The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not reflect the views of Step Up.

If you want to keep friendships, relationships, and maybe even family members, don’t talk about two things. Don’t mention diets and don’t talk about politics or the former in relation to the latter. Both just smell of heated discord and resentment, kind of like Monopoly. Everyone has an opinion and thinks these personal notions are completely true. It’s important to look at facts, especially when talking about politics and electing a leader for the country. Here’s what we know about President Donald Trump, based off of objective information, his bills, his acts, his statistics, and studies done on him.

• Trump and minorities

If Trump really hated minorities, he wouldn’t be pushing for acts and bills that specifically help them. For example,the Domestic Violence Act that is aimed to help minorities and includes specific clauses for demographics such as Native Americans. The act will also aid women and black communities living in the United States. If anything, Trump is the president that has brought more benefits to minorities than any other president through a combination of his own initiatives and how he’s building upon the work sketched out by his predecessors. Black unemployment is at a record low and more money is going towards retired minorities. The prison reform plots affect minority communities the most by giving less prison time for people convicted of nonviolent crimes and giving former inmates a better chance at life after prison. He and his administration are also responsible for the highest home-ownership rate among minorities and a blanket lowered dependence on food stamps and welfare.

• Trump and immigrants

President Trump gets labeled horrendous epithets relating to bigotry and gets blamed for acts like the travel ban. In reality, the countries listed on the ban were put there by Obama and Trump only put the ban into effect. Trump is pro-immigrant and welcomes diversity in America. The problem solely rests on people coming into The United States illegally, thus making it harder on people trying to immigrate legally and the American taxpayers who fund the mechanisms for said legal immigration. If America is a secured nation, then there will likely be more room for people to immigrate legally. While he has done things that are not the most well-advised (to say the least), legal immigration is what he stands by and what he ultimately wants to see happen.

• Trump and women

Trump has more women in his office than any other president. If he was so anti-women and such a misogynist, then he would not support women in these roles or trust them to securely and effectively be counsellors, transportation secretaries, CIA directors, American Ambassadors, education secretaries, secretaries of homeland security, administrators of small business administration, and more. These women are making impressive changes and letting their voices be heard on a very high level.

Trump can be credited with increasing the success of the stock market, lowering unemployment, decreasing illegal border crossing by 76 percent (which is better for tax payers and people who are trying very hard to enter the United States legally), diffusing through negotiations what could have been a nuclear war with North Korea, finding a way to help Israel and Jewish people in a climate where doing so is becoming increasingly tricky to do, and instating a tax reform that gave more American’s bonuses, just to name a few of his laudable actions. Where does the issue with Trump stem from? Often it’s due to  misinformation, lack of research, and a tendency to believe biased media outlets. Yes, media. The same media that said in the early 2000s that the Queen of England had cancer and only a few months left to live. Yet, people still put way too much stock in sensationalist media when we should all be wary of (actual) potential fake news and that, as mentioned earlier, everyone on any side of a conflict has an agenda to plug as inarguable truth. A great deal of news reporters and outlets critical of him lean towards the Democratic party and affiliated Leftist philosophies; in their eyes, Trump is not an ideal choice for a political leader, president or otherwise. So they put extra emphasis on his various faux-pas social media posts and spoken sentiments. Some go so far as downplaying the context of these statements or obfuscating it to prod their audience in a certain direction. These tactics are rather gauche, but credit is due where credit is deserved. If you take nothing else from this article, remember this: the media, like Wikipedia and President Trump’s twitter feed, is not always accurate.