William Bennett did NOT pen an essay endorsing Trump

Over the last several months several friends have forwarded to me an email containing an essay purportedly written by former Secretary of Education William Bennett praising Donald Trump.

Bill Bennett did NOT pen this essay.

It was originally posted on the web site Reality News Media on 17 September 2015 and circulated for several weeks with no attribution attached to it. It wasn’t until mid-November 2015 that Bill Bennett’s named started to appear alongside the title in an apparent attempt to lend credibility to the essay.

Bennett’s views on Donald Trump are not in line with those expressed in the essay. While the unknown author writes that Trump would make a good President since he is self-funded and does not play by the rules, Bennett said in an interview with Sean Hannity that he was not okay with a Trump presidency:

Because I look at a man and the totality of his acts and his record and the things he has and stood for.  And I think, probably, he’s not very principled in terms of his convictions anyway, except he, you know, is a businessman who does things his way, his own idiosyncratic way.

I do understand the appeal. People are angry, mad.  And he seems big enough to kind of encompass that anger …

… Here’s Trump with a record, you know, longer than your arm, wrong on all these things, getting all this support. That’s what makes me a little angry and makes me think there’s a lot of irrationality on it…

… Look, if Trump’s the nominee, Sean, I will support him because I won’t support Hillary.