10 Worst Things About The Trump Presidency
Donald Trump left office with the lowest approval rating of any president ever. But some people now seem to be suffering from amnesia.
Let me jog your memory. Here are 10 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency — in no particular order.
#1. Trump fueled division and sparked a record uptick in hate crimes.
#2. Murder went way up under Trump. He presided over the largest ever single-year increase in homicides in 2020. A number of factors might have contributed to that, but a big one is…
#3. Gun sales broke records under Trump, who has bragged about how he “did nothing” to restrict guns as president in spite of…
#4. Under Trump, America suffered more than 1,700 mass shootings.
#5. Trump said there were “very fine people” among the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville.
I’m halfway to ten. If you think I’m missing something big, leave it in the comments.
#6. Trump allied himself with the Proud Boys, a violent hate group who helped orchestrate the Jan 6 Capitol attack.
#7. Trump’s not wrong when he says…
TRUMP: I got rid of Roe v. Wade.
It is entirely because of Trump’s judicial appointments that 1 in 3 American women of childbearing age now lives in states with abortion bans.
#8. One of Trump’s Supreme Court justices was Brett Kavanaugh, a man accused of sexual assault by multiple women.
#9. Trump’s White House interfered in the FBI’s investigation of Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assaults.
And now: #10. Trump has been convicted of committing 34 felonies while in office. The criminally false business filings he got convicted for in New York? All of them were committed while he was president.
I’m sorry, did I say the 10 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency? I meant 15.
#11. Trump’s failed pandemic response is estimated to have led to hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. By the time Trump left office, roughly 3,000 Americans were dying of covid every day. That’s a 9/11-scale mass casualty event every single day. How did Trump screw up so badly?
#13. Trump disbanded the National Security Council’s pandemic response team.
#14. Trump repeatedly lied about the danger of covid, saying it was no worse than the flu or that it would go away on its own.
But behind closed doors, Trump admitted he knew covid was deadly.
#15. Trump promoted fake covid cures like hydroxychloroquine and even injecting people with disinfectants.
After Trump’s “disinfectant” remarks, poison control centers received a spike in emergency calls.
That’s fifteen things. Should I keep going? Ok, I’ll keep going. The 20 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency.
#16. Trump presided over a net loss of 2.9 million American jobs — the worst recorded jobs numbers of any U.S. president in history.
#17. Trump profited off the presidency, making an estimated $160 million from foreign countries while he was president.
#18. Trump also billed the Secret Service over $1 million for the privilege of staying at his golf clubs and other properties while they protected him. That’s your money!
#19. Trump caused the longest government shutdown in U.S. history when he didn’t get funding for his border wall, which he said Mexico was going to pay for.
#20. Under Trump, the national debt increased by about 40% — more than in any other four-year presidential term — largely because of his tax cuts for the rich and big corporations.
You didn’t really think I was stopping at 20, did you? We’re going to 25 —
#21. Trump separated more than 5,000 children from their parents at the border, with no plan to ever reunite them, putting babies in cages.
#22. The Muslim Ban. Yes, Trump really did try to ban Muslims from entering the country.
#23. Trump sparked international outrage by moving the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem while closing the U.S. mission to Palestine.
#24. Trump tasked his son-in-law Jared Kushner with drafting a potential Middle East “peace plan” with zero Palestinian input.
#25. And finally, Trump recognized Israel’s occupation of the Goh-lahn Heights, which is considered illegal under international law.
So there you have it, folks: The 25 Worst — Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Did I mention the impeachments? We’ve got to do the impeachments. Let’s go to 30.
#26. Trump broke the law by trying to withhold nearly $400 million of U.S. aid for Ukraine in an effort to extort a personal political favor from Ukraine’s Pres. Zelensky. Trump wanted Zelensky to interfere in the 2020 election by announcing an investigation into the Bidens. Delaying this aid to Ukraine weakened Ukraine and strengthened Russia.
#27. Trump personally attacked and ruined the careers of everyone who stood in the way of his illegal Ukraine scheme, including Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman.
#28. To cover up the scheme, Trump ordered the White House and State Department to defy congressional subpoenas.
#29. For these reasons, on December 18, 2019, Trump became the third U.S. president to be impeached. He was charged with Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress.
#30. Even while he was being investigated for trying to get Ukraine to interfere in the U.S. election, Trump publicly called for China to interfere in the election.
So those are the 30 Worst Things —
I’ll go to 35.
#31. Long before Election Day, Trump started making false claims that the election would be rigged.
#32. After losing, Trump falsely claimed the election was stolen, even though his own inner circle, including his campaign manager, White House lawyers, and his own Justice Department and attorney general told him it was not.
#33. Trump kept telling his Big Lie even after more than 60 legal challenges to the election were struck down in court, many by Trump-appointed judges.
#34. Trump ordered the Department of Justice to falsely claim that the election “was corrupt.”
#35. Trump and his allies used threats to pressure state leaders in Arizona and Georgia to falsify the election results.
We may go to 40.
#36. When none of the previous schemes worked, Trump and his allies produced fake electoral votes cast by fake electors in multiple swing states. His former White House chief of staff and Rudy Giuliani are among the many members of his inner circle who have been criminally indicted for this scheme.
#37. Trump tried to bully Vice President Pence into obstructing the certification of the election.
#38. Trump invited a mob to the Capitol on Jan 6 with his “be there, will be wild” tweet.
#39. Sworn testimony alleges that when Trump was warned that members of the crowd were carrying deadly weapons, he ordered security metal detectors to be taken down.
#40. Knowing the crowd had deadly weapons, he ordered them to go to the Capitol and…
TRUMP: …fight like hell.
#41 — Yes, yes, I know, bear with me.
Trump betrayed his oath to defend the nation by doing nothing to stop the Jan 6 violence. Instead, according to witness testimony, he sat and watched TV for hours.
#42. On January 13, 2021, Trump became the only president ever to be impeached twice. This time he was charged with incitement of insurrection. It was a bipartisan vote.
#43. The majority of senators — 57 out of 100 — voted to convict Trump, including 7 Republican senators.
So that’s the two impeachments and the Big Lie, but wait, we haven’t dealt with Russia, right? So we’re going to 50.
#44. In a likely obstruction of justice, Trump pressured then FBI Director James Comey to stop the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn. This was documented in the Mueller report.
#45. When Comey didn’t bend to Trump’s will, Trump fired him.
#46. Trump tried to shut down the Mueller investigation by ordering White House Counsel Don McGann to fire Mueller. McGann refused because that would be criminal obstruction of justice.
#49. Trump convinced Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about Trump’s plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, and Cohen served prison time for lying to Congress.
#50. Trump was not charged for criminal obstruction of justice because it’s the Justice Department’s policy not to indict a sitting president, but more than a thousand former federal prosecutors who served under both Republicans and Democrats, signed a letter declaring there was more than enough evidence to prosecute Trump.
So those are the 50 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency. Now I could go on…
And I will! The 75 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency.
#51. Trump said he’d hire only the best people, but…
His campaign chair was convicted of multiple crimes.
So was one of his closest associates.
His deputy campaign chair pleaded guilty to crimes.
The Chief Financial Officer of his business
A campaign foreign policy adviser
And one of his campaign fundraisers.
They all committed crimes, and Trump pardoned most of them.
#52. Trump said he’d drain the Washington swamp. But he appointed more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls to his administration than any administration in history
#53. Trump intervened to get his son-in-law, Jared Kushner top-secret clearance after he was denied over concerns about foreign influence.
#54. Trump hosted a Russian Foreign Minister to the Oval Office, where Trump revealed top-secret intelligence.
Oh, and Trump’s economic policies!
#55 Trump promised that the average American family would see a $4,000 pay raise because of his tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations. How’d that work out? Did you get a $4,000 raise? Of course not! Nobody did!
#56. Trump vowed to protect American jobs, but offshoring increased and manufacturing fell.
#57. Trump said he would fix America’s infrastructure, but it never happened. He announced so many failed “infrastructure weeks” they became a running joke.
#58. Trump said he would be “the voice” of American workers, but he filled the National Labor Relations Board with anti-union flacks who made it harder for workers to unionize.
#59. Trump’s Labor Department made it easier for bosses to get out of paying workers overtime, which cheated 8 million workers of extra pay.
#60. Trump repeatedly suggested he might serve more than two terms in violation of the Constitution — and continues to do so.
#61. Trump called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries.
#62. Trump tried to terminate DACA, which protects immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. Luckily this was struck down by the courts.
#63. Trump called climate change a “hoax.”
#64. Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement.
#65. Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental protections.
#66. Every budget Trump proposed included cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
#67. Trump tried (and failed) to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which would have resulted in 20 million Americans losing insurance. And striking down the ACA’s protections for the roughly 130 million people with pre-existing conditions could have driven up their insurance premiums or led to a loss of coverage.
#68. Trump made it easier for employers to remove birth control coverage from insurance plans.
#69. By the end of Trump’s term, the number of people lacking health insurance had risen by 3 million.
#70. Trump lied. Constantly. He made 30,573 false or misleading claims while president — an average of 21 a day, according to Washington Post fact-checkers.
#71. Trump allegedly took hundreds of classified documents on his way out of the White House, reportedly including nuclear secrets, which he then left unsecured in various parts of Mar-a-Lago, including a bathroom. He was even caught on tape showing them off to people.
#72. Trump seriously discussed the idea of nuking a hurricane.
#73. When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, Trump delayed $20 billion of aid and allowed Puerto Rico to be without power for 181 days.
#75. Trump pulled out of the Iran deal, placing Iran on a path to developing nuclear weapons.
Honestly, there’s so much more, from exchanging “love letters” with North Korea’s brutal dictator to publicly denigrating a Gold Star military widow and making her cry, to the way he attacked journalists, to late night tweet binges.
Look, I can understand why a lot of people want to block all of this out of their memories. But we cannot afford to forget just how terrible Trump’s time in the White House was for this nation.
And we sure as hell can’t afford to put him back there.
Robert Reich's writes at robertreich.substack.com. His latest book is "THE SYSTEM: Who Rigged It, How To Fix It." He is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written 17 other books, including the best sellers "Aftershock,""The Work of Nations," "Beyond Outrage," and "The Common Good." He is a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, founder of Inequality Media, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentaries "Inequality For All," streaming on YouTube, and "Saving Capitalism," now streaming on Netflix.