The election is less than 2 months away, and political tensions have reached a fever pitch. To see where our students stand, The Crimson White interviewed students who support each of the three candidates on the ballot in all 50 states; Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Gary Johnson. 

Daniel Ashford is a proud conservative evangelical, who served the Young Conservatives of America at Alabama as their president last year and currently serves as their treasurer. He plans on voting for Donald Trump in November.

How would you describe your personal political views?

Conservative, evangelical conservative.

Did you support your current preference during primary season?

He was not my choice in the primaries, but I do support him now. I supported Ben Carson, then John Kasich.

What do you like about your candidate’s domestic policy?

I’d have to say that I think his aspect of lowering taxes on the middle class is something I like. I think his promise to secure our borders, to build a wall, to get rid of sanctuary cities are also good. He wants to be tough on crime and appoint judges who are tough on crime, and I think appointing conservative judges to the supreme court is also something that I like about him. 

Sometimes I wonder if I can trust that he will appoint conservative supreme court justices, because for most of his life he has been a liberal. But I do think with his choice of Mike Pence and with the people he listed that he would possibly nominate to the Supreme Court, I do have a little more faith. I certainly think that anybody he appoints would be better than anyone Hillary Clinton would appoint.

What do you like about your candidate’s foreign policy?

I think that he would be a lot tougher on ISIS, and I think that his foreign policy is probably where more people find positives in him than in Hillary. A lot of us, including myself, are voting for him because we just cannot stand Hillary Clinton and will do anything to keep her from the Oval Office. So for some evangelical conservatives like me, it hard to find positives in Donald Trump, but I think we find the positives in his foreign policy, because – unlike our current president –– he will be very tough on radical Islamic Terrorism. He wants to waterboard, he wants to go after these terrorists. 

For many years now we have not had a plan to combat ISIS. We have a president who won’t even call radical Islamic terrorism by its name. He will not say anything bad about the religion of Islam. I think Trump is very pro-Israel, which is another aspect that I think evangelical conservatives, like me, like about Donald Trump. I think he will hold Israel to a higher standard than our current president or Hillary Clinton will. He will be a president who will make us a world power. 

We have been weakened by our current President in many senses. Our President has gone around apologizing for, really I don’t know what, but he goes around apologizing. I think Trump would be very pro-American more so than our current President or Hillary Clinton.

What is your candidate’s greatest strength?

Foreign policy, particularly on the border, on crime and on combating terrorism. I do think Donald Trump will keep our nation safe. I really felt [ it ] after Orlando. I thought he handled the Orlando terrorist attack very well. Unlike Hillary or Obama, he called it by its name: he said this is a radical Islamic terrorist who wants to kill gays because they are gay. We are going to make sure that people from nations like Syria and Pakistan aren’t going to come here and commit more of these acts of terrorism. 

What is an area where you feel that your candidate is weak or could improve on before being inaugurated?

I think a lot of things, particularly his social issues. I think if he wants to completely win over the trust of conservative evangelicals like myself, he needs to be more pro-life. He is the first republican nominee, I believe since Nixon –– I don’t know that for sure –– that has not mentioned anything about pro-life issues in his nomination address at the Republican National Convention. I still think he’s not pro-traditional marriage. I think he just says that because he has often talked about how for most of his life he has been a supporter of the LGBT community. I don’t think he is one to support traditional marriage, he is just saying that to make people like me happy.

I think he needs to improve on his policy articulation. If you listen to most of his speeches, it’s very vague. He has a super plan to defeat ISIS, you know, he seems to just say very vague things like “Mexico is going to pay for that wall.” Well, how are you going to do that? He needs to be very articulate and more detailed about his policy. First we were going to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it, he still says we’re going to make Mexico pay for it, but he didn’t tell them when he was in Mexico City. He used to want to deport all 12-million undocumented citizens, now he wants to just deport some, especially. I don’t know on a given day where he stands, so I think he needs to be more articulate on policy stances.

Do you think some of Trump’s tactics have alienated groups within the GOP? If so, how can the party work to get those people back?

I think he needs to be more specific if he wants to win their trust. I mean he obviously knows that we are going to vote for him. We aren’t going to vote for Hillary Clinton, and we aren’t going to vote for Gary Johnson. I have a lot of friends, evangelical conservatives who I go to church with daily, who don’t want to vote for him. Somehow in their minds they have convinced themselves that Hillary may not be that bad, and so they’re just not gonna go vote, or they’re just going to write in somebody. I think those people he’s got to win over. Mike Pence was a strong pick for him to win over those people, because Mike Pence is a conservative evangelical.

I also I think more and more that Hillary is going to fall apart. Her health problems are very concerning, and she lies about literally everything. I think that the more that Hillary begins to fall apart as we’ve seen here the last few days, I think some people may just say “I don’t even care who it is, we just need to ensure that Hillary is not the President.” But that’s still not winning over the trust of conservative evangelicals and those who are decidedly conservative like me. We are going to do anything we can to prevent Hillary Clinton from being in the Oval Office. I think a lot of people in this election, Republicans and Democrats are voting against the other candidate, not necessarily for their own candidate.