Trump’s Dismal Performance as POTUS #45 — Part 4
If the state of our country under Biden has you thinking you will vote for Trump in 2024, maybe it’s time to RETHINK!
“In order to make America great and glorious again, I’m announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.” That was Trump’s declaration at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on November 15, 2022.
In his typical long, boorish, and self-serving ‘I’m running for President’ announcement, Trump claimed the country had slipped into anarchy under President Biden — a claim he continues to make — and argued he could repeat the policy successes of his first term.
As a part of his case for another term as President, the man-child falsely pointed to his keeping the U.S. out of foreign conflicts thanks to his bold approach to international relations, his reworked trade deals, and a strong economy before the onset of COVID-19.
Trump is a legend in his own mind. But in reality — on his best days — he is a babbling buffoon who does not know geopolitics, history, economics, business, ethics, or any other subject that someone in any position of authority should possess.
In short, Trump was the worst possible person that could have ever ascended to the Presidency of the United States.
And because of the danger of his becoming POTUS #47, we must not forget just how pitiful Trump was at doing his job during his 4-year stint in the White House as POTUS #45 from 2017 through 2020.
I get it that this stuff may put you to sleep as you read it. But these are bedrock issues that America must remain mindful of when selecting our next POTUS in 2024.
This is the fourth article in a series of articles intended to remind you of how horrible Trump was at his job. Click here to read part 3.
If you’re all caught up, let’s look back on…..
How President Trump Dealt with Crisis
During his Presidency, Trump was fundamentally dangerous as he was consistently disrespectful of the standards and principles of constitutional government, and he was poorly informed about policy.
Trump benefited from a benign economic situation in his first three years as President. And there were no real crises in America or abroad that might have severely impacted the typical American. We, therefore, had no idea how the pitifully flawed POTUS #45 would respond to any adversity until COVID-19.
Trump and the coronavirus pandemic
With the arrival of the coronavirus in America in early 2020, we learned about Trump’s skills in governing and dealing with crises.
From February 2020 through the end of his one term as President on January 19, 2021, 17 million coronavirus cases were reported in the U.S., and more than 400,000 Americans died — the highest number of any country.
That represented 23% of the world’s coronavirus cases and more than 19% of the world’s fatalities — even though the U.S. makes up only 4% of the global population.
And beginning in November 2020, the U.S. experienced its third surge of the coronavirus epidemiologists had predicted but that Trump insisted would not happen.
The third wave of Covid-19 was worsened by Trump’s refusal to encourage mask-wearing and social distancing — even as he contracted the virus himself. By many metrics, the U.S. was in a far worse situation in November 2020 than in the earliest phase of the pandemic in February.
On Thanksgiving 2020, Trump took credit for the vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer. In the Oval Office, Trump said, “The vaccines — and by the way, don’t let Joe Biden take credit for the vaccine. Don’t let him take credit for the vaccines because the vaccines were me.”
It’s important to understand that Trump had no role in creating the vaccines to fight Covid-19. A review of events shows that the vaccines were created by immigrants and immigrant-led companies — people whom Trump often vilified.
It’s true that on May 15, 2020, the Trump administration announced Operation Warp Speed to help with distributing the vaccines. The program is considered one of the few bright spots in the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. But it is woefully incorrect to declare that Trump should receive any credit whatsoever for creating the vaccines.
In the final week before Election Day in November 2020, Trump insisted that COVID was under control as he barnstormed around the country, attending rallies that were likely super-spreader events, insisting that the country was “rounding the corner.”
His actions in that final week were just the latest examples of Trump pretending the COVID crisis did not exist and failing to respond even when his experts asked and sometimes begged him to act. All part of a pattern that stretched back to January 2020, when Trump reportedly dismissed early warnings of COVID as “alarmist.”
On December 2, 2020, more than three thousand Americans died because of the coronavirus. That was the nation’s deadliest day up to that point in the pandemic.
That same day, as an example of his callous nonawareness of the pandemic, Trump chose to release, on social media, a 46-minute videotaped address from the White House. He called it “possibly the most important speech I’ve ever made.”
In the speech, the pandemic’s grim toll was never mentioned. What was mentioned? The “tremendous vote fraud and irregularities” in November’s election, the results of which Trump had still refused to accept. The speech was delivered to an empty room and released straight to Facebook for unclear reasons.
President Trump was absent from his duties and responsibilities throughout the coronavirus pandemic. He refused to treat the coronavirus as a real risk. By the end of his one-term Presidency, the country was in its third wave of infections.
Trump said the states should take charge — even though, traditionally, the federal government did that. And so, the burden of leadership fell on states and cities that were increasingly implementing more stringent measures to try to control the virus’s rapid spread in the last quarter of 2020.
Trump was just done with it — and his minions went along
As the coronavirus (COVID-19) was killing Americans at the rate of about one per minute in the fourth quarter of 2020, it became apparent that Trump was “just done with COVID,” as one of Trump’s closest advisers told The Washington Post. “I think he put it on a timetable, and he’s done with COVID … It just exceeded the amount of time he gave it.”
This is where Trump’s crippling psychological condition — his complete inability to face unpleasant facts, his toxic narcissism, and his utter lack of empathy — became lethal during the pandemic. Trump’s negligence turned what would have been a challenging autumn and winter into darkness.
Meanwhile, Trump’s naïve and gullible base continued to deny that the coronavirus was real and adored its President for feeling the same way. His base did not hold him responsible for the pandemic’s impact. Some of his followers chafed at urgings to wear masks, which became a cultural signifier in the red-versus-blue political wars, while others dismissed reports of sickness and death as “fake news.”
Trump’s First Impeachment in 2019
The first impeachment of Trump was initiated on December 18, 2019, when the House of Representatives approved articles of impeachment on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The Senate acquitted Trump of those charges on February 5, 2020.
Trump was the third U.S. president to be impeached by the House of Representatives, after Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998.
Before Trump, Johnson was the only President impeached in his first term. The House Judiciary Committee also voted to adopt three articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon. But he resigned before the full House vote.
The Senate voted to acquit both Johnson and Clinton in their trials. It should also be noted that Trump was the only impeached President in American history who ever tried to be re-elected.
Trump’s Second Impeachment in 2021
It took 200 years for America to rack up its first two presidential impeachments. Trump’s wrongdoing led the country down that path twice in just over one year.
In late January 2021, the House formally impeached Trump for inciting a riotous mob to attack the U.S. Capitol. Trump then had to rely on his Republican enablers to save him from impeachment for the second time in his Presidency.
The impeachment vote in the Senate was 43 not guilty to 57 guilty — short of the 67 guilty votes needed to convict Trump and prevent him from ever holding federal office a second time.
The first impeachment trial of Trump was about abuse of power and obstruction of Congress; the second was about the attempt to thwart the peaceful transfer of power after an election. The fact that these two impeachments happened is significant.
We must never ignore the actions of a President who violates the most fundamental acts required for a properly functioning American democracy. The failure of the Senate to impeach Trump for his actions sends a frightening message: Future presidents will face no accountability for inciting violence during and after an election.
And it set a dangerous new precedent for aspiring Republican presidential candidates who follow in Trump’s footsteps — including Trump himself as he runs for re-election in 2024.
