176 points

The amount of people here commenting authoritatively about this is disheartening.

Trump’s economic policies were insane. I remember looking at his campaign platform and seeing tax cuts everywhere and with no way to pay for anything.

I remember him shuttering valuable tools like the pandemic response teams because he wanted to tear down the success of previous administrations.

I still remember him mocking our military, displaying state secrets on national tv, trade wars that destroyed American jobs, diplomatic decisions that ruined international relationships.

I remember immigrant children locked in cages.

I remember the rule of law being absolutely trampled in order to achieve nothing. Just norms and institutions being torn down.

Trump accomplished nothing and made literally every facet of our government, politics and economic life worse.

He performed a political pump and dump and the entire world is still picking up the pieces.

He is a fascist and categorically the worst president we’ve ever had and every person here saying, “well actually…” should be ashamed.

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15 points

While I agree I’d be careful with “I remember immigrant children locked in cages.” If you don’t want all the “ObAmA StArTeD iT aNd BiDeN CoNtInUeD!” comments lol

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-14 points

Obama is gonna close Gitmo any day now like he promised.

And surely Joe “I’m a Zionist” Biden wouldn’t do worse things to brown children than lock them in cages.

And Biden taxed the rich and the economy is fine now. Not like the private sector owns all housing funded by unlimited free money loaning like in 2008 or anthing.

Both sides Schmoth sides everyone!

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1 point
*

Its amazing to see the flack when you say something along the lines of both sides are the same. In the end they will do anything for money except what is right for the people

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8 points

“Slow the testing down, please!”

he should have been immediately arrested and thrown in the fucking Hague with that statement.

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6 points
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He is a fascist and the worst president we could’ve possibly had that didn’t commit straight up genocide.*

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19 points

Removing children from parents is genocide.

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13 points
*

No it’s not. The goal must be to exterminate the entirety of a group of people.

Being a cruel fascist piece of shit othering central americans by separating children - parents in detention centers then reuniting most of them isn’t genocide.

Forcible transferring of children from Ukraine may potentially violate multiple international law provisions.Footnote5 In its latest report, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine concluded that the transfer and deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia constitute violations of Article 147 of the Geneva Convention IV, Articles 74 and 85(4)(b)-(5) of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, and Article 8(1) of the Convention of the Rights of the Child.Footnote6 On 17 March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued warrants of arrest for two individuals in the situation in Ukraine: President Putin and Commissioner L’vova-Belova for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation (under Articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute).Footnote7

International lawyersFootnote8 remain divided on extent to which Russia’s actions in Ukraine constitute genocide under any of the paragraphs of Article IIFootnote9 of the Genocide Convention.Footnote10 Predictably, the fundamental challenge lies with proving dolus specialis, a special intent to physically destroy the group, as required by the genocide definition.Footnote11

https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/forcible-transfer

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10443894231200659

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949/article-50

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2023.2228085

An example where it is but they aren’t necessarily killing every one of them?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide

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1 point

Chris Hanson arrest them

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1 point

Thank you for saying that. I have been making that case for years and no one else has ever agreed with me.

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3 points
*
Removed by mod
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-34 points

I call this recency bias. Trump was terrible, but not the worst.

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15 points

So Andrew Jackson?

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14 points

In your opinion, who is worse?

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5 points

IMO a lot of the shit we are dealing with socio-politically is because Andrew Johnson appeased the southern traitors and allowed them to keep their wealth and power after the Civil War. I often wonder what we’d be like if the Confederacy were properly humbled and then reconstructed instead of what happened. Maybe the road from Tea Party to MAGA would have never been walked.

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1 point

Fuck Woodrow Wilson.

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3 points

Who’s worse?

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126 points

Trump was the worst President in U.S. History.

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61 points

I would say second-worst after Andrew Jackson. Hard to beat genocide in order to make a massive land grab.

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56 points

Personally, I’m very bitter about the completely awful effects of Reagan’s tenure. Literally turned the office into a Hollywood act; you know damn well he wasn’t calling the shots. He was there to draw people’s attention.

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26 points

He also defunded 99% of American science to pour billions into a hole in Texas that never had a chance of working.

Ever notice how all major breakthroughs these days come from non-US scientists? The scene never recovered.

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12 points

Let’s not forget the “war on drugs” as well. A lot of awful things came from the Reagan era.

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11 points

Not to mention that he changed economic policy to ensure the boomer generation will dominate all following generations.

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29 points

If Drumpf gets a second term, I think he’ll be going for the high score.

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11 points

Dismantling democracy would definitely put him over the top

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21 points

Tbh Andrew Johnson (became president after Lincoln was assassinated) is pretty high up there, too. I might actually put him ahead of Trump in terribleness, because a lot of the regressive societal shit we are dealing with now - and have been dealing with for around 150 years - can be directly attributed to Johnson’s softball treatment of the Confeds during reintegration.

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17 points
*

Trump/Kushner did try to weaponize the COVID response against blue regions that voted Democrat. That’s pretty bad

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0 points

I mean that’s just Republican standard operating procedure.

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15 points

Trump activity attempting to overthrow the Federal Government pushes him beyond Jackson. Moving the Southeast Tribes to Oklahoma was a fall out of the War of 1812 against the Tribes who joined the British. It doesn’t remove how horrible that was. Moving so many people during a pandemic of Yellow Fever was inexcusable. Obviously Jackson didn’t care.

I still think Trump attempts to overthrow the government is worse as well as losing 20 million jobs, making the Covid pandemic worse by inaction, and all his criminal activity.

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1 point
Deleted by creator
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0 points

Trump activity attempting to overthrow the Federal Government pushes him beyond Jackson.

I doubt most indigenous Americans would agree.

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15 points
*

I mean, among the most evil maybe, but he was successful in what he did at least.

Can’t forget that Trump if anything killed millions not even because he was trying to, but outright negligence.

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8 points

I’m surprised at the amount of disagreement your comment is getting.

I don’t want to downplay Jackson’s displacement of American Indians, but there was one real FUBAR thing Jackson did that no one remembers:

He paid off the national debt.

Completely and entirely. The federal government existed debt free for some months (I forget exactly how long, I want to say it was a year or so before borrowing exceeded income).

On the face of it, this probably sounds like a good thing, but it hard crashed the economy. Obv wasn’t alive at the time, but it’s my understanding that it was the worst economic disaster until the Great Depression (and The Great Depression was only worse because the country and world were far more connected than the world of Jackson’s day).

That said, I hear inauguration party was a real rager.

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6 points

The difference for me comes down to the relative power both men had. If the US had been the sole hyperpower on the planet, Jackson may well have out-Hitlered Hitler. If Trump’s administration wasn’t actively engaged in sabotaging his deranged orders to attack Venezuela and Iran, we’d probably still be at war. Trump exercised authority over 300M people and has, probably for the remainder of our lifetimes, permanently altered politics in the US and around the world, while Jackson’s ability, monster that he was, was constrained that the US was not a significant world power at the time.

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4 points

I’d say those two and Wilson are fairly neck and neck

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3 points

Reagan and Bush Jr. were far worse imo. Thankfully Trump was pretty incompetent.

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3 points

So far.

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1 point

Buchanan literally sat on the fence so he could do nothing while the country fell apart into a civil war.

Trump sucked and it would be a disaster to elect him again, but he has a long way to go to beat Buchanan for worst.

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68 points

Show this to any trump fan and they’ll just say:

“No, he didn’t”. And that’s it. You can’t reason with trump supporters.

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16 points

Stock market went up! Best president ever!

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22 points

Ok, the stock market is at a near record high right now, under Joe Biden. Does that mean Joe Biden is now the best president ever?

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13 points

Nope. Why? Because [reason they just invented off the top of their head and will forget in five minutes].

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-1 points

Tell it to my 401k bud

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53 points

Let’s be clear though, it wasn’t because of his economic policy, it was his thorough mishandling of covid that got one million Americans killed which was the problem.

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36 points

More significantly yes but let’s not forget the massive tax cuts and regulation destruction he did

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7 points

I wish I’d bought a new washer/dryer before he pissed off China with that pointless trade war. Prices doubled overnight and have not come back down.

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14 points

I don’t that his brainless decisions regarding economic policy did anything but make it worse.

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23 points

Remember his trade wars with…everyone? And then he renegotiated the same agreements but worse?

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8 points

I would love to not remember the entire four years; but I have to accept that the only chance to learn from it is to acknowledge that the shit did happen. Ugh.

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6 points

Maybe it was worse, but with a sharpie pen. So there’s that.

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12 points

I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but the man didn’t do anything without the combination of someone telling him to do it and somehow that thing being made worth his while.

So, why the hell would he decide/be-told to disband the US Pandemic Response team in May 2018?

https://x.com/atomicanalyst/status/994696175575068672?s=46&t=g3yM8UdEINqcLyXIxWs-lg

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19 points

Apparently, Trump had a beef with his National Security advisor, and that advisor was good friends with the admiral in charge of the pandemic office. So, to punish the Advisor, Trump closed down his buddy’s office.

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10 points

It’s all so petty. And people still want this person to have power. Society is so confusing.

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2 points

The Presidency essentially sharing storylines with any predictable, tween drama. That’s totally normal and ok…

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I think they handled it all according to the plan. It allowed them to sow distrust in everyone from doctors just trying to save people’s lives, to the very government he was in charge of. It basically set the hook for his cult of “you can only trust me”. And his cult believes that millions are going to die from the vaccine, and at the same time that people dying from COVID is “fake news”.

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1 point

It’s called cognitive dissonance and Putin is a master class at it…

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Indeed. I wish we could just trade him a pardon for all his crimes, and in exchange he must take his cult and all move to some remote place where they will be separated from the rest of the world. He can live out his remaining days as some god, and his cult members can stop messing up society for the rest of us. Ah, to dream.

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5 points

His economic policies did cause severe damage, though. Yes, the pandemic made it even worse. But I disagree with saying it “wasn’t” his economic policies. That implies his policies were productive; they were not.

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-13 points

And the fact the whole world shut down for a few months. I’m sure that had something to do with it.

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37 points

Which could have been drastically mitigated to an extent if he actually got his base to jump on board and support the vaccine and mask agenda. It wouldn’t have spread anywhere near the extent that it did, nor would we have had the need to shut so many things down and isolate.

His mismanagement of the COVID pandemic, and his anti-sciencw rhetoric really screwed things up. Hell, there’s still ignorant loons out there that think COVID was a lie and that the vaccines are just for the government to inject a world-ending virus that will get triggered by 5G signals when the Global Cabal decides to end the World. It’s absolutely comical.

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29 points

Also wasn’t he sorta directly responsible for it in the first place? US for years maintained pandemic response labs in high-risk areas, like around the notorious wet-markets in Wuhan, that he shuttered early in his term. We were explicitly looking out for that kind of thing to catch it before it became a global issue, but he thought it cost too much.

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4 points

nor would we have had the need to shut so many things down and isolate.

I’m not so sure. In my province we had very good mask use and vaccine uptake (once we could get them), but we still went back into lockdown, after our initial long ass lockdown, due to case loads still being too high.

Masks and vaccines did help of course, but are not a guarantee things will stay open.

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1 point

I’m not saying he didn’t screw the pooch. I’m just saying the whole world economy took a huge hit which clearly was due to the COVID lockdowns. I’m not saying they weren’t needed and we absolutely should have done everything we did. But to pretend it was all Trump’s fault is showing just as much brain power that he does.

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11 points
*

I mean yeah, Trump can’t be blamed for COVID, but his response to it is another matter entirely.

Over 1 million dead. That’s a pretty damn big chunk of the population to lose in the space of two years.

Now I’m not saying he’s alone in the blame, there are state level republicans responsible too, but boy did he try to hamstring those who were trying to do the right thing.

If I looked purely at his actions, I’d say that he wanted COVID to be some great filter or something to wash through the masses and take out lots of people.

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11 points

I mean, in South Africa we have a famously corrupt and incompetent government. And even we significantly outperformed the US in deaths per 100k people.

It does help to have publicly funded healthcare.

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5 points

It isn’t just about his reactive actions to the pandemic.

His proactive efforts to hasten the pandemic is more damning.

May, 2018:

https://x.com/atomicanalyst/status/994696175575068672?s=46&t=g3yM8UdEINqcLyXIxWs-lg

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42 points

To be fair, even if Trump did manage the pandemic like a sane person, the economy likely would’ve still taken a massive pandemic hit.

Other nations, with better public health policies and lower losses of life, also saw a bonkers hit to economic indicators.

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32 points

You can’t say that about the rampant spending that took place during his administration. Conservative fiscal policy be damned!

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35 points

They are only concerned with spending when they are not in power.

It’s been that way for years.

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17 points

It’s classic Two Santas from the Republicans again.

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4 points

He gave small business owners instant full depreciation for large assets - specifically vehicles. It was an outright bribe because they all just went and bought luxury personal vehicles and claim they are for work. Sorry, no one uses a Land Rover for work.

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