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| - "I was wrong about Trump," says Frank VanderSloot, the richest man in Idaho. In 2016, like many other conservatives, he didn't initially take the New York real estate magnate seriously. Today VanderSloot, in bombastic language not unlike the president's, views Trump as a crucial rampart against an "immediate" socialist takeover of the country -- regardless of the fact that his opponent Joe Biden has spent his career as a centrist Democrat. The turnabout of this wealthy conservative donor, the founder and CEO of the Melaleuca corporation -- which sells vitamins, cleaning products and personal-care products -- reflects the similar path of many other Republican elites. Like them, he has put aside initial doubts to embrace the lure of four years of conservative values fiercely pursued by Trump. Those include a Trump tax cut and the rollback of various regulations, particularly related to the environment. "I didn't think he would be a conservative," VanderSloot told AFP. "But he did follow through on his promises. "He supported free enterprise, did away with a lot of nonsensical regulations, helped revive the oil industry, took on China, called out the press." VanderSloot, who in 2016 backed Florida Senator Marco Rubio in the Republican primaries, doesn't agree with everything Trump has done. He says the president should, for example, have encouraged mask-wearing against the coronavirus far sooner. And he finds more than a little fault with the president's tone, which he thinks has undercut Trump's broader message. "He's damaged the Republican Party from the perspective that he seems mean. He's not mean, but he talks mean. "I don't know of very many conservatives who like what he says, and the crudeness of it, and how he attacks people. He just beats up anybody who criticizes him; he's thin-skinned. "And his braggadocios, me-me-me stuff: No one likes that." But he summed up Trump's appeal to conservatives in disarmingly simple terms: "Everybody likes what he does. They don't like how he does it." VanderSloot, who is 72 and controls a fortune of $3.5 billion according to Forbes, is less than optimistic about Tuesday's election. That is why he has donated more than $2 million to Republican candidates this year, according to opensecrets.org, which estimates total US election spending this cycle at a stunning $11 billion. VanderSloot says he fears "radicalism" from Democrats -- though he does not mention the projections of skyrocketing debt and deficit numbers under Trump even before the pandemic. "I am worried. I'm especially worried that if we have a new president and the Republicans lose the Senate majority, nothing is going to stop radicalism from controlling the Democratic Party and our nation." Republicans know that if they lose the White House but maintain control of the Senate, Democrats will still be severely constrained from acting on issues like the climate, energy and environmental standards. That is why VanderSloot has directed a majority of his donations to conservative Senate candidates -- in hopes of a legislative bulwark against a future president Biden. "He is going to be influenced dramatically by the extreme radical left and a Democratic Senate," he alleged of the 77-year-old Democrat who helped manage an economic recovery during his eight years as vice president. "I think if we swing to the left and toward socialism, that's my biggest concern." VanderSloot suspects Democrats will put off passing a new stimulus package to alleviate the economic impact of the coronavirus until after the new president takes office on January 20. That would be just long enough, he said, to destroy businesses such that "everybody's dependent on the government" and the subsidies it dispenses, he claims. Democrats in the House of Representatives have however already passed a stimulus plan and negotiations with Republicans on a bipartisan bill have broken down. ico/bbk/mjs
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