Even for a Trump supporter, the fact that he’s fulfilled so few of his campaign promises or agenda (or seems likely to) even when his party controls both houses of Congress should indicate failure. (Of course, IMO he’d be even worse if he did fulfill his agenda.)
Above all else, Trump has damaged and lessened the standing of the US in the world. With Trump as President, the US is seen as unreliable and a weak ally. Germany, of all countries, has taken on the role of “Leader of the Free World.” Our leadership is seen as a joke, to the dismay of our friends and the delight of our enemies.
I strongly disagree. This dismissal of not following certain “Presidential norms” as not objectively problematic misses pretty much the entire point of having a president; he is the acknowledged both head of state and head of government who not only holds broad executive authority but is also looked upon by both the domestic population and the world at large as a sign of how the world’s leading military and industrial power is going to respond to crisis and conflict. His (or her) words have the weight of the faith and credit of the United States behind them, and by themselves have the potential to quell or inflame wars, lift or depress economies, strengthen or weaken alliances, and generally guide the rest of the world on a course they will follow for years or decades.
However you felt about the politics of Barack Obama, he respected the authority and power of the office and measured his words carefully. And as much of a clown as George W. Bush was, and the embarrassment of Bill Clinton being caught up fucking around with an intern or being accused of sexual harassment by multiple women both before and during his terms, both generally managed to rise up to at least the appearance of normality and assert authority when necessary. Reagan, at least in his first term, clearly understood the power of the office even if he used his podium in ways that people did not like, e.g. calling out the Soviet Union as the “Evil Empire”.
But Trump just can’t stop himself from embarrassing not only himself but the entire nation on an almost daily basis to the point that it is just exhausting to listen to comedians mock him for whatever baseless nonsense he twittered out during his morning shit-and-watch-Fox-&-Friends. He has alienated the closest economic and military allies that past administrations of either party have collectively spent decades cultivating, and caused all but his most stalwart supporters to essentially discount anything he says as being even approximately truthful. He has undermined confidence not only in himself but the government at large by staffing the executive branch with incompetents and pilferists (when he bothers to staff positions at all) and undermining the very party he ostensibly represents in Congress such that they struggle to advance their agenda despite having majorities in both houses. The people who like to avoid taking any action with government because “they’re all crooks!” are now pretty much completely correct in their view from the top down.
Donald J. Trump is objectively a bad president, and he is bad because he does not understand why “Presidential norms” are important to the preservation of American authority and leadership, both domestically and internationally. He had never had to lead anything beyond sitting at a desk and begging creditors to give him more money to cover his oft-failed business ventures and license out his name for easy cash, and he has never had to know sacrifice, hardship, compassion, or empathy. He has surrounded himself with people who tell him how great he is, and gets petulantly angry when someone makes the most adventitious insult about him; humorously, missing the point that being called a “short-fingered vulgarian” is far more about his intellect than his glove size.
Donald Trump is not fit clean toilets, much less make decisions that influence the lives of billions of people. Anyone for whom that is not evident is being deliberately and irresponsibly obtuse.
The stereotype in fiction of a person in high office being an incompetent buffoon has often bugged me. As an example, consider Mel Brooks’ character in Blazing Saddles. I figured no one that incompetent could ever be elected.
I’m going to do as you asked and I’m going to add another limitation - I’m going to try to avoid injecting too much opinion into the matter. I’m going to try to answer with specific examples of where he promised one thing and has either failed or done the exact opposite.
Let’s start with tax reform. This has been his one meaningful legislative success. Among his campaign tax promises were: Cutting the number of tax brackets and simplifying the tax code, expanding child care tax credits, repealing the AMT, cutting taxes for the middle class, and eliminating the carried interest loophole. He did none of these things other than a temporary tax cut for most of the middle class. Because of changes to index adjustments, those benefits go away in a few years. The tax cuts for corporations, however, are permanent. After the campaign, he promised that taxes on the wealthy would go up. Instead they went down dramatically. The result is $1.5 trillion dollars in additional deficit spending.
He promised to invest $500 billion in infrastructure. During his presidency, that amount grew to $1 Trillion and then to $1.5 trillion. Even though Democrats also want an infrastructure bill, he has achieved nothing.
He promised to make no cuts to Social Security. His new budget would cut $72 billion from Social Security Disability Insurance.
He promised not to cut Medicaid. He now wants to “reform” Medicaid by giving states block grants, which would reduce the federal government’s commitment to the program and both allow and force states to make cuts in the future.
He promised to defund Planned Parenthood. He has failed. The way they intend to do it is unconstitutional. The constitutional way to do it is to eliminate public health programs millions rely on so that Planned Parenthood can’t get paid under them but at the same time, effectively gut public health care in the country altogether.
He promised to eliminate the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare” if you must) and replace it with something wonderful that would protect people with pre-existing conditions. He failed, but instead he has taken costly, short-sighted steps that actually make it more expensive for the government to fulfill its obligations under the act while reducing the number of people insured. These steps included:
threatening to terminate cost sharing reduction payments and finally following through. These payments helped to make insurance rates predictable. As a result of uncertainty, insurers just raised rates crazy amounts. Since the government subsidizes insurance for the poorest, the increased insurance payments actually cost more than the the cost sharing reduction payments would have. The poorest continue to get subsidized insurance but those with lower subsidies or no subsidies at all just get higher premiums. Because less-subsidized Americans tend to be healthier, when they disappear from the insurance market, the premiums on everyone else must rise accordingly. This is the death spiral people have talked about. He causing it.
*He also reduced outreach and advertising to recruit new enrollees. This used to attract mostly younger healthier members, so once again, this is a healthcare two-fer. It reduces the number of people who have health insurance while increasing rates for the people who remain insured.
He has promised not to enforce the individual mandate allowing the healthiest people to bet that they won’t get sick and not have to pay a penalty. This means less money from the penalty for health insurance, fewer people covered, and higher rates as the healthiest people abandon the insurance market.
He promised that Mexico would pay for his big beautiful wall. Never going to happen, but instead, he is proposing spending billions of American dollars on a destructive monument to his ego.
He guaranteed six weeks of paid maternity leave to mothers. Nope.
He promised to deal with the opioid crisis. He has done nothing other than nominating a completely unqualified person as the opioid czar (Kellyanne Conway) and given her a 24-year-old deputy with no discernible skills or experience.
He promised to renegotiate the Iran deal. To what end, I have no idea, but he hasn’t decertified it or renegotiated it.
He promised to support law enforcement officers. Instead, he has undermined the FBI repeatedly because it is has convicted people close to him of crimes and is (deservedly) going after many other illegalities.
He promised to deport all the illegal aliens, but do it humanely without separating families. Instead, he has basically kept the deportation rate the same but essentially prioritized everyone so we are deporting college students who came here children, people with misdemeanor convictions from years ago, and, in some cases, victims of domestic violence who are serving as witnesses against their abusers. He is going after these people because they are easy to snag, not because they are a threat.
He promised to end “chain immigration.” His wife, who was an illegal immigrant, used chain migration to allow her own parents to settle here.
He promised to expand mental health care. This could help deal with the opioid crisis an perhaps even reduce mass shootings. He has done nothing. His health and Medicaid proposals would make the problems worse.
I literally don’t have enough time to go through all the actions that are not merely broken promises but are instead intentional actions that directly contravene what he promised. He is a bad president for all Americans. He is only marginally less horrible for the people who voted for him than those who didn’t.
Other way around. If there’s nothing nefarious in there, then the reason to reveal them is to show that there’s nothing nefarious in there. But it’s moot anyway, because we know that his finances are nefarious: He hires contractors and doesn’t pay them. He channeled his money through a “nonprofit” that didn’t exist. We just don’t know exactly how nefarious they are.
Well, we know roughly how neferious they are. ‘Exactly’ would imply a transparency on his personal finances and of the Trump Organization that has not been provided by Trump or his family as has been done by every president in living memory. Dick Nixon may have done some unscrupulous shifting of campaign funds, but he has nothing on the amount of perfidy that Trump has gotten up to with Trump University and his other questionable enterprises, notwithstanding any money laundering or other adverse connections to Russian financiers.
The die-hard Trumpets wanted a white male, authoritarian, patriarchal, and rich, in that general order of importance. Everything else aside, that’s why they voted for him, and I’d wager that he truly is all of those things to the core*.
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*With the possible exception of “rich.” But they didn’t balk at his refusal to release his taxes, so I concluded we can safely put that last in order of importance.
We (that is, many of you, but not me) voted for a fictional Donald trump over an equally fictional Hillary Clinton. We got the real Donald trump instead of the real Hillary Clinton.
Really? Are you sure that isn’t because - as it notes at the bottom of the article - America is so divided? A divided country is seen as weak - just look at the UK vis-a-vis Brexit.