Now lets talk Tiny trump.... FAILURES: Just to me
Post# of 123668
FAILURES: Just to mention afew.... LOL LOL LOL
Trump often took credit for the robust US economy before the pandemic, ignoring that much of the growth began during the Obama administration.
The US faced one of the worst economic crises in its history under Trump, which was intrinsically linked to his disastrous response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Coronavirus lockdowns in early 2020 and reduced consumer spending led to tens of millions of job losses as whole segments of the economy sputtered. The economy has since begun adding back jobs, but is far from a full recovery as the US struggles to contain the coronavirus and Biden takes over.
Roughly 22 million jobs were lost from February to April. Though nearly half of those jobs have been recovered, the unemployment rate is still at 7.9% (estimated to be about 12 million people). The pre-pandemic unemployment rate was 3.4%.
As Trump left office, the US national debt was at the highest levels since World War II. And US economic growth was set to average just above 0% for Trump's first term because of the pandemic recession, according to The Washington Post.
Though the economy is still far from recovered, Trump also failed to bring Congress together to pass a second coronavirus stimulus package prior to Election Day as Americans across the country struggled to cover rent and other bills. The GOP-controlled Senate instead prioritized confirming Trump's Supreme Court nominee, essentially placing the economy and the livelihoods of Americans on the back-burner.
As of Election Day 2020, Trump had not signed a coronavirus relief bill in roughly half a year. He finally signed a $900 billion relief package shortly after Christmas in late 2020.
Failure: Contracting COVID-19
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ALEX EDELMAN/AFP via Getty Images
As the president of the US, Trump is the most heavily protected person on the planet. The fact he contracted COVID-19 in October 2020 stood as a catastrophic failure and a national-security crisis for the US.
The president routinely flouted public health recommendations before getting infected. Less than a week before he was diagnosed, Trump mocked then-presidential candidate Joe Biden for routinely wearing a mask in public.
Top public health experts have repeatedly urged Americans to wear a mask or face covering, touting the practice as the best tool available in fighting the virus.
Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19 just days after essentially holding a super-spreader event in the Rose Garden at the White House to announce his Supreme Court nominee. Attendees did not socially distance, and many were seen without masks.
Well over a dozen people in Trump's orbit tested positive for COVID-19 after the event
Failure: Damaging democracy
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President Donald Trump. Getty
Trump eroded democratic norms in many ways during his tenure.
He repeatedly attacked the media, leading UN experts to warn that Trump's rhetoric raised the risk of violence against journalists. He threatened to deploy combat troops to American cities, over the objections of their elected leaders, and ordered illegal actions like demanding poll workers stop counting ballots.
Trump's relentless dissemination of disinformation on an array of topics, particularly the electoral process, led historians and experts on fascism to compare him to dictators like Benito Mussolini.
Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), a project that monitors the health of democracy across the world, in its 2020 report said the US has become more autocratic in the Trump era.
"The United States – former vanguard of liberal democracy – has lost its way," V-Dem's 2020 report said, adding that the US "is the only country in Western Europe and North America suffering from substantial autocratization."
The former president's rhetoric was often viewed as a source of encouragement by far-right extremist groups, and Trump frequently equivocated when asked to condemn such people.
Though President Joe Biden was the clear winner of the 2020 election, Trump refused to concede. Trump rejected the results and made baseless allegations of fraud.
Even as world leaders began to congratulate Biden, a major sign of Biden's legitimacy, Trump continued to deny reality.
After weeks of rejecting the election result and attempting to overturn the outcome, the president provoked an attempted coup at the US Capitol on the day lawmakers met to certify Biden's Electoral College victory. He riled up his supporters in an inflammatory speech, urging them to march on the Capitol and "fight like hell." They listened.
The pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6 destroyed property and clashed with police. Five people were killed in the process. Trump was subsequently impeached for inciting the violent insurrection.
After the violence, Trump released a video acknowledging that a new administration would take over, but he did not explicitly concede.
Trump's refusal to concede breaks from a democratic tradition in the US that dates back to its earliest days when President John Adams lost the 1800 election and peacefully stepped aside for Thomas Jefferson, a member of another political party, to take over.
The former president undermined the political system in the US and sowed doubt about the integrity of the country's elections. Every president prior to Trump allowed for a peaceful transition of power after they'd served two terms or lost an election.
Trump also skipped Biden's inauguration. He's the first outgoing president since 1869 to refuse to attend the inauguration of his successor.