He’d have to have some redeeming qualities, first.
He has two actually:
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Doesn’t really give a shit about anything, so he’s not committed to messing things up. He seems to want the Presidency for bragging rights more than anything else.
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He will sign Democratic legislation, which would give him accomplishments even Democrats would love.
I’m predicting some militia klansman who promises to pardon anyone who commits murder against a liberal will be nominated in 2028. And we’ll say ‘maybe Trump wasn’t so bad’.
I’m thinking more like Joe McCarthy.
We’re rapidly heading there already, not to mention all the pro-Dumpster people.
There’s going to be a lot of “De mortuis nil nisi bonum” when the time comes.
If the economic ducks line up and the US manages to avoid wars and recessions during his term(s) then history will judge him as an ineffective curiosity.
Though he might be in a select group of Presidents who achieved above average results through a total inability to get any of their election stump agenda implemented.
I don’t think any president of this era will be remembered particularly fondly; not Bush, nor Obama, Trump, and whomever follows him. People, if there’s any still around, will wonder is why all these leaders didn’t try to mitigate global warming when they still had the chance. Maybe Trump will, deservedly, be the poster boy of climate change denialism, maybe not. I don’t think they’ll spend a lot of time debating the nuances of climate policies of current day leaders. They’ll all seem equally ineffectual by most.
Thing is, Bush II has done a lot to rehabilitate his image, or at least done nothing to further tarnish it since he left office.
I have a suspicion that Dowager President Trump isn’t going to quietly retire to his tower in Manhattan. He’s likely to be a twitter maniac and just be a general pest to his successors and the political process in general until he dies.
That isn’t going to win him a lot of historical warm fuzzies I suspect.
In the medium future, say 0-30 years, I think is legacy will get steadily worse as those who currently worship him die off. As time goes on his presidency will be viewed with more historic objectivity, he will be known for being a unifying presence akin to Joe McCarthy, having the honest integrity of Richard Nixon, and the competence and judgement of George Armstrong Custer.
Trump will easily go down as the 2nd worst president ever and will beat even Harding for the lowest spot if something comes of the Mueller investigation. The only reason he may not go down as the worst is because historians don’t usually understand economics and will therefore give him credit for the economy.
Ultimately he will be significantly more villified than he is now because the destructive effects of his policies have yet to show themselves.
He’ll have provided fiscal stimulus during the peak of an economic boom which caused the fed to have to raise rates faster due to misleading market feedback, which, along with nearly universally derided tariffs that were disproved in 1776, caused a serious recession that widened the already tax-break-widened deficit at the beginning of a long cycle of rising interest rates that created an untenable debt burden.
He’ll be considered the spark and bellower-in-chief of the flames of racial nationalism resulting in god knows what.
I’ll leave it to someone else to catalogue the voluminous excoriations he’ll suffer from his environmental policies because I’m already too pissed to write any more.
Unlike, say, Millard Fillmore, people in the future will be able to watch actual video recordings of Trump being Trump. Barring some kind of linguistic degeneracy such as in Idiocracy, he is always going to sound like a complete idiot.
It’ll be worse than that. He is addicted to the adoration of his supporters and Twitter won’t be a big enough platform to get his narcissistic fix. There’s gonna be a huge attention gap to fill moving from President to civilian. He’ll combine his two biggest catapults to fame - right wing nationalism from his Presidential days and television from his Apprentice days. He’ll start a right-wing media company, possibly a channel (TrumpTV) that will make Fox look like MSNBC.
First, he’ll spend a year or two in some country club federal prison, building his notoriety and priming the pump for his comeback. #notevenkidding
Once we get rid of Trump, we really should do an annual Guy Fawkes’ Day-type celebration of having gotten rid of him, to memorialize his awfulness in perpetuity.
That is not a good thing for the Trumpsters among us. “Grandpa, what the fuck were you thinking? This guy was barely able to put two cogent thoughts together.”
“Well, you see, child, we were all taking a substance known as ‘meth’…”
I’ve wondered myself if we will end up looking back and thinking, “you know, after everything the results weren’t all that bad”. But ultimately I think no one will remember that the economy did moderately well at the beginning of his presidency, but anyone with internet access will be able to look back at his tweets and say “WTF!?”.
His tweets will be there for all to see, and they will not age well.
Hah! I’m imagining a Bonfire Night where everyone burns a giant pile of hairpieces.
Only if we turn into a fascist state. Other than that, I think he’ll be remembered as the worst president we’ve ever had.
About as fondly as his fellow fascists Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco. Unless of course his attempt at ending democratic rule succeeds, in which case our grandchildren will think of him in similar ways as Mao and Ho Chi Minh are remembered in their countries.
If he is allowed to tweet from prison or outlives his sentence, he will still be a dangerous person. There are a significant number of people who would consider it an honor to lick his boots. He could conceivably give birth to an American fascist party that could lead to the end of western democracy. There are too many people who would gladly give up democracy as long as the right people are persecuted.
My most likely scenario is that he doesn’t live past 2025. He is not a healthy man with healthy habits and despite what his lying doctor says, weighs a shit load more than 239 lbs. He will die in the next several years and be thought of worse as the years go on and his cult slowly dies off.