From
https://www.facebook.com/RBReich 30 October 2024
(Number 17 relates to another thread on nz.general recently)
Some people seem to have forgotten how bad a president Trump was, so I
made a list of the 100 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency, in no particular order. Please share and add anything I missed.
1. Trump fueled division and sparked a record uptick in hate crimes.
2. Murder went way up under Trump. He presided over the largest ever single-year increase in homicides in 2020. A number of factors might
have contributed to that, but a big one is…
3. Gun sales broke records under Trump, who has bragged about how he
“did nothing” to restrict guns as president in spite of…
4. Under Trump, America suffered more than 1,700 mass shootings.
5. When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, Trump delayed $20 billion of
aid and allowed Puerto Rico to be without power for 181 days.
6. According to Trump's former acting Homeland Security secretary,
Trump proposed selling the entire island of Puerto Rico.
7. Trump said there were "very fine people" among the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. He now denies it, but it's on video.
8. Trump allied himself with the Proud Boys, a violent hate group who
helped orchestrate the Jan 6 Capitol attack.
9. Trump has been convicted of committing 34 felonies while in office.
The criminally false business filings he got convicted for in New
York? All of them were committed while he was president.
10. Trump strategically appointed Supreme Court justices who would
overturn Roe v. Wade. 1 in 3 women of childbearing age now live under
a Trump abortion ban.
11. One of Trump’s Supreme Court justices was Brett Kavanaugh, a man
accused of sexual assault by multiple women.
12. Trump’s White House reportedly interfered in the FBI’s
investigation of Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assaults.
13. Trump’s failed pandemic response is estimated to have led to
hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. By the time Trump left
office, roughly 3,000 Americans were dying of covid every day. That’s
a 9/11-scale mass casualty event every single day.
How did Trump fail so terribly? Here are a few of the ways:
14. Trump’s White House discarded the pandemic response playbook that
had been assembled by the Obama administration.
15. Trump disbanded the National Security Council’s pandemic response
team.
16. Trump repeatedly lied about the danger of covid, saying it was no
worse than the flu or that it would go away on its own, even as he
admitted in private that he knew it was deadly.
17. Trump promoted fake covid cures like hydroxychloroquine and even
injecting people with disinfectants.
After Trump’s “disinfectant” remarks, poison control centers received
a spike in emergency calls.
And then of course there are all the ways Trump wrecked the economy.
18. Trump presided over a net loss of 2.9 million American jobs — the
worst recorded jobs numbers of any U.S. president in history.
19. Under Trump, the national debt increased by about 40% — more than
in any other four-year presidential term — largely because of his tax
cuts for the rich and big corporations.
20. Trump promised that the average American family would see a $4,000
pay raise because of his tax cuts for the wealthy and big
corporations.
How’d that work out? Did you get a $4,000 raise?
America's billionaires, however, doubled their wealth.
21. Trump vowed to protect American jobs, but offshoring increased and manufacturing fell.
22. Trump said he would be “the voice” of American workers, but he
filled the National Labor Relations Board with anti-union flacks who
made it harder for workers to unionize.
23. Trump’s Labor Department made it easier for bosses to get out of
paying workers overtime, which cheated 8 million workers of extra pay.
24. Trump’s haphazard use of tariffs drove up prices of all kinds of
goods, costing American families thousands of extra dollars.
25. Under Trump, the national debt increased by about 40% — more than
in any other four-year presidential term — largely because of his tax
cuts for the rich and big corporations.
26. Every budget Trump proposed included cuts to Social Security and
Medicare.
And then there's all the grift and corruption.
27. Trump profited off the presidency, making an estimated $160
million from foreign countries while he was president.
28. Trump also billed the Secret Service over $1 million for the
privilege of staying at his golf clubs and other properties while they protected him. That’s your money!
29. Trump said he’d hire only the best people, but his campaign chair
was convicted of multiple crimes.
One of his closest associates, Roger Stone, also became a convict.
His deputy campaign chair pleaded guilty to crimes. So did his
national security adviser. Also his personal lawyer, the CFO of the
Trump Organization, his campaign foreign policy adviser, and one of
his campaign fundraisers.
They all committed crimes, and Trump pardoned most of them.
30. Trump said he’d drain the Washington swamp. But he appointed more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls to his administration than
any administration in history.
31. Trump intervened to get his son-in-law, Jared Kushner top-secret
clearance after he was denied over concerns about foreign influence.
And let's not forget the nonstop chaos.
32. Trump caused the longest government shutdown in U.S. history when
he didn’t get funding for his border wall, which he said Mexico was
going to pay for.
33. Trump also shut the government down two other times
34. Trump diverted nearly $14 billion from other federal agencies —
including $9.9 billion from the military — to pay for his border wall,
which he never finished. And again, so much for Mexico paying for it.
35. He went through four chiefs of staff, four press secretaries, and
seven communications directors in just four years.
36. Trump lied. Constantly. He made 30,573 false or misleading claims
while president — an average of 21 a day, according to Washington Post fact-checkers.
And then there's the cruelty.
37. Trump separated more than 5,000 children from their parents at the
border, with no plan to ever reunite them, putting babies in cages.
38. The Muslim Ban. Yes, Trump really did try to ban Muslims from
entering the country.
39. Trump tried to terminate DACA, which protects immigrants brought
to the U.S. as children. Luckily this was struck down by the courts.
And what about the impeachments?
40. Trump personally attacked and ruined the careers of everyone who
stood in the way of his illegal Ukraine scheme, including Ambassador
Marie Yovanovitch and Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman.
Trump wanted Zelensky to interfere in the 2020 election by announcing
an investigation into the Bidens. Delaying this aid to Ukraine
weakened Ukraine and strengthened Russia.
40. Trump personally attacked and ruined the careers of everyone who
stood in the way of his illegal Ukraine scheme, including Ambassador
Marie Yovanovitch and Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman.
42. To cover up the scheme, Trump ordered the White House and State
Department to defy congressional subpoenas.
43. For these reasons, on December 18, 2019, Trump became the third
U.S. president to be impeached. He was charged with Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress.
44. Even while he was being investigated for trying to get Ukraine to
interfere in the U.S. election, Trump publicly called for China to
interfere in the election.
The second impeachment was all about Trump's efforts to undermine our democracy.
45. Long before Election Day in 2020, Trump started making false
claims that the election would be rigged.
46. Trump falsely claimed the election was stolen, even though his own
inner circle, including his campaign manager, White House lawyers, &
his own Justice Dept said it wasn’t.
As his handpicked attorney general said: “The claims of fraud were
bullsh*t.”
47. Trump kept telling his Big Lie even after more than 60 legal
challenges to the election were struck down in court, many by
Trump-appointed judges.
48. Trump ordered the Justice Department to falsely claim that the
election “was corrupt.”
49. Trump and his allies used threats to pressure state leaders in
Arizona and Georgia to falsify the election results. He was even
caught on tape doing it.
50. When none of the previous schemes worked, Trump and his allies
produced fake electoral certificates for multiple swing states. His
former White House chief of staff and Rudy Giuliani are among his
associates who have been criminally indicted for this.
51. Trump tried to bully Vice President Pence into obstructing the certification of the election.
52. Trump invited a mob to the Capitol on Jan 6 with his “be there,
will be wild” tweet.
53. Sworn testimony alleges that when Trump was warned that members of
the crowd were carrying deadly weapons, he ordered security metal
detectors to be taken down.
54. Knowing the crowd had deadly weapons, he ordered them to go to the
Capitol and “fight like hell.”
55. On January 13, 2021, Trump became the only president ever to be
impeached twice. This time he was charged with incitement of
insurrection. It was a bipartisan vote.
56. The majority of senators — 57 out of 100 — voted to convict Trump, including 7 Republican senators.
But let's not gloss over Russia and the Mueller probe.
57. In a likely obstruction of justice, Trump pressured then FBI
Director James Comey to stop the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s
National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn. This was documented in the
Mueller report.
58. When Comey didn’t bend to Trump’s will, Trump fired him.
59. Trump tried to shut down the Mueller investigation by ordering
White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller. McGahn refused because
that would be criminal obstruction of justice.
60. When news got out that Trump tried to fire Mueller, Trump
repeatedly told McGahn to lie — to Mueller, to press, to public — and
even create a false document to conceal Trump’s attempt to fire
Mueller.
61. Trump ordered his staff not to turn over emails showing Don Jr.
had set up a meeting at Trump Tower before the 2016 election with representatives of the Russian government.
62. Trump convinced Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about Trump’s
plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, and Cohen served prison time
for lying to Congress.
63. Trump wasn’t charged for criminal obstruction because it’s the
Justice Dept’s policy not to indict a sitting president, but more than
1,000 former federal prosecutors signed a letter declaring there was
more than enough evidence to prosecute Trump.
64. Trump publicly sided with Putin over the U.S. Intelligence
Community, rejecting the well-documented evidence that Russia
interfered in the 2016 election to help elect him.
65. Trump hosted a Russian Foreign Minister to the Oval Office, where
Trump revealed top-secret intelligence.
Trump's foreign policy was disastrous.
66. Trump tasked his son-in-law Jared Kushner with drafting a
potential Middle East “peace plan” with zero Palestinian input.
67. Trump sparked international outrage by moving the American Embassy
in Israel to Jerusalem while closing the Palestinian diplomatic office
in D.C.
68. Trump recognized Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights, which
is considered illegal under international law.
69. Trump vetoed a bipartisan Congressional resolution to end U.S.
military support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, which has killed
tens of thousands of civilians.
70. He pulled out of the Iran deal, placing Iran on a path to becoming
a nuclear power and increasing its ability to fund terrorist groups.
71. Trump called Haiti and African nations “sh*thole” countries.
72. Trump tried to buy the country of Greenland.
73. Trump canceled a diplomatic trip to Denmark, reportedly because he
wrongly thought Denmark was blocking his plan to buy Greenland.
74. Trump repeatedly denigrated German Chancellor Angela Merkel,
seemingly because he resented her for beating him out as Time’s Person
of the Year in 2015.
He’s that petty.
75. He was literally the laughingstock of the world, prompting guffaws
from the UN General Assembly and mockery from world leaders.
There's so much more!
76. Trump said he would fix America’s infrastructure, but it never
happened. He announced so many failed “infrastructure weeks” they
became a running joke.
77. Trump repeatedly suggested he might serve more than two terms in
violation of the Constitution — and continues to do so.
78. Trump even suggested delaying the 2020 election when he started to
realize he would lose.
79. Trump called climate change a “hoax.”
80. Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement.
81. Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental protections.
82. Trump tried (and failed) to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which
would have resulted in 20 million Americans losing insurance.
Striking down the ACA’s protections for the roughly 130 million people
with pre-existing conditions could have driven up their insurance
premiums or led to a loss of coverage.
And he STILL says he'll repeal the ACA, with only “concepts of a plan”
to replace it.
83. Trump made it easier for employers to remove birth control
coverage from insurance plans.
84. By the end of Trump’s term, the number of people lacking health
insurance had risen by 3 million.
85. He allegedly took hundreds of classified documents on his way out
of the White House, reportedly including nuclear secrets, which he
then left unsecured in various parts of Mar-a-Lago, including a
bathroom. He was even caught on tape showing them off to people.
86. Trump seriously discussed the idea of nuking a hurricane.
87. Trump seemed to think he could redirect the path of a hurricane
with a Sharpie.
88. Trump suggested withholding federal aid for California wildfire
recovery and said the solution was to “clean” the “floors” of the
forest.
89. Trump referred to fallen U.S. service members as “losers” and
“suckers.” This has been confirmed by multiple sources, including
Trump’s former chief of staff, retired Gen. John Kelly.
90. According to Kelly, Trump praised Hitler, saying he “did some good
things.”
91. Trump complained that the military wouldn’t place personal loyalty
to him over their oath to the Constitution, saying, “I need the kind
of generals that Hitler had.”
92. Trump proposed having the military shoot Black Lives Matters
demonstrators.
93. Trump tried to cut $460 million for unhoused veterans.
94. Trump has repeatedly turned his ire on Gold Star families. Army
widow Myeshia Johnson said Trump reduced her to tears when he
dismissed her fallen husband, Sgt. La David Johnson, saying, “he knew
what he was getting into” when he joined the army.
95. Instead of apologizing to Johnson, Trump then went on to publicly
attack her.
96. In 2020 Trump risked the lives of Gold Star families by visiting
them when he reportedly knew he had tested positive for covid. Trump
later tried to blame the families for his infection.
97. He banned transgender service members from the military.
98. He spent $5.4 million of taxpayer money on a dictator-style
military parade in D.C.
99. He attempted to remove protections from nearly 35 million acres of
public lands – roughly the size of the entire state of Florida.
100. He even contested the only election he won, falsely claiming that “millions” had voted illegally in 2016, and that was the only reason
he lost the popular vote.
Honestly, there's so much more, from exchanging “love letters” with
North Korea's brutal dictator to late-night tweet binges.
Tell me the biggest things you think I may have missed.
I can understand why a lot of people want to block all of this out of
their memories. But we cannot afford to forget just how terrible
Trump’s time in the White House was for this nation.
And we sure as hell can’t afford to put him back there.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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