Trump's biggest accomplishments and failures from his 1-term presidency
22 hours ago
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President Donald Trump has been among the most controversial presidents in
US history.
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He's just the third commander-in-chief to be impeached, one of 11 incumbent
presidents to fail to win reelection, and also the only America president
to be impeached twice.
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Though his accomplishments are not popular with his critics, Trump, for
better or worse, has been a consequential president.
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His handling of COVID-19 will go down as one of the worst disasters in US
history, with over 386,000 dead and millions unemployed.
President Donald Trump entered the election year as
just the third commander-in-chief in US history to be impeached.
He was ultimately acquitted, in an impeachment trial
that would soon become a distant memory amid a pandemic that's killed over
386,000 Americans and left millions unemployed.
But with just a week left in office, Trump was impeached once again — this time for
inciting a violent insurrection at the US Capitol. He's now the only American
president who has been impeached twice.
Trump is just the 11th incumbent president who won their
party's nomination but failed to win reelection. He was defeated by
President-elect Joe Biden in an election he has baselessly written off as fraudulent.
To many, Trump has been the most controversial and
divisive president in modern US history, but has enjoyed a remarkably steady
approval rating thanks to his staunchly loyal supporters.
Even as polling has repeatedly shown that most
Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, his overall approval rating has barely changed.
Here are Trump's biggest accomplishments and failures
as president, measured by their overall impact and taking into account the
general response from Congress, the public, and the world.
Accomplishment:
Reshaping the federal judiciary
Trump's most lasting impact on the country will be the
reshaping of the federal judiciary.
So far, Trump has installed three Supreme Court
justices and 220 judges overall to the federal bench — all for lifetime
appointments. Amy Coney Barrett became Trump's third Supreme Court justice on
October 26, barely a week before Election Day.
By December 2019, Trump nominees made up roughly 25%
of all US circuit court judges, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.
In four years, he's appointed 53 judges on the 13 US
circuit courts. To put this in perspective, former President Barack Obama
appointed 55 circuit judges in his two terms in the White House.
The courts get the final say in US politics, setting
precedents that can shape the country for years to come.
Even though Trump was not reelected in 2020, his
presidency will continue to have an influence on the direction of the US
because of the sheer number of conservative federal judges he's installed.
Accomplishment:
Space Force
Andrew Harnik/AP
In signing a $738 billion defense spending bill just a
few days before Christmas, Trump officially established the sixth branch of the
US Armed Forces — the Space Force.
The Space Force is the first new military service
since the US Air Force was created in 1947.
Despite its name, the new branch has not been
established to protect the planet from extraterrestrial threats, but is tasked
with protecting the US military's assets in space.
"This is not a farce. This is nationally
critical," Gen. John Raymond, who Trump tapped to lead the Space Force,
told reporters recently. "We are elevating space commensurate with its
importance to our national security and the security of our allies and
partners."
Many of the details surrounding the Space Force must
still be ironed out. In many ways, the new branch is simply a more centralized
version of military missions in space that already existed from the Air Force,
Army, and Navy.
Todd Harrison, who directs the Aerospace Security
Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, recently told
NPR: "It will create a centralized, unified chain of command that is
responsible for space, because ultimately when responsibility is fragmented, no
one's responsible."
Accomplishment:
Tax reform
Reuters/Carlos Barria
Three years into his presidency, Trump's signature
legislative achievement remains a Republican tax bill that made sweeping
changes to the tax code — the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
As Business Insider's Joseph Zeballos-Roig recently reported:
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The law was the biggest overhaul to
the nation's tax code in three decades, and the president pitched it as
"rocket fuel" for the American economy.
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It permanently slashed the corporate tax rate to 21%
from 35% while also providing temporary benefits for individuals and their
families.
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Critics argued it was a windfall for massive
corporations at the expense of the middle class. Meanwhile, supporters of the
tax cuts contended it would unleash an
economic bonanza. Businesses would invest in their operations, they said, resulting in
improved worker productivity and higher wages.
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Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, among others, said the law would
juice the nation's gross domestic product to 3% (or more, as Trump said 6%) and soon
pay for itself and spread prosperity.
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But the law has achieved none of the ambitious goals
that Republicans put forward — and there are scant signs they ever will.
Accomplishment:
First Step Act
Trump signed the First Step Act into law in December
2018, marking the first legislative victory in years for advocates seeking to
reform the criminal justice system.
The bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support
in Congress. It offers relatively modest changes to the federal prison system,
but was praised as an important step forward by groups and activists seeking to
end mass incarceration.
Business Insider's Michelle Mark summarized the key aspects of the legislation after
it passed in the Senate last year:
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The passage of the bill ... marked the first major
legislative win in decades to address mass incarceration at the federal level.
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The bill overhauls certain federal sentencing laws,
reducing mandatory minimum sentences for drug felonies and expanding
early-release programs.
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The bill also makes retroactive a 2010 federal
sentencing law reducing the sentencing disparity between crack and powder
cocaine offenses.
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The bill also aims to lower recidivism by offering
more rehabilitation and job-training opportunities, and it includes provisions
intended to treat prisoners humanely — banning the shackling of pregnant
inmates, halting the use of solitary confinement for most juvenile inmates, and
mandating that prisoners be placed in facilities within 500 miles from their
families.
Accomplishment:
Defeating ISIS's caliphate and killing Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
Associated Press
ISIS shocked the world in 2014 when it took over a
large swath of territory across Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate.
The terrorist group's territorial holdings were the
basis for its so-called caliphate, and provided it will a major base of
operations to conduct attacks across the world.
After a five-year effort led by the US, ISIS's
caliphate was finally defeated in March 2019.
Trump has at times falsely claimed that ISIS is totally defeated,
embellishing the extent of the US military's success against the terrorist
organization during his presidency. Though the terrorist group has lost its
territory — its so-called caliphate — it's still estimated to have up to 18,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria.
In late October, a US raid led to the death of ISIS
leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Baghdadi was the world's most wanted terrorist up to
that point and his death represented a major blow to the terrorist group.
"Last night, the United States brought the
world's No. 1 terrorist leader to justice," Trump said at the time.
"Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead."
"Capturing or killing him has been the top
national security priority of my administration," he added.
Failure:
Charlottesville and George Floyd
Anthony Crider/Wikimedia Commons
Trump's response to a deadly neo-Nazi rally in
Charlottesville, Virginia, remains one of the most controversial moments in his
presidency.
It was emblematic of Trump's struggle to bring the country together after tragedies,
and more generally. His response also typified his controversial record on race
relations and white supremacy.
Trump blamed "many sides" for the violence
at the rally, which resulted in the death of a counterprotester, Heather Heyer.
He later said there were "very fine people on both sides."
The president was excoriated by Republicans and
Democrats alike over his response and his failure to offer a swift and forceful
condemnation of white-supremacist violence.
GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, often one
of Trump's fiercest defenders in Congress, at the time said the president's
words were "dividing Americans, not healing them."
"President Trump took a step backward by again
suggesting there is moral equivalency between the white supremacist, neo-Nazis
and KKK members," Graham added.
In the wake of the brutal death of George Floyd at the
hands of Minneapolis police and the nationwide protests that followed, Trump
also failed to rise to the occasion. He's done far
more to divide the country than bring it
together.
The president had peaceful protesters tear-gassed near the
White House so he could pose for a photo with a Bible at a nearby church. He's
consistently demonized anti-racism demonstrators, and controversially sent federal agents into US cities to
squash unrest and intimidate the local population. Trump has elevated conspiracy theorists and people who've threatened protesters with guns.
Historians have warned that Trump's tactics mirror those of authoritarian regimes.
Trump has frequently employed racist rhetoric during his
presidency, but especially during times of heightened racial tensions.
Polling shows that the vast majority of Black
Americans believe Trump is a racist, and his approval rating with this
demographic stands at 8%, according to Gallup.
Failure:
America's global image is in shambles
Reuters
America's global image has declined significantly
under Trump, who has repeatedly insulted key US allies while cozying up to
dictators.
The president's tendency to push important allies away
and isolate the US, including by pulling out of landmark international
agreements like the Paris climate accord, has had a palpable impact.
People across the world have expressed negative views
on Trump. Pew Research Center in January 2020 released a survey of 32 countries that showed a
median of 64% said they do not have confidence in Trump to do the right thing
in world affairs, and just 29% expressed confidence in the president.
Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic has also
left the US embarrassed on the world stage, and created a
void in global leadership that China has rushed to fill.
Failure:
Family separations and the deaths of migrant children
John Haltiwanger/INSIDER
Trump in 2016 campaigned on reducing undocumented
immigration, pledging to take a hardline approach.
He made good on that promise when coming into office,
but has been accused of human-rights abuses and violating
international law by the UN.
The Trump administration's "zero tolerance"
policy on illegal border crossings led to the separations of at least 5,500 families and saw children placed in cages. Lawyers say
they are still struggling to find the parents of 545
children who had been separated at the US-Mexico border.
The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics at
the time described the practice as "nothing less than government-sanctioned child
abuse."
After widespread backlash, Trump issued an executive
order in June 2018 to halt the family separations, and a federal judge ordered
the Trump administration to reunite all those it had separated. But the fallout
from the separations is ongoing.
Trump has falsely blamed his predecessor, former
President Barack Obama, for the policy that saw thousands of children separated
from their parents.
Meanwhile, at least six migrant children have died
in US custody since September 2018, leading to widespread condemnation of
conditions in detention facilities.
The UN human-rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, in July
said she was "shocked" by the US government's treatment of migrant children
and the conditions they faced in detention facilities after crossing the border
from Mexico.
"As a pediatrician, but also as a mother and a
former head of state, I am deeply shocked that children are forced to sleep on
the floor in overcrowded facilities, without access to adequate healthcare or
food, and with poor sanitation conditions," Bachelet, the former president
of Chile, stated.
Failure: Iran,
Syria, and Afghanistan
Michael Gruber/Getty Images; Olivier
Douliery-Pool/Getty Images; Samantha Lee/Business Insider
Trump's decision to unilaterally withdraw the US
from the 2015 nuclear deal in May 2018 has
induced chaos throughout the Middle East.
It remains one of Trump's most unpopular decisions in
the global arena, and has been condemned by top US allies who were also
signatories to the deal.
The president has failed to thwart Iran's aggressive
behavior in the region through a maximum pressure campaign, meant to squeeze
Tehran into negotiating a more stringent version of the pact.
After a series of incidents in the Persian Gulf region
in 2019, tensions between Washington and Tehran reached historic heights and
sparked fears of war. This fears were exacerbated after Trump ordered a strike
that killed Iran's top general, Qassem Soleimani, in early January. The strike
led Iran to retaliate and fire on US troops in the region, and dozens were
seriously injured.
Iran has essentially abandoned the 2015 nuclear deal,
which was designed to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Trump's decision to pull US troops out of northern
Syria in October is also among his most disastrous foreign policy moves. In
doing so, Trump effectively abandoned US-allied Kurdish forces who bore the
brunt of the US-led campaign against ISIS to a Turkish military invasion.
The withdrawal induced a humanitarian crisis and
created a security vacuum that Russia, Iran, and Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad, an accused war criminal, all benefited from.
Trump has repeatedly pledged to end "endless
wars," zeroing in on Afghanistan. He wanted to remove all US troops from
Afghanistan by the November election, but that didn't
happen. The US is engaged in ongoing but tenuous peace talks with the Taliban that
have occurred in concert with ongoing violence in the country.
Meanwhile, The New York Times in June reported that US
intelligence officials determined Russia has paid bounties to Taliban-linked
Afghan militants to kill US troops.
The Trump administration has taken no known responses.
Though the White House has claimed Trump was not initially briefed on the
matter, reporting from multiple outlets suggests otherwise. Trump
in a recent interview said he has not confronted Russian President Vladimir Putin on
the matter.
Failure:
Replacing the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare)
Screenshot/CNN
The late Sen. John McCain's iconic
"thumbs-down" vote denied Trump a full congressional repeal (even a
"skinny repeal") of former President Barack Obama's signature
healthcare law.
But Trump has had success in dismantling parts of the
law. His tax bill included a rollback of the tax penalty for those who did not
enroll in healthcare, and the Trump administration has had some success in the
courts regarding the individual mandate.
In December 2019, a federal appeals court struck down a core
part of the law — the individual mandate. It did not overturn the entire law,
sending it back to a lower court, and leaving the fate of Obamacare uncertain
as an election year focused on healthcare intensifies.
What Trump has not done in his first three years is
offer a replacement for the Affordable Care Act. As the Associated Press points out, as a
candidate Trump promised "insurance for everybody" and a more
immediate replacement to the nearly decade-old ACA.
The president said he would introduce a
"phenomenal healthcare plan," during an interview with ABC News in June.
Failure:
Impeachment
Associated Press
Trump was impeached in the House of Representatives on
December 18, 2019.
The House approved two articles of impeachment against
Trump, one for abuse of power over his dealings with Ukraine and one for
obstruction of Congress over his efforts to stonewall the impeachment inquiry.
Trump urged Ukraine to launch investigations into his
political rivals as he simultaneously withheld about $400 million in
congressionally approved military aid from the country, which is fighting an
ongoing war against pro-Russian separatists.
The president was acquitted in a Senate trial, but
will still go down as just the third president in US history to be impeached.
GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah also made history by voting to convict Trump,
marking the first time ever that a senator voted to convict a president from
his or her own party.
Failure:
COVID-19 pandemic
Jabin Botsford/Getty Images
Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic will likely
go down as one of the biggest disasters in US history. Hundreds of thousands of
Americans have died, and millions are unemployed.
The US has the worst coronavirus outbreak in the
world, with over 23.1 million confirmed cases and over
386,000 reported fatalities (as of mid-January). The US has had more
coronavirus cases than the populations of many countries. And more Americans
have died from the virus than the number of US soldiers killed in combat in
every war since 1945 combined.
Trump has repeatedly downplayed the threat of the
virus and contradicted top public-health experts, flouting recommendations from
advisors on his own White House coronavirus task force.
In March, Trump privately admitted to veteran reporter
Bob Woodward (on tape) that he was deliberately misleading the public on the
dangers of the virus in an effort to avoid inducing panic.
Public health experts have cited Trump's nonchalant approach to the virus and tendency to reject
science as one of the primary factors in why the US emerged as
the epicenter.
Trump has refused to accept responsibility for his
failed response to the pandemic, blaming China instead.
Failure: The
US economy
Tom Brenner/Reuters
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 is now facing one of the worst economic crises
in its history under Trump, which is 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.
Expanded unemployment benefits provided via the relief
legislation enacted in late March have expired.
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%.
The US national debt is at the highest levels since World
War II, and US economic growth is 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, Trump had not signed a coronavirus
relief bill in roughly half a year.
Failure:
Contracting COVID-19
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 stands 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 former Vice President 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 social
-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
President Donald Trump. Getty
Trump has eroded democratic norms in many ways during
his tenure.
He's repeatedly attacked the media, leading UN experts
to warn that Trump's rhetoric raised the risk of violence against journalists. He's
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, has 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 president's rhetoric has often been viewed as a
source of encouragement by far-right extremist groups, and Trump has frequently
equivocated when asked to condemn such people.
Though President-elect Joe Biden was the clear winner
of the 2020 election, Trump has refused to concede. Trump rejected
the results and has made baseless allegations of fraud.
Even as world leaders began to congratulate Biden, a major sign of the
president-elect'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 president is undermining the political system in
the US and sowing 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 is also set to skip Biden's inauguration. He'll
be the first outgoing president since 1869 to refuse to attend the inauguration
of his successor.
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