DONALD TRUMP, A RETROSPECTIVE: A LOOK BACK AT THE 1,462 WORST DAYS IN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORY
Let us never forget all the ways, big and small, that Trump was the worst president ever.
BY BESS LEVIN
JANUARY 20, 2021
U.S. President Donald Trump left speaks to members of the media next to U.S. First Lady Melania Trump before boarding...
BY AL DRAGO/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES.
By Wednesday afternoon, January 20, 2021, Donald Trump will be 992 miles from the White House, ensconced at his Palm Beach resort where his neighbors hate his guts. Joe Biden will have taken the oath of office and Americans will no longer have to worry about the possibility that the president of the United States is a crook, or trying to get them killed, or a friend of neo-Nazis, or an ugly racist, or paying off porn stars, or putting his idiot children in charge of national emergencies, or hiring a dog breeder to head up a coronavirus task force. Oh, did you forget about that last one? Or about the time the Trump administration threatened to economically cripple Ecuador for promoting breastfeeding? Or when Trump went on an unhinged rant in front of 35,000 children? Or when he hired an acting Attorney General who worked for a company that marketed “masculine toilets”? It’s understandable that, with all the impeachment and extortion and coronavirus and sedition, you might have forgotten. But as a reminder, and so grade school students hundreds of years from now are told, here’s a look back at the the worst president in American history, through the headlines.
Investors Panic as Trump Begins Doing All the Crazy Things He Said He’d Do
January 31, 2017
During the period between the 2016 election and the inauguration, Wall Street investors, a portion of whom were appropriately shocked and terrified by Donald Trump being elected, comforted themselves with the hope that the reality-TV show host probably wouldn’t end up doing all the crazy, racist shit he talked about on the campaign trail, and would merely stick to cutting their taxes and running the country like a businessman. Of course, that notion turned out to be horribly misplaced and extremely stupid. To prove it, Trump spent his first Monday in office claiming 3 to 5 million illegal ballots cost him the popular vote; his first Wednesday signing an executive order to start construction on the wall (and insisting Mexico would reimburse the U.S. for the cost); and for his big finish on Friday, banning travel from seven majority-Muslim nations. Turns out we were supposed to take him literally!
Trump’s Sons Insist “Papa Bear” Is Conflict-of-Interest Proof
February 13, 2017
Some people might have been uncomfortable with the sight of the president of the United States hosting the prime minister of another country at his for-profit Palm Beach resort, as Trump did the second weekend in February 2017, but the president’s big-boy adult sons were not among them. To The New York Times, Eric Trump dismissed the question of whether or not Trump charged Japan for Shinzo Abe to stay at Mar-a-Lago when the White House would’ve been free as meaningless, while an incensed Don Jr., practically shrieking, flew off the handle when asked about the prospect that his father was using the presidency to line the Trump family’s pockets. “Who in their right mind would try to enrich themselves by spending a fortune to run against 17 seasoned politicians on the Republican side, to then go up against the Clinton machine, Wall Street, Hollywood, P.C. culture?” Don Jr. asked. “To use that as the way to enrich yourself is laughable.” This would be several years before we learned Mar-a-Lago charged taxpayers for the glasses of water Trump drank while at the club.
Trump Was Set to Kill NAFTA Until an Adviser Showed Him a Map
April 28, 2017
He still ended up killing NAFTA, but he briefly kept it going after his Agriculture Secretary “brought along a prop to the Oval Office” displaying the parts of the country that would be hardest hit by the move and highlighting that many of them had voted for him in November. “It shows that I do have a very big farmer base, which is good,” Trump told The Washington Post. “They like Trump, but I like them, and I’m going to help them.” (He would end up f--king them in other ways.)
Trump Thinks He Invented a Phrase That’s Been Used Since 1932
May 11, 2017
It was on this day in history that we learned the 45th president claimed to have invented the phrase “prime the pump.”
Trump Drops the Mic on Train Wreck NATO Meeting by Calling Germans “Very Evil”
May 25, 2017
During his first big trip abroad, and his first NATO meeting, Trump shamelessly shoved Montenegro’s prime minister out of the way so he could be front and center for a group photo; accused fellow members of the alliance of not paying their bills; and proclaimed “The Germans are evil, very evil.” It is truly a wonder that when he lost his bid for reelection, other countries celebrated “like we defeated the mothership in Independence Day.”
Trump Tells Local Iowans Why He Prefers the Rich
June 22, 2017
During a campaign-style rally in Cedar Falls, Iowa, to discuss agriculture and vocational training for farmers, Trump decided to get frank about his decision to exclusively fill his Cabinet with cartoonishly rich robber baron-types. “Somebody said, ‘Why did you appoint a rich person to be in charge of the economy?’” he told the crowd. And he explained, “‘Because that’s the kind of thinking we want. I love all people. Rich or poor. But in those particular positions, I just don’t want a poor person. Does that make sense?‘”
His Presidency in Crisis, Trump Takes a Break to Play Fireman
July 17, 2017
Things were not going so well for Trump on this July day in 2017—questions surrounding his campaign’s attempt to team up with the Russian government during the 2016 election had reached a fever pitch—but there was one bright spot in his world: the White House’s “Made in America Week,” which gave the leader of the free world the opportunity to pretend to be a cowboy, a baseball player, and a fireman.
https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedNews/status/887094229717012482This experience came only second to the time he got to sit in a big rig and pretend to be a truck driver.
https://twitter.com/ABC/status/845242368882327553Trump Goes on Unhinged Rant in Front of Thousands of Children
July 25, 2017
In late July 2017, Trump treated tens of thousands of Boy Scouts to a 35-minute campaign rally-style screed that touched on everything from killing Obamacare to musing about firing a member of his Cabinet. He also hyped up the stock market and went on an extended aside about all the really hot parties he was invited to in the 1980s. He later claimed that the head of the Boy Scouts called him to say “it was the greatest speech that was ever made,” a call that a spokesperson for the group said never happened.
Trump Manages to Say Another Cringeworthy Thing About Charlottesville
September 14, 2017
Maybe you thought it couldn’t get much worse than refusing to condemn neo-Nazis and claiming there were “very fine people on both sides”—then Trump made up a story about “a lot of people” saying “Gee, Trump might have had a point.”
Trump Tells Puerto Ricans Their Hurricane Wasn’t “a Real Catastrophe Like Katrina”
October 3, 2017
After saying nothing about the humanitarian disaster wrought by Hurricane Maria for days, only to attack the mayor of San Juan via Twitter, the president made it down to Puerto Rico. There, he complained that the territory, which had been without electricity and water for days, was costing him a lot of money. Later, he said that Maria wasn’t a “real catastrophe like Katrina” and then tossed paper towels into the crowd like it was Friday night at Madison Square Garden and he was shooting T-shirts into the stands with an air cannon. The following September, he claimed the 3,000-person death count was a Democratic hoax to make him look bad.