Forgeting the first 3 years of his presidency is not gonna help you. And that last year... Name ONE country that faired really well in 2020.
Edit: other than China
All 4 years of his presidency was abysmal. I could literally write pages detailing exactly why, but here are a few highlights.
—Unlike the 9-10% unemployment rates that Obama inherited from Bush, Trump was the beneficiary of the work Obama and Dems did to turn the economy around. By the time Trump was sworn in, unemployment was 4.7%, and we had seen something like 91 consecutive months of economic expansion. Trump had claimed his amazing tax plan would result in American families getting a $4000 raise, but of course that never happened. He also claimed that once those tax cuts kicked in, we’d pay down the debt like “water.” He claimed he’d eliminate it in 8 years—in 4 years, he added 8 trillion dollars to it. The streak of job creation, inherited from Obama, ended in February
2019– a whole year before the pandemic, when we lost 55K jobs that month.
—After promising he knew “all the best people,” he had the most turnover in his administration of any president in the previous 100 years.
His appointees were wildly unqualified, and unethical: Sec of Ed Betsy DeVos had never been to a public school, never sent her children to one, and couldn’t answer basic questions about public ed issues in her hearings. She got the job because her family are mega-donors. Scott Pruitt had a long history of opposing environmental regulations, and was brought in as head of the EPA (!!). He resigned in disgrace with 12 simultaneous this investigations. against him. Ryan Zinke’s main “accomplishments” as Sec of Interior included opening national monuments for drilling (even to foreign countries), enriching his Whitefish friends with a 300 million dollar contract while US citizens in Puerto Rico suffered, and multiple ethical violations.
—Trump was horrible on minority rights. This includes things like directing the Dept of Ed to no longer respond to complaints of trans students, banning trans persons from serving in the military, filed an amicus brief with SCOTUS saying that LGBTQ persons were not exempt from workplace discrimination, brought in a white nationalist (Stephen Miller) to write his immigration policy, advocating for a nationwide Stop and Frisk Policy, rolled back Fair Housing rules making it more difficult for minorities to own homes…i could go on and on.
—The pandemic. When it happened, Trump had already disbanded the Global Health Security Team that Obama had created to help manage a pandemic situation just like this. He showed no leadership ability whatsoever, instead resorting to his usual trick of screaming “fake news” and “hoax” in the hope that it would just go away (maybe by summer!). COVID testing and vaccine development and distribution was a mess. It’s interesting how many people who criticize the vaccine forget that Trump wanted to overrule the FDA and skip steps in the testing of the vax. Medical journal the Lancet estimated that
40% of US casualties to COVID could have been avoided if Trump had simply enacted common-sense policies. Shameful.
—And of course, his multi-state illegal scheme to disenfranchise millions of voters and hold on to power despite losing at the polls.
There’s still so many things I haven’t touched on, such as his failures at the G20, disastrous pullout in Syria, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital resulting in needless deaths…
He’s a fucking failure. His presidency was shit.