With the election on the horizon, it’s inevitable that you’ve heard attacks on both candidates, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The main argument against Trump is that he’s racist, sexist and everything-ist. For Clinton, it’s mainly her corrupt financial background, emails and lying accusations that bring her heat. For many high school seniors, this is your first chance to vote. Not only that, but these seniors have a chance to make a difference in one of the most historical elections of all time. Even if you aren’t 18 years of age, it’s always helpful to be politically informed, even if you don’t support either candidate like me. Besides, there are going to be countless jokes during this year’s election, who wouldn’t want to miss out on that?

Let’s start with Donald Trump. Trump has been taking the bad end of mainstream media for over the past year. Popular news networks, such as CNN,  seem to be willing to tear him apart piece by piece, calling him sexist, racist, misogynist, and so on. For example, last October during an interview with Megyn Kelly, Trump was asked if he insulted women. His response? “Only Rosie O’Donnell.” Actually, he also called Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post, a ‘dog who wrongfully comments on me’ on Twitter. You can decide what he meant by that.

It’s true that Trump has insulted a few women in the past, however, to be fair, he insults just about everyone. Insulting a woman doesn’t necessarily make you sexist, it makes you rude. Trump technically could be considered anti-sexist, depending on your viewpoint. During the 1980s, he appointed a woman, Barbara Res, to oversee the construction of a skyscraper, being the first woman to do so ever.

Unfortunately, Res has been extensively interviewed and mentioned several times that she would not be voting for Trump in this election. This then led to online hostility towards each other, both making snide comments to each other. The whole argument was odd, considering that Res called Trump ‘the least sexist boss I ever had’ in her 2013 book All Alone on the 68th Floor.

Jumping back to racism, the idea that Trump is racist is entirely subjective. It all is determined by how one interprets comments and arguments he has had. During a statement, Trump said that Mexico sends (mostly) drug traffickers and rapists to America, suggesting that they cause a spike in crime rate. This statement can’t be backed up due to the fact that only Texas keeps track of its immigrant crime rate. There have also been contradicting reports of immigrant crime rates. According to Breitbart.com, illegal aliens accounted for 30 percent of crimes in Texas between 2008-2014. However, the Texas Department of Safety only has immigrant crime statistics up to 2008.

Trump in general is not necessarily racist, or misogynistic. It all depends on who processes the statements he has said. He seems to not hold back on comments, especially considering he’s becoming a major political figure.

Now let’s switch to Hillary Clinton. If Trump got the bad end of the stick in mass media, then Clinton essentially got dismantled by the internet. There are several online hate groups armed towards sending Hillary to prison, as well as countless forums dedicated to bashing on Hillary. Some are even calling Clinton a ruthless assassin with a body count, accusing her of murdering those who plot against her. Although not all of these allegations are true (hopefully), one thing is for sure: Hillary Clinton has many doubters.

Hillary cannot catch a break. A full list of accusations with actual evidence would span for pages, so I’ll try to keep this short.

From ‘pandering to Hispanics’ by opening a rally to a mariachi band to having a mild seizure in front of several reporters, Hillary still manages to have a (somewhat) successful campaign… somehow.

The biggest Clinton scandal at the moment is the email server. There is undeniable proof that Clinton accessed classified information on a private server, yet FBI Director James Comey recommended no charges against Clinton. The Department of State has also managed to convince the judge in charge of the case to delay the public release of 14,900 emails to after the election.

A recent leak of DNC (Democratic National Committee) documents by Wikileaks has shown that the DNC has poor cybersecurity, and that election fraud is entirely possible. Voter profiles were shown to be able to be switched, causing many people to believe that Clinton committed election fraud during the primaries.

Although I don’t agree with Clinton in many cases,  I’ll try to be unbiased and say that she deserves a break. Trump deserves a break too; people should view the presidential candidates by their views on certain issues, rather than their past. However, their pasts should be taken into consideration at some point, especially when both candidates have a shady past when dealing with money.

Instead of looking at both candidates and thinking, “Hillary is a corrupt, lying snake and Trump is a racist and sexist pig,” people should view Hillary as a relatively moderate democrat, and Trump as a conservative republican. That way, people will actually vote for a candidate and not move to Canada.