From Newsgroup: alt.home.repair
Trump's response to a deadly neo-Nazi rally in
Charlottesville, Virginia, was one of the most controversial
moments in his presidency.
It was emblematic of Trump's struggle to bring the country
together after tragedies, and more generally. His response
also typified his controversial record on race relations and
white supremacy.
Trump blamed "many sides" for the violence at the rally,
which resulted in the death of a counterprotester, Heather
Heyer. He later said there were "very fine people on both
sides."
The former president was excoriated by Republicans and
Democrats alike over his response and his failure to offer a
swift and forceful condemnation of white-supremacist
violence.
GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, often one of
Trump's fiercest defenders in Congress, at the time said the
former president's words were "dividing Americans, not
healing them."
"President Trump took a step backward by again suggesting
there is moral equivalency between the white supremacist,
neo-Nazis and KKK members," Graham added.
In the wake of the brutal death of George Floyd at the hands
of Minneapolis police and the nationwide protests that
followed, Trump also failed to rise to the occasion. He's
done far more to divide the country than bring it together.
The former president had peaceful protesters tear-gassed
near the White House so he could pose for a photo with a
Bible at a nearby church. He's consistently demonized anti-
racism demonstrators, and controversially sent federal
agents into US cities to squash unrest and intimidate the
local population. Trump has elevated conspiracy theorists
and people who've threatened protesters with guns.
Historians have warned that Trump's tactics mirror those of
authoritarian regimes.
Trump has frequently employed racist rhetoric during his
presidency, but especially during times of heightened racial
tensions.
Polling has shown that the vast majority of Black Americans
view Trump as racist, and his approval rating with this
demographic stood at 14% in late 2020, according to Gallup.
Failure: America's global image is in shambles
Trump NATO SS
Reuters
America's global image declined significantly under Trump,
who repeatedly insulted key US allies while cozying up to
dictators.
The former president's tendency to push important allies
away and isolate the US, including by pulling out of
landmark international agreements like the Paris climate
accord, had a palpable impact.
People across the world expressed negative views on Trump.
Pew Research Center in January 2020 released a survey of 32
countries that showed a median of 64% said they do not have
confidence in Trump to do the right thing in world affairs,
and just 29% expressed confidence in the president.
Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic also left the
US embarrassed on the world stage, and created a void in
global leadership that China has rushed to fill.
Failure: Family separations and the deaths of migrant
children
Homestead Florida
John Haltiwanger/INSIDER
Trump in 2016 campaigned on reducing undocumented
immigration, pledging to take a hardline approach.
He made good on that promise when coming into office, but
was accused of human-rights abuses and violating
international law by the UN.
The Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy on
illegal border crossings led to the separations of at least
5,500 families and saw children placed in cages.
The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics at the
time described the practice as "nothing less than
government-sanctioned child abuse."
After widespread backlash, Trump issued an executive order
in June 2018 to halt the family separations, and a federal
judge ordered the Trump administration to reunite all those
it had separated. But the fallout from the separations is
ongoing.
Trump falsely blamed his predecessor, former President
Barack Obama, for the policy that saw thousands of children
separated from their parents.
At least six migrant children died in US custody, leading to
widespread condemnation of conditions in detention
facilities.
The UN human-rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, in July 2019
said she was "shocked" by the US government's treatment of
migrant children and the conditions they faced in detention
facilities after crossing the border from Mexico.
"As a pediatrician, but also as a mother and a former head
of state, I am deeply shocked that children are forced to
sleep on the floor in overcrowded facilities, without access
to adequate healthcare or food, and with poor sanitation
conditions," Bachelet, the former president of Chile,
stated.
Failure: Iran, Syria, and Afghanistan
trump rouhani iran 4x3 trump
Michael Gruber/Getty Images; Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty
Images; Samantha Lee/Business Insider
Trump's decision to unilaterally withdraw the US from the
2015 nuclear deal in May 2018 has induced chaos throughout
the Middle East.
It remains one of Trump's most unpopular decisions in the
global arena, and has been condemned by top US allies who
were also signatories to the deal.
The former president failed to thwart Iran's aggressive
behavior in the region through a maximum pressure campaign,
meant to squeeze Tehran into negotiating a more stringent
version of the pact.
After a series of incidents in the Persian Gulf region in
2019, tensions between Washington and Tehran reached
historic heights and sparked fears of war. These fears were
exacerbated after Trump ordered a strike that killed Iran's
top general, Qassem Soleimani, in early January 2020. The
strike led Iran to retaliate and fire on US troops in the
region, and dozens were seriously injured.
Iran also abandoned the 2015 nuclear deal, which was
designed to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Trump's decision to pull US troops out of northern Syria in
October 2019 was also among his most disastrous foreign
policy moves. In doing so, Trump effectively abandoned US-
allied Kurdish forces who bore the brunt of the US-led
campaign against ISIS to a Turkish military invasion.
The withdrawal induced a humanitarian crisis and created a
security vacuum that Russia, Iran, and Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad, an accused war criminal, all benefited
from.
Trump repeatedly pledged to end "endless wars," zeroing in
on Afghanistan. He wanted to remove all US troops from
Afghanistan by the November election, but that didn't
happen.
Meanwhile, The New York Times in June 2020 reported that US
intelligence officials determined Russia paid bounties to
Taliban-linked Afghan militants to kill US troops.
The Trump administration didn't take any known responses.
Though the White House claimed Trump was not initially
briefed on the matter, reporting from multiple outlets
suggests otherwise. Trump in a July 2020 interview said he
had not confronted Russian President Vladimir Putin on the
matter.
Failure: Replacing the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare)
John McCain
Screenshot/CNN
The late GOP Sen. John McCain's iconic "thumbs-down" vote
denied Trump a full congressional repeal (even a "skinny
repeal") of former President Barack Obama's signature
healthcare law.
But Trump did have success in dismantling parts of the law.
His tax bill included a rollback of the tax penalty for
those who did not enroll in healthcare.
Trump never offered a replacement for the Affordable Care
Act. As a candidate Trump promised "insurance for
everybody" and a more immediate replacement to the nearly
decade-old ACA. But he didn't deliver on that as president.
Failure: Impeachment
In this Dec. 18, 2019, photo, President Donald Trump speaks
at a campaign rally in Battle Creek, Mich. Using stark oUs
versus Themo language, Trump and his campaign are trying to
frame impeachment not as judgment on his conduct but as a
culture war referendum on him and his supporters, aiming to
motivate his base heading into an election year (AP
Photo/Paul Sancya)
Associated Press
Trump was impeached in the House of Representatives on
December 18, 2019.
The House approved two articles of impeachment against
Trump, one for abuse of power over his dealings with Ukraine
and one for obstruction of Congress over his efforts to
stonewall the impeachment inquiry.
Trump urged Ukraine to launch investigations into his
political rivals as he simultaneously withheld about $400
million in congressionally approved military aid from the
country, which is fighting an ongoing war against pro-
Russian separatists.
The former president was acquitted in a Senate trial, but
will still go down as just the third president in US history
to be impeached. GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah also made
history by voting to convict Trump, marking the first time
ever that a senator voted to convict a president from their
own party.
On January 6, 2021, Trump provoked an attempted coup at the
US Capitol in relation to his baseless claims of mass voter
fraud and refusal to concede to Biden. Five people were
killed.
Trump was impeached by the House for inciting a violent
insurrection over the Capitol riot. He's the only president
in US history to be impeached twice.
Failure: COVID-19 pandemic
Trump, Dr. Fauci, Birx briefing masks mask
Jabin Botsford/Getty Images
Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic will likely go
down as one of the biggest disasters in US history. Hundreds
of thousands of Americans have died, and millions are
unemployed.
On the day Trump left office, there had been more than 24.3
million confirmed COVID-19 cases in the US and over 405,000
reported fatalities. The US has the worst coronavirus
outbreak in the world. As of January 20, the US COVID-19
death toll was on the verge of surpassing the total number
of American service members killed during World War II.
Despite this, Trump repeatedly downplayed the threat of the
virus and contradicted top public-health experts, flouting
recommendations from advisors on his own White House
coronavirus task force.
In March 2020, Trump privately admitted to veteran reporter
Bob Woodward (on tape) that he was deliberately misleading
the public on the dangers of the virus in an effort to avoid
inducing panic.
Public health experts have cited Trump's nonchalant approach
to the virus and tendency to reject science as one of the
primary factors in why the US emerged as the epicenter.
Trump refused to accept responsibility for his failed
response to the pandemic, blaming China instead.
Failure: The US economy
Trump
Tom Brenner/Reuters
Trump often took credit for the robust US economy before the
pandemic, ignoring that much of the growth began during the
Obama administration.
The US faced one of the worst economic crises in its history
under Trump, which was intrinsically linked to his
disastrous response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Coronavirus lockdowns in early 2020 and reduced consumer
spending led to tens of millions of job losses as whole
segments of the economy sputtered. The economy has since
begun adding back jobs, but is far from a full recovery as
the US struggles to contain the coronavirus and Biden takes
over.
Roughly 22 million jobs were lost from February to April.
Though nearly half of those jobs have been recovered, the
unemployment rate is still at 7.9% (estimated to be about 12
million people). The pre-pandemic unemployment rate was
3.4%.
As Trump left office, the US national debt was at the
highest levels since World War II. And US economic growth
was set to average just above 0% for Trump's first term
because of the pandemic recession, according to The
Washington Post.
Though the economy is still far from recovered, Trump also
failed to bring Congress together to pass a second
coronavirus stimulus package prior to Election Day as
Americans across the country struggled to cover rent and
other bills. The GOP-controlled Senate instead prioritized
confirming Trump's Supreme Court nominee, essentially
placing the economy and the livelihoods of Americans on the
back-burner.
As of Election Day 2020, Trump had not signed a coronavirus
relief bill in roughly half a year. He finally signed a $900
billion relief package shortly after Christmas in late 2020.
Failure: Contracting COVID-19
trump walter reed
ALEX EDELMAN/AFP via Getty Images
As the president of the US, Trump is the most heavily
protected person on the planet. The fact he contracted
COVID-19 in October 2020 stood as a catastrophic failure and
a national-security crisis for the US.
The president routinely flouted public health
recommendations before getting infected. Less than a week
before he was diagnosed, Trump mocked then-presidential
candidate Joe Biden for routinely wearing a mask in public.
Top public health experts have repeatedly urged Americans to
wear a mask or face covering, touting the practice as the
best tool available in fighting the virus.
Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19 just days after
essentially holding a super-spreader event in the Rose
Garden at the White House to announce his Supreme Court
nominee. Attendees did not socially distance, and many were
seen without masks.
Well over a dozen people in Trump's orbit tested positive
for COVID-19 after the event.
Failure: Damaging democracy
trump wind
President Donald Trump. Getty
Trump eroded democratic norms in many ways during his
tenure.
He repeatedly attacked the media, leading UN experts to warn
that Trump's rhetoric raised the risk of violence against
journalists. He threatened to deploy combat troops to
American cities, over the objections of their elected
leaders, and ordered illegal actions like demanding poll
workers stop counting ballots.
Trump's relentless dissemination of disinformation on an
array of topics, particularly the electoral process, led
historians and experts on fascism to compare him to
dictators like Benito Mussolini.
Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), a project that monitors the
health of democracy across the world, in its 2020 report
said the US has become more autocratic in the Trump era.
"The United States u former vanguard of liberal democracy u
has lost its way," V-Dem's 2020 report said, adding that the
US "is the only country in Western Europe and North America
suffering from substantial autocratization."
The former president's rhetoric was often viewed as a source
of encouragement by far-right extremist groups, and Trump
frequently equivocated when asked to condemn such people.
Though President Joe Biden was the clear winner of the 2020
election, Trump refused to concede. Trump rejected the
results and made baseless allegations of fraud.
Even as world leaders began to congratulate Biden, a major
sign of Biden's legitimacy, Trump continued to deny reality.
After weeks of rejecting the election result and attempting
to overturn the outcome, the president provoked an attempted
coup at the US Capitol on the day lawmakers met to certify
Biden's Electoral College victory. He riled up his
supporters in an inflammatory speech, urging them to march
on the Capitol and "fight like hell." They listened.
The pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6
destroyed property and clashed with police. Five people were
killed in the process. Trump was subsequently impeached for
inciting the violent insurrection.
After the violence, Trump released a video acknowledging
that a new administration would take over, but he did not
explicitly concede.
Trump's refusal to concede breaks from a democratic
tradition in the US that dates back to its earliest days
when President John Adams lost the 1800 election and
peacefully stepped aside for Thomas Jefferson, a member of
another political party, to take over.
The former president undermined the political system in the
US and sowed doubt about the integrity of the country's
elections. Every president prior to Trump allowed for a
peaceful transition of power after they'd served two terms
or lost an election.
Trump also skipped Biden's inauguration. He's the first
outgoing president since 1869 to refuse to attend the
inauguration of his successor.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-biggest- accomplishments-and-failures-heading-into-2020-2019-12 #failure-damaging-democracy-15
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