Closing The Book On The Disastrous Trump Legacy
When Donald Trump took office on January 20, 2017, he inherited a growing economy from the Obama-Biden Administration. Beginning with the end of the Bush recession in 2009, the unemployment rate during the Obama-Biden Administration was reduced from 10% to 4.7%. In 2016 alone, the economy added 2.15 million jobs. Moreover, since the end of the Bush recession, the economy had added 15.6 million jobs between 2009 to 2016. That was the best record of job creation since Bill Clinton’s second term.
The former TV reality star also inherited an improved health care system from Obama. Thanks to the Affordable Care Care Act, 20 million additional Americans were insured during the Obama-Biden Administration. During the 2016 campaign, Trump promised to “insure everybody” and he assured voters it would be “so easy.”
During the first three years of his presidency, Trump was able to coast due to the accomplishments of the Obama-Biden Administration. The big concern I discussed on numerous occasions was what would happen if Trump faced a serious crisis.
As we know, the world was hit with the worst pandemic since 1918 during the first quarter of 2020. The pandemic had spread to the U.S. by March 2020. Trump’s mishandling of the crisis was an epic disaster that will forever relegate him to the status as the worst president in U.S. history.
The lesson of the failed Trump Administration is best summed up by this quote from Franklin Roosevelt in 1938: “Once you build a house you always have it. On the other hand, a social or economic gain is a different matter. A social or an economic gain made by one Administration, for instance, may, and often does, evaporate into thin air under the next Administration. “
I will share with you some of the key statistics that best illustrate Trump’s utter failure as president.
Final U.S. COVID deaths per month for 2020, from CNN:
January 0
February 1
March 5,277
April 60,738
May 41,703
June 20,112
July 26,446
August 29,532
September 23,418
October 23,974
November 36,964
December 77,572
In the first half of January 2021, there were already 43,000 Covid 19 deaths. Unfortunately, the pace of infections and deaths is accelerating.
Just to show how much of an outlier the U.S. is from better performing First World, developed countries, here are covid-19 deaths per million people (adjusted for population) since the pandemic began:
Japan: 21
Australia: 35
South Korea: 12
Norway: 74
New Zealand: 5
Taiwan: 0.3
U.S.: 948
According to a study from Columbia University, Trump’s incompetence caused over 200,000 Americans to have unnecessarily perished to this dreaded disease. The U.S. had the worst response to the pandemic of the First World industrialized countries.
Trump’s failure to mitigate the virus wrecked the good economy he inherited from President Obama. When Trump was in office, the unemployment rate increased from 4.7% to 6.7%, 12 million Americans lost insurance, 8 million Americans fell into poverty and the annual deficit increased from $585 billion to $3.1 trillion.
In 2020, the U.S. economy lost a net 10 million jobs. Weekly unemployment claims since March 2020 exceeded the worst week of the 2008–09 recession. Trump left office after nearly 50 straight weeks of the worst job losses in American history.
Trump was the first president since the Great Depression to leave office with fewer jobs in the country than when he was inaugurated.
Trump’s failures on the foreign policy front were as disastrous as his failed domestic legacy. North Korea was a bigger threat in 2020 than when Obama left office. When Trump was president, North Korea developed an ICBM that could potentially reach all of the U.S. Kim Jong Un’s nuclear arsenal most likely expanded by about 15 warheads since his meetings with the former TV reality star. North Korea currently has 20 to 60 nuclear warheads.
Trump’s decision to repudiate Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran was equally disastrous. Since 2015, the Republicans had been promising us a “better deal” with Iran. Where is it?
During the Trump Administration, Iran breached the deal’s nuclear safeguards, and Iran increased its stockpile of enriched uranium by eight times! When Trump took office, Iran had 102kg of enriched uranium. That supply was increased to nearly 2.5 tons during the Trump years.
Trump and the Republican Party paid a high political price for this catastrophe. Trump was the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over the loss of the White House, the House and the Senate in a single term.
It is no coincidence that this was the second consecutive Republican administration to lead the United States into disaster. This is the direct result of the GOP’s bankrupt governing philosophy that rejects science, expertise and government itself. The Republicans like to tell us that government doesn’t work and then they wreck government in order to prove it.
I predict to you that by this time next year, most Republicans will deny that they were ever enthusiastic supporters of Trump. They will point to his deficits and spending and falsely contend that he was never a true conservative. We can’t let the Republicans get away with this again. It is our job as Democratic activists to refresh voter memories. History matters. Now let’s get it done!
P.S. — You’re going to want to save this post for when Trump and his propaganda machine try to rewrite history.