marriage, for example, just more than half identify themselves as “supporters of gay rights” and they are twice as likely to see gay and lesbian couples raising children as a good thing for the country than as a negative, which puts them at odds with older generations. They are also far more likely to favor legalization of marijuana. Opinions on abortion and gun control, by contrast, show little generational difference.

Just more than half of millennials say they favor a “bigger government providing more services” rather than a smaller government — a polling question used for years as an index of people’s attitudes toward government’s role.

On the question of the role of government, the much greater racial diversity of the millennial generation plays a key role. About four in 10 members of the millennial generation are non-white — a much larger percentage than in older age groups. Their generally liberal views shape the generation’s outlook although whites in the millennial generation also hold somewhat more liberal views on government than white members of older generations.

Racial diversity may play a role in another distinctive feature of the generation’s members: Although they are optimistic about the country, they are significantly less likely than older generations to say that “most people can be trusted.” Sociologists who have looked at other studies over the years have suggested that people who see themselves as part of a vulnerable minority group are less likely to feel trust toward other members of society.

A significantly smaller share of millennials have married than among older generations at this stage of their lives. Only about one in four millennials have wed, compared with more than one-third of Generation X when they were in their 20s and 30s, and nearly half of the baby boomers.

That decline in marriage rates may reflect the lessened attachment that members of the generation have to other institutions, such as organized religion or nationalism. Almost three in 10 say they are religiously unaffiliated, nearly twice the share among baby boomers. Just less than half of millennials say that “patriotic” describes them well, in comparison with two-thirds to three-quarters of older generations.

But the reluctance to marry also reflects the tough economic circumstances that millennials have faced. Members of the generation are the best educated in U.S. history, but also have the most student-loan debt. Their unemployment rate, 13 percent as of January, is significantly higher than that of older workers. And an overwhelming majority of them believe that young adults today face more economic challenges than did previous generations — a view with which older generations concur.

Yet despite those economic difficulties, millennials have a positive view about their economic futures, the survey showed. A majority believe that they eventually will have “enough to lead the kind of life I want.”

The Pew report on millennials is based largely on a new survey conducted Feb. 14-23 among 1,821 adults nationwide, including 617 members of the millennial generation. The results have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.

AFP Photo/Scott Olson