Writer Randy Weir, who describes himself as a devout Christian and conservative, used the social question-and-answer website Quora to challenge the notion that the Trump presidency was anything other than a complete dumpster fire.
Quora’s question was “How was Donald Trump bad as a president? Can’t we just forget about his flaws and acknowledge the good things he did?”
His response:
“He literally did no good things. At least not anything significant.
He immediately started a trade war that actually increased our trade deficit. By the end of 2018, almost 2,000 US manufacturing plants had closed because of his tariffs, resulting in 300,000 job losses, and American farmers went bankrupt as Russia supplanted the US as the chief importer of soy into China.
It took him eleven months to get his own party to pass his tax bill. And in the two years that followed, stock market growth and the decline in unemployment both slowed by about two thirds.
At the end of 2018, he shut down the government for the longest period of time in history because his own party wouldn’t fund the border wall he promised Mexico would pay for.
In 2019, the Fed lowered interest rates for the first time since Bush was President to combat the slowing economy, and Trump himself complained that they didn’t commit to do more to prevent a recession.
He spent 23 of the first 69 days of 2020 on vacation, during which time the Trump recession began, all the while repeatedly insisting that Covid was nothing to worry about—before declaring it a national crisis on day 70. Two weeks after he tweeted, “Stock Market starting to look very good to me!“, we saw the largest single day point drop in the history of the Dow followed by the most new jobless claims in history.
During the height of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, he literally was most concerned that gas prices were too low and that oil companies weren’t making enough money, so he forced OPEC into a two-year deal to slash production by 25% to create a global oil shortage and drive up high prices which are still rising today.
He also increased the annual budget deficit every year he was in office, something not even GW Bush accomplished, adding more to the national debt in one term than GW Bush and GHW Bush in twelve years combined, adding more in one year than Reagan added in two full terms, and becoming the first President in history to maintain a debt to GDP ratio over 100% for his entire term.
And that’s just the financial mess he created. He also set a record for indictments, guilty pleas and criminal convictions of members of an administration, eclipsing Nixon’s six-year record in less than three. He became the first President in history to be impeached twice, and the first to have Senators from his own party vote for his conviction—which happened both times. A special counsel testified that Trump encouraged Russian interference in the 2016 election and committed obstruction of justice by ordering his staff to falsify records relevant to an ongoing investigation to cover his actions. He repeatedly and publicly violated the emoluments clause and the Hatch Act. And he illegally withdrew troops from Afghanistan five days before leaving office in knowing violation of the National Defense Authorization Act.
Moving on from his crimes, he was and is an absolute idiot. He asked about nuking Hurricanes. He suggested destroying Notre Dame with tons of water to put out a fire. He suggested combating California wildfires by raking the forests. He forgot what country he bombed. He tweeted a classified photo. He misspelled a three-letter word on a device with spellcheck. He gave a speech about George Washington taking British airports at 19th century forts during the Revolutionary War under a flag that didn’t exist yet. He gave a speech on space where he had great lines like, “At some point in the future, we’re going to look back and say how did we do it without space?” And, “This is infinity here. It could be infinity. We don’t really don’t know. But it could be. It has to be something — but it could be infinity, right?” And he suggested people treat a virus by taking an anti-parasitic and by taking horse dewormer, and wondered aloud if we could just clean out the lungs of Covid patients with surface disinfectant and sunlight. He also painted himself orange and called himself a stable genius for passing a test he insisted on taking to see if he had a brain injury.
Moving on from his stupidity, he’s an objectively horrible person. He boasted that he was a repeat sex offender and a pedophile. He encouraged violence at his rallies, even stating, “You know, part of the problem…is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore, right? …And honestly, protesters, they realize it. They realize that there are no consequences to protesting anymore.” He repeatedly refused to denounce white supremacist groups, and attacked our own leaders on social media with childish name-calling. His entire candidacy was launched by him making racist personal attacks against President Obama, and his entire “build the wall” nonsense was birthed out of his handlers wanting to find a way to remind him to attack immigrants at every rally. He created a humanitarian crisis at the border by misusing existing laws designed to protect children in order to torture children in hopes of deterring refugees from legally seeking asylum in the US. And as soon as he left office, his own party voted almost unanimously to pass legislation to address the rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans caused by his racist “China virus” rhetoric.
Now, should we talk about his legitimization of the North Korean dictatorship, his secret meetings with Putin, and how he sided with hostile dictators against our own intelligence agencies? Or what about how he deliberately sabotaged our operations in Afghanistan by inviting the Taliban to Camp David on the anniversary of 9/11, undermining the legitimate Afghan government by meeting with the Taliban in private, by freeing 5,000 Taliban terrorists, by promising to abandon the country to the Taliban about 100 days after he knew he’d be out of office, and by his aforementioned illegal removal of American troops on his way out the door?
And now almost 18 months after he left office, we’re still dealing with his mistakes. His four year war on imports, his bungling of the pandemic, and his OPEC deal are the primary reasons behind high inflation and high gas prices. Another major factor, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, was set up by his weakening of NATO, his illegal withholding of Congressionally authorized aid to Ukraine, and his strengthening of Russia.
And sadly I know I’m leaving out some major things under each and every one of those topics.
If you didn’t notice he was a terrible President, what were you doing for four years?”
Quora is a social question-and-answer website. Users can collaborate by editing questions and commenting on answers that have been submitted by other users. As of 2020, the website was visited by 300 million users a month.
Source: Quora
