As Donald Trump aims to expand on his "Make America Great Again" platform, those close to the presumptive Republican nominee say that Trump will call for the return of child labor in the United States in his speech at the Republican National Convention next week.
In the past, Trump has spoken highly of America's success during the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1800s and credits the economic boom to the "blood, sweat, and tears" of the country's children.
Child labor has essentially been outlawed since Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, but according to a campaign surrogate speaking on the condition of anonymity, Trump believes that "it's these kinds of overly politically correct laws that coddle American children into soft and lazy degenerates," which then causes them to lag behind their Chinese counterparts.
At many of his campaign rallies, Trump has said that we need to "take the jobs back from China," leading many political experts to speculate that Trump's proposal will lead to sweatshop-like factories with hard and poor working conditions for our country's youth. "It's time our children put down their iPhones and start making iPhones," Trump will reportedly say in his speech at the convention.
Typically, such a proposal would weaken a candidate's electability, but time and time again Trump has proven that marginalizing certain segments of people, most notably Mexicans, Muslims and women, only increases his numbers in the polls. The surrogate explained that children are an ideal group to attack next because should there be any political fallout this time around, "there's no need to worry because kids can't vote."
The Republican Convention takes place July 18th to 21st in Cleveland, Ohio.