After two wonderful nights sleep under the leadership of the Biden administration, I have been wracking my brain trying to think of anything good to say about trump and what he may be remembered for during his seemingly endless but single term in office. I sure there is more that others will point out but the only thing I can come up with is that he was so full of hate and vitriol and sowed so much discourse and division that he brought to the surface the systemic racism that still exists in this country. I am sure he has other accomplishments that need to be pointed out. If anyone can think of any please share.
Not everything he did was bad and I've given him credit for Criminal Justice Reform and getting the first CARES Act passed. The real tragedy of the Trump Presidency wasn't that he was grifting narcissist, we knew that coming in, but that he could've been the transformational President that transcended the parties. If he had actually done infrastructure instead of obsessing about the wall he likely would've had the support of Democrats. He could've addressed the opiod crisis that also likely would've gotten the support of Democrats. There were several opportunities during his administration that just doing a few things different and he could've gone down as an effective President who crossed divisions instead of exacerbating them.
He NEVER would get establishment support. This issue of support transends party line bc of that. He did what was right by his view. NOT the view of billionaires and internationalists.
I agree with much of what you point out. Unfortunately he never pivoted to a more responsible form of governing. Therefore he will forever be known as a grifting narcissist. He had chance after chance after chance throughout his failed presidency to bring people together but instead he chose to deny, lie, and spread propaganda. Because of this, we cannot begin to understand how much work Biden has ahead of him to undo the damage trump has caused and to get us all back to a better place again.
you might not know this but he claims to be a billionaire and he’s hire foreign workers ans have companies all over the world (internationalist)
I do know however his policies are better for America. America should be prioritized and he is far better than a neocon or neolib.
Push for EUA of monoclonal antibodies treatment (although laid not ground work to make it widely accessible; as usual, he left it to others which has so far been slow to provide it in a timely manner with ease of access).
He laid bare our chief problem of domestic terrorism and conspiracy theorists. He showed that words do matter. They cannot be escalated ad infinitum without significant consequences. If people can hold onto those important ideas even for a few years, that could be a good thing. He created a roll call of GOP politicians who really stand for our model of government and which ones would just trample that for power. That's indelibly recorded in thousands of quotations now and the votes to certify the EC. That's a pretty striking piece of handiwork. not saying those outweigh the many negatives and corrosives. But I can think of no other person better able to bring all the Proud Boy types (from moms' basements and from congressional offices) into the light so quickly and so obviously.
His undoing was covid. I think he'd have been reelected if not for his botching of handling the pandemic. I wish that people would have looked at Trump and thought, "damn, we centralize too much power and influence on just one person - we need to scale that back." But I don't think that is a takeaway that many have had. So, we will just chill until the next Trump and then act stunned again.
The stuff he helped broker between Israel and the rest of the middle east is more than any modern president. Although I don't agree with how he went about dealing with China, he did put China on notice that we are willing to go a "little crazy" if they push us too far. Criminal reform was good also.
Experts do and will continue to debate what weighs more: ripping up the Iran nuclear deal or the pro-Israel treaty your reference. Time will tell, kind of.
Hard to know. It really depends on if Iran was truly living up to their side of the agreement. Only the guys at the Pentagon have that information.
It seemed like even when he did the right thing, he did it the wrong way and for the wrong reasons or else regretted doing it in the first place. I doubt there was any potential there. His narcissism compels him. He was too psychologically broken to ever rise above politics -- he somehow found a basement under politics. I guess that's some kind of good, but he also increased these phenomena at the same time. He radicalized people. It's like giving Osama bin Laden credit for showing us there was a Muslim fundamentalist grievance against the USA. But this is an appreciation thread. But the nicest thing I can say is that there are some things he didn't choose to wreck. He screwed up the covid response, but he at least didn't get in the way of rapid development of the vaccine, for example. But it's pretty faint praise to say in some discrete areas you didn't get in the way.