43) Defeat Trump Now Because of All the Horrible and/or Crazy Things He Did During His Former Term as President

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How many cringeworthy things do you remember, from Trump’s first term in office? The crazy, corrupt, disappointing things that happened continuously. So many awful and stupid things that any single one can get lost in the clutter of just his merciless, non-stop Tweets. I was reminded of all this by stumbling on this article: “Donald Trump, a Retrospective: A Look Back at the 1,462 Worst Days in Presidential History,” by Bess Levin, Vanity Fair, January 20, 2021.

Well, he is promising more of the same exact stuff, only this time there won’t be anyone in the White House to mitigate what he really wants to do.

• No General John Kelly as Chief of Staff to keep the crazies from getting access to the Oval Office.

• No Attorney General William Barr (despite his other faults) to tell Trump “there was no election fraud.”

• No divided Supreme Court that might challenge his actions, after three Trump appointments during the first term. In fact this new Court has given him a green light with “nearly complete immunity.”

He values LOYALTY over EXPERTISE. So expect the same kinds of things as the last time –only, supercharged, on steroids.

To get a flavor of a new Trump term of office, let’s look at just the first 7 months of his previous term of office.

____ Day 1: Trump issued an Executive order to build a wall along the southern border

He said over and over that Mexico would pay for the wall. Of course, Mexico never paid a cent, and why would it? This tendency to state or promise things about which he is ignorant is a common theme.

The border consists of 1,954 miles. About 450 miles of new or replacement walls/fencing were built during the Trump years by taking $10 billion from the defense budget. Many court cases argued it was illegally changing the budget Congress voted for, but by the time all appeals were settled, most of the money had been spent and the walls were built. There are still many miles without any wall.

Trump’s 2024 website lists his “20 Core Promises” to the American People. “Sealing the Border” is Promise #1, so the wall will be a big priority for him, but funding it may be an even bigger hurdle this time. But since he is immune from any prosecution concerning his duties, he will do whatever he wants, regardless of effectiveness.

____ Day 3: He banned all travel from 7 majority-Muslim nations.

It was the first of five travel bans, at first successfully thwarted in the courts. Eventually his lawyers worded the travel bans so that they were acceptable to court review. Actions like this have many consequences, including credibility in working with other countries to establish peace in the Mid-East. Biden got rid of the bans as discriminatory and bad diplomacy, but Trump has pledged to re-instate them if re-elected.

____ February 3-6: Trump made his first visit while President to Mar-A-Lago.

Presidential Limousine Loaded for Transport

During the course of his Presidency, he spent 1/3 of his days at a Trump Inc. property and for all of those occasions Trump Inc sent an invoice to the US government for all rooms and meals used by the participants and the required team of Secret Service agents! I don’t know the total of those invoices. But the Government Accounting Office (GAO) determined the combined cost of the Secret Service and the Department of Defense for 4 trips to the Mar-a-Lago resort by the President and 3 international trips by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump during the short period of January and March 2017 came to $14 million. [If we multiply that by the 16 quarters of his 4 years in office, we get $224 million in costs. That is a minimum since trips to his other clubs and golf courses are not included, and “classified expenses” are not included.]

STATS APPLICABLE TO SOME OF THE 3,737 CONFLICTS OF INTEREST DURING THE 4 TRUMP YEARS:
1461 Days in office
281 Days at one of the 9 Trump Golf Courses/Clubs
133 Days at Mar-A-Lago
61 Days at other Trump Inc. properties
TOTAL: 475 days at Trump Inc. properties where the taxpayers pay Trump Inc. directly for services rendered to Trump, official guests, and Secret Service requirements.

____ February 13-14: Trump uses Mar-a-Lago instead of The White House or Camp David for meetings with heads of government/state.

Instead of using the White House, Trump met with the Japanese Prime Minister at his Mar-A-Lago Resort. At meal time, high level discussions involving Korea were conducted as nearby hotel guests dined, listened, and took photos. It doesn’t seem like national security issues of both countries should be discussed in a public dining room!

____ February 27: Trump cannot come up with a better healthcare system than the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”)

Trump tells reporters:

“It’s an unbelievably complex subject. Nobody knew health care could be so complicated….Doing a tax cut is a tiny little ant compared to what we are talking about with Obamacare. You have to remember, …Obamacare has failed. I say to the Republicans, if you really want to do something good, don’t do anything. Sit back for a period of two years because 2017 is going to be a disaster for Obamacare. Let it be a disaster because we can blame that on the Dems and President Obama. Let it implode. And then let it implode in 2018 even worse….”

  1. Of course healthcare is a complex subject! That’s why it took over a year of negotiations involving many experts, many members of Congress, and the White House back in 2010. I guess everyone knew that except Trump.
  2. Here are a few GOP ways to make healthcare worse: Allow companies to go back to very low premium plans with $10,000 (or higher) deductibles; encourage “health savings accounts” (HSA); and other plans which are bad for the working or middle class. Those and other plans have been advanced which give you “access” to insurance but not if you can’t afford it. And allow insurance companies to use “pre-existing conditions” to deny coverage as part of their inexpensive, but worthless plans.
  3. Obamacare is a failure. Far from it. The number of uninsured has declined steadily from 45.2 million uninsured in 2013 to 26.4 million in 2022 thanks to the Affordable Care Act. Trump and the GOP tried to kill it, but Biden nurtured it. Yes, it’s complicated; yes, some more improvements could be made; yes many parts of the original ACA were eliminated (like mandatory participation) by GOP State government lawsuits, cutting some of the effectiveness; yes, the first few years caused some pains, but on balance has been successful.

4. Nobody knew… That phrase, along with “Many people don’t know,” is used by Trump frequently. It is a tip off that it is something that Trump himself has just learned. Then he shares the information thinking he is so clever when it is something that most educated people already know. (See also “Reason 32: Trump is Clueless About Many Important Things; It’s Probably Due to Functional Illiteracy.“)

____ March 2-3: Trump’s Excessive Rage.

Trump wanted the Russia investigation at first led by FBI Director Comey, to be stopped. He wanted his Attorney-General Jeff Sessions to stop it. Instead, Sessions called a news conference on this day to clearly state that he was recusing himself. He said that “his hands were tied and that he intended to abide by the Justice Department’s rules of recusal and follow the advice of the career ethics staff.”* Trump, who had already made it clear that he did not want Sessions to recuse because it would look suspicious, learned of Session’s news conference while flying a short distance back to Washington.

On the plane, “he was furious. … He railed about how ‘weak’ and ‘horrible’ the attorney general was. He said he should never have picked him for the job. To Trump, this was the end of Sessions. His attorney general had betrayed him. … Trump’s Air Force One eruption was the maddest his aides had ever seen him to date. He was so loud that some more Junior staffers took a seat in a rear cabin of the plane and put on headphones to drown out the presidents yelling.”*

His fury had not subsided after getting off the plane. “Rather it was a rage that boiled into the next day. He went thermonuclear. ‘the rages, they build and they build,’ one of his advisers said. ‘he’s screaming and he’s a big guy and he looks like he could get physical.’ Trump is famously short tempered, a trait that pre-dated his presidency. A large physical presence even when he is sedate, Trump becomes monstrous when something sets him off.” ….

In the Oval Office, “the president gave [Chief of Staff Reince] Priebus and [Senior Advisor Steve] Bannon an earful about how much he despised Sessions and then summoned [White House Counsel Don] McGahn. He wanted to make clear to the White House counsel that he had failed him as well. Trump’s words were blistering…. ‘I don’t have a lawyer!’ the president screamed. ‘Where’s my lawyer?’…. [The concept that neither his White House Counsel nor his attorney general] was actually Trump’s attorney, was an important constitutional detail lost on the president.” In any case he is thinking about a lawyer like his long dead mentor, Roy Cohn.]*

*Quoted from A Very Stable Genius: Donald Trump’s Testing of America, Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, Penguin Books, 2020, pages 45-47.

More On Trump, the Temper Tantrum President, In the Testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson

While not the only factor, Trump’s rages together with his inability to accept competent advice, his giant ego, and his difficulty understanding basic history, science, and civics are probably factors in having the highest rate of turnover in both White House and Cabinet positions. For example, consider the chart below.

____ May 11: Trump claimed to have invented the phrase “prime the pump.”

Actually, the phrase was first used in 1932. His need to be “first” and “best” is pathetic.

____ May 17: Trump’s Coast Guard Academy graduation address.

Trump delivered a self-centered graduation speech at the Coast Guard Academy. Usually such speeches focus on the graduates. Instead, Trump took plenty of time to address his political grievances. “No politician in history – and I say this with great surety – has been treated worse or more unfairly,” he said.

____ May 25: Trump’s First Meeting with European Union colleagues.

At a meeting with European Union leaders in Brussels, Trump said “The Germans are evil, very evil. Look at the millions of cars they sell in the U.S. We’ll stop that.” A frankly stupid observation and a stupid way to treat an important ally.

It was made worse by shamelessly shoving Montenegro’s prime minister out of the way so he could be front and center for a group photo. His body language can be translated to, “Me first, me first!” Sadly, no, Donald, it’s the United States security that comes first, and that requires many, many qualities summed up in the words “strong but diplomatic.” Sadly, he lacks those qualities.

____ July 25: Trump gives a talk to 40,000 Boy Scouts

Speaking to tens of thousands of Boy Scouts, Trump seemed to forget the purpose of speaking to the Scouts; instead he talked about killing Obamacare, firing a cabinet member, and spoke longest about all the hot parties he attended in the 1980s. Later, He claimed the head of the Boy Scouts called to say “it was the greatest speech that was ever made,” a call that a spokesperson for the group said never happened. Trump can’t stop talking about me-me-me, and then lies about it being a great speech. That’s what being a narcissist means.


That’s just some of the things from the first 7 months of Trump’s first term!

Vote Blue to get America past this 2024 Trumpian crisis. 

Resources:

–> Build “The Wall”

–> Ban travel from majority Muslim countries

–> Conflicts of interest with job as President and CEO of Trump Inc. / Profiting from the Presidency

–> Using Mar-A-Lago for state visits

–> Healthcare really is complex!

–> GOP Healthcare is not acceptable

–> Obamacare actually is a success! 

–> “No One Knew” A Fav Trump Expression

–> Trump’s Excessive Rage

  • Get this book which is filled with examples of Trump’s raging anger: A Very Stable Genius, Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, Penguin Press, 2020.

–> “Priming the pump”

–> Shoving the prime minister of Montenegro

–> Speech to Boy Scouts

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