Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Is Trump A Bad President

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Opinion: Donald Trump Is The Worst President In Us History For Three Big Reasons

Colbert: All The Other Reasons Trump Is A Bad President
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Donald Trump is the worst president in U.S. history for three huge reasons and tens of thousands of lesser ones. Only the reasons order is up for debate.

Trumps attacks on institutions the press, the judiciary, the intelligence community culminated in his war on voting. The Jan. 6 mayhem at the Capitol was a direct result and rightly led to a previously unimaginable second presidential impeachment.

The second huge reason is Trumps stunningly incompetent response to the coronavirus pandemic. Instead of seeing the virus as a public health threat, he treated it as a threat to the economy and thus to his re-election downplaying it even after it hit in full force in April. He refused to use White House clout to obtain basic supplies and offer guidance to states, then pushed the view that wearing a mask was a political statement against him not an attempt to keep people safe. More than 400,000 Americans are dead at least partly as a result.


Build that wall? No. Its time to rebuild it all.

Kanye West Says He Asked Donald Trump To Be His Running Mate At Mar

WASHINGTON Almost six in 10 Americans disapprove of former President Donald Trumps 2024 bid to return to the White House, though almost half think hes at least somewhat likely to become president again, according to a new poll.

The Quinnipiac University survey released Tuesday found that 57% of Americans thought the 76-year-old Trumps candidacy was a bad thing. Just 34% thought it was a good thing and 10% said they didnt know or had no opinion.

Respondents were slightly more sanguine about the 45th presidents prospects in 2024, however.

According to the poll, 18% of Americans said it was very likely Trump would win another election, with 31% saying it was somewhat likely and 23% saying it was not so likely. Just 25% said another Trump term in the White House was not likely at all.


An underwhelming welcome back to the political battlefield for Donald Trump comes with a mixed message, Quinnipiac polling analyst Tim Malloy said Tuesday. Nearly 60% of Americans say they do not want to see him back in the Oval Office, but nearly half of Americans think its likely.

More than half of Americans thought Trump has had a mainly negative impact on the Republican Party, though 70% of self-identified Republicans thought the former presidents impact was mostly positive.

Among self-described Republicans, DeSantis and Trump were tied at 44%, though DeSantis held a slight edge among registered GOP voters .

How Unique Were Trump And The Other Lowest

President Trump left office as perhaps the least popular president in modern history. According to Gallup data, just 41 percent of the public approved of the job he did on average during his tenure and Trump is the only president since Gallup began their survey in 1938 to never achieve a 50 percent approval rating.

Gallup polls are not unique Pew survey data shows that more than 50 percent of the public disapproved of the way Trump handled his job as president for his entire term. Trump also ranked last in a 2018 survey of presidency scholars within political science.


Worth considering is whether public and scholarly estimation of Trump will remain low, or rise over time as it has for many former presidents.

Experts have lots of thoughts on what makes for a good or even great president. These involve both ranking our former presidents as well as analyzing those rankings. According to research from Curt Nichols, being president during a time of crisis or war, being re-elected, and serving during robust economic times tend to be associated with higher rankings.

At least one political scientist has taken a different approach. Before he passed away in 2014, Tulane Universitys Thomas Langston analyzed the bad presidents: those consistently ranked as the worst in American history . As Langston noted, many presidents encounter failure but only a small number are judged by historians and political scientists to have been failures.

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Iowa Republicans Dump Trump For Desantis In Caucus Survey

Meanwhile, Trump shared results of an Emerson College poll Tuesday that found 55% of respondents would support him in a Republican primary compared to 25% for DeSantis.


For all RINOS, Never Trumpers, Radical Left Democrats and, of course, the Fake News Media, please enjoy this latest poll from highly respected Emerson College. Im sure you will be thrilled! he said in his post.

It was Trumps latest blast at fellow Republicans on his social media platform since a growing number of polls have shown dissatisfaction with the former president since the midterm elections on Nov. 8.

He took aim at DeSantis on Truth Social Nov. 10, arguing that shouldnt it be said that in 2020, I got 1.1 Million more votes in Florida than Ron D got this year, 5.7 Million to 4.6 Million? Just asking?

While the statement was technically true, about 3.3 million more Floridians cast ballots in 2020 than in 2022, a trend commonly seen in presidential elections. DeSantis also secured a greater percentage of the Florida vote in 2022 than Trump did in 2020, with the governor winning re-election by 19.4% compared to Trumps 3.3% victory over Biden in the Sunshine State two years before.

When He Appointed Ben Carson A Neurosurgeon Secretary Of Housing And Development

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During the 2015 race to become the Republican nominee, Ben Carson stood out.


Sadly it wasnt for his incisive political nous but instead because he kept saying really, really strange things.

It got to the point where people were surprised to discover the man had actually qualified and practised as a world-renowned neurosurgeon.

So when Trump was elected, it came as an unwelcome surprise to discover Carson was being put in charge of a vital department, as secretary of housing development, with absolutely zero experience in the area.

Since then, Carsons been accused of trying to destroy affordable housing during his four years in government.

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Friendship On The Rocks

These attitudes were also reflected in public opinion surveys.

The Pew Research Center found that the number of Canadians who favourably viewed the U.S. fell from 68 per cent in 2015 to 43 per cent in 2017, and then again to 39 per cent in 2018 the lowest percentage ever recorded.

In 2020, polls found that the number of Canadians who said they consider the U.S. a friend , when pollsters first began asking the question.

These shifts suggest that Trump really did change how Canadians regard the U.S. But he also changed how Canadians regard themselves.

I would argue that Trump led Canadians to be more receptive to progressive policy orientations if only as a means of distinguishing themselves from Trumps America.


Trump Rated One Of Worst Presidents In History On Par With Leader Who Died After A Month In Office

Former President Donald Trump has ended up among the bottom four in a ranking of Americas commanders in chief.

A number of historians were consulted for the C-SPAN list ranking everyone who has served in the top spot for the last 232 years since George Washington took office in 1789. The list left out current President Joe Biden who is only six months into his term.

Mr Trump was ranked the lowest of all presidents who were in office during the last 150 years and the fourth worst overall. The list is the fourth iteration of the rankings by C-SPAN and is based on judgements by 142 historians and professional observers.

Mr Trump is considered the worst president since just after the Civil War, according to the group. But he still continues to hold a vice-like grip on the Republican Party and would be the overwhelming favourite if he chooses to enter the race for the 2024 GOP nomination.

At the other end of the list, Barack Obama jumped two spots in the rankings, going from 12th best to 10th. Ronald Reagan snagged the number nine spot, Bill Clinton came in at 19, George HW Bush at 21, and George W Bush at 29.


The only president forced to resign because of a scandal, Richard Nixon, was ranked 31st.

Mr Trump is the first president to have been impeached twice by the House for conditioning military aid on political favours from Ukraine, and then for inciting the mob of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on 6 January. He was acquitted both times by the US Senate.

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When He Retweeted Anti

Trumps busy fingers on social media often display that he doesn’t really think or check things before he shares them on his official account, which is a worrying thing to consider when you are talking about the US president.


Perhaps the most disturbing thing that Trump has ever shared on his timeline was a series of Islamophobic tweets from the deputy leader of the far-right group Britain First back in November 2017.

Trump did later apologise for sharing the tweets, telling Piers Morgan in a television interview that he knew nothing of the group beforehand, adding:

If you are telling me they’re horrible people, horrible, racist people, I would certainly apologise if you’d like me to do that.

Press: Four Years Of Trump Is Worse Than We Thought

Kinzinger: Trump was the ‘worst president America has ever had’

Looking back at it now, the most surprising thing about the Donald Trump presidency is that we survived it at all: the lies, the chaos, the ignorance, ugliness, recklessness and lawlessness. On many levels, it was unlike any other presidency in our history, Republican or Democrat.

Presidential historians generally rank Warren G. Harding, Ulysses S. Grant, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Zachary Taylor and Andrew Johnson as the worst six presidents in American history. Its time to revise the list. Donald Trump makes them look like statesmen.

Its all spelled out in The Divider, a compelling new account of Trumps four years in the White House by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser. In a sense, their book is a compilation of their great reporting by Baker at The New York Times and Glasser at The New Yorker on COVID-19, the Robert Mueller investigation, and both impeachment trials. But its more than that. Now that its over, pulling it all together, their account of the entirety of the Trump presidency is mind-blowing. How did we stoop so low? How did we escape?

Baker and Glasser dont hold back. They establish the theme of the book in their very first sentence: Donald Trumps refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 election, and the insurrection at the Capitol he summoned to overturn his loss, were no violent outliers but the inexorable culmination of a sustained four-year war on the institutions and traditions of American democracy.

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Lafayette Square Protester Removal And Photo Op

On June 1, 2020, federal law enforcement officials used batons, rubber bullets, pepper spray projectiles, stun grenades, and smoke to remove a largely peaceful crowd of protesters from Lafayette Square, outside the White House. Trump then walked to St. John’s Episcopal Church, where protesters had set a small fire the night before he posed for photographs holding a Bible, with senior administration officials later joining him in photos. Trump said on June 3 that the protesters were cleared because “they tried to burn down the church and almost succeeded”, describing the church as “badly hurt”.

Religious leaders condemned the treatment of protesters and the photo opportunity itself. Many retired military leaders and defense officials condemned Trump’s proposal to use the U.S. military against anti-police brutality protesters.The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General , later apologized for accompanying Trump on the walk and thereby “creat the perception of the military involved in domestic politics”.

The Trump Problem For Conservatives

Consider that nearly all attempts by conservative politicians to brand themselves as the Canadian Trump between 2016 and 2020 led to failure.

Not long after announcing he was seeking the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, business mogul Kevin OLearys campaign was dead in the water in part owing to the obvious similarities between him and Trump.

In 2018, the leader of the Parti Québécois at the time, Jean-François Lisée, channelled his inner Trump by floating the idea of building a fence at a Québec-U.S. border point to prevent asylum-seekers from crossing.

Lisées party was rewarded with a pitiful fourth-place finish in the 2018 Québec general election, forcing him to resign as party leader.

These examples show that being seen as Trump-like in Canada became a death sentence happily exploited by more progressive parties.

The Trump card was so potent that when Andrew Scheers replacement, Erin OToole, took over the party in 2020, he made a point of emphasizing that he was not a Canadian version of Trump.

OTooles starkest departure from Scheer, his predecessor, revolved around social issues. Scheer identified as a pro-life social conservative whereas OToole publicly identified as socially progressive. And these words werent just rhetoric.

Finally, consider the dramatic differences between the Canadian and American response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

And in all cases, the Trump effect was at play.

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Incited A Violent Attack On The Capitol Building That Left Five People Dead

In perhaps the darkest day, in not just Trump’s presidency but in the history of the United States, thousands of armed Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in a violent attempt at a coup to stop Biden from being certified as the next president by the Senate.

The mob smashed through windows and doors and managed to make their way into the chamber as well as elected officials’ offices, all while Senators and others were locked away for their own personal safety.

The riot led to the deaths of five people including one police officer and came just hours after Trump had held a ‘Save America March’ outside of the White House where he had encouraged the crowd to march down Pennsylvania Avenue and make their presence known. Trump failed to immediately act to stop the riot and eventually tried to distance himself from any blame. The aftermath saw members of Congress call for Trump to be immediately impeached, whereas on social media, Trump’s Twitter account was permanently suspended and he was locked out of many other platforms to prevent any further incitements of violence. For all of the scandals that has dogged Trump’s presidency the image of his rabid supporters draping Trump flags over the steps of the Capitol, intimidating the press and overall posing a threat to democracy will be the enduring legacy of his presidency. The hearings opening up information of that day are only just starting

Redirecting Middle East Diplomacy

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Donald Trump was far less interested in a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a struggle that has outlasted every postwar president and far more in a 22-state outcome, normalizing Israels relations with the Arab world, especially Persian Gulf countries. Building on ties between Israel and key gulf states that had been developing for two decades, and propelled by a common interest in restraining Irans regional ambitions, the Trump administration invested heavily in cultivating close personal relationships with leaders of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It approved weapons sales to those nations, exerted maximum pressure on Tehran and served as a facilitator between gulf Arab nations and Israel.

The costs of such an approach were clear. The Israeli-Palestinian issue wasnt so much ignored as it was undermined by a Trump peace plan comically biased in favor of Israel, leaving it dead on arrival. Meanwhile, Trumps catering to Saudi Arabia allowed its reckless and ruthless crown prince to pursue a disastrous war in Yemen and repression at home with tacit American support. Washington also recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara region in a questionable quid pro quo that helped spur Morocco to begin establishing diplomatic ties with Israel.

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Pick The Least Wrong Answer

Biden also faces a completely impossible task in front of him with Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia hellbent on destroying any aid that could come his constituents’ way, as well as Republican Party elements who still refer to last year’s mob of domestic terrorists as “tourists.”

I was wrong:I assumed we could trust the government and each other during the pandemic.

I am not arguing to drop calls for student loan forgiveness, or paid leave, though. As a socialist Democrat, my policy priorities have not changed. Nevertheless, putting Biden into historical context, I’d like to remind progressives that while he might not be our favorite, he isn’t the worst. We just had that.

It’s an underwhelming argument, I admit. But it’s also a practical one that reminds me of the wisdom contained in many of my law school exam instructions, “All of the answers are wrong. Pick the least wrong answer.”

Sometimes that is the best you can hope for: the least wrong. And right now folks, that’s Joe Biden.

Carli Pierson is an attorney, former professor of human rights, writer and member of USA TODAY’s Editorial Board. You can follow her on Twitter: @CarliPiersonEsq

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