Donald Trump

Donald J. Trump's Angry Birds mugshot, 2023, a photo that no other US President has posed for.

God, guns, and freedom U.S. Politics

Starting arguments over Thanksgiving dinner

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Persons of interest

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Not to be confused with his equally racist father or his even dumber son.

“”He's an ass.

—George H. W. Bush during an interview with Maureen Dowd.

“”They promised they were going to take on corruption in Washington. Instead, they've racked up enough indictments to field a football team. Nobody in my administration got indicted, which, by the way, is not that high a bar.

—Barack Obama at a rally for the 2018 midterm elections.

“”Yet when the difference between the public and the private collapses, democracy is placed under unsustainable pressure. In such a situation, only the shameless politician can survive, one who cannot be exposed. A work of fiction such as "Donald Trump, successful businessman" cannot be shamed because it feels no sense of responsibility for the real world. A work of fiction responds to revelation by demanding more. As a candidate, Trump did just this, calling on Moscow to keep searching and exposing.

—Timothy Snyder.

Donald John Trump, Sr. (1946–), is an American businessman, rapist, reality-TV host, four times indicted criminal, convicted felon, and conspiracy theorist who was the forty-fifth President of the United States from 2017 to 2021 and was re-elected in 2024. He is an adjudicated liar, adjudicated rapist: yes, he's a sadistic "sick fuck", and the first convicted felon to be elected President of the United States. Due to his involvement in an attempted self-coup after losing reelection, he has the infamous dishonor of being the first president in American history impeached and acquitted twice by the House of Representatives, with the most bipartisan impeachment standing in US history.

More proof of his self-described "very stable genius" comes from his public life and career reading like a Greatest Hits album of everything wrong with American society. Once tweeting a quote by radio host Wayne Allyn Root, who called Trump the "Chosen One and the King of Israel", he is infamous for being a bizarrely unsuccessful businessman, brash television personality, fascist and neo-Nazi sympathizer, con artist, honorary Russian Cossack, heel wrestling personality, sexual-assault enthusiast, demagogue, personality-cult leader, and an aspiring strongman, Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and subject of extensive false equivalency. Thanks to the confluence of his legendary narcissism and propensity for self-promotion, minimal attempts by his Republican supporters to moderate his malignant impulsivity, and four years at the tiller of perhaps the world's most influential public platform with an itchy Twitter finger, he holds the distinction of having likely told more public (and demonstrable) lies than any other person in human history.

Elected against all odds, Trump's presidency was an unmitigated disaster. Responsible for numerous human rights violations and outright crimes against humanity, he was condemned by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, for taking migrant children from their parents at the Mexican border and putting them in literal cages. His inflammatory rhetoric, defense of his antagonistic or outright homicidal supporters, endorsement of police killings on leftists, bragging that his government assassinated leftists and antifascists (and heavily implying under his direct orders), and vicious scapegoating of minorities directly inspired multiple acts of violence, including against political rivals and their relatives, and even actual politically-motivated murders by his supporters, even against people unconnected to Trump.

For many, his presidency could be summed up by a very simple phrase: "the cruelty is the point." Nothing mattered to Trump or his supporters more than crushing any and all opposition. Not pride, convenience, practicality, nor pragmatism, just pure unadulterated suffering. All of this would lead to predictable results.

Following the inglorious end of his presidency, Trump gained the dubious honor of becoming the only former US president to ever face criminal charges, and later the first ever former President to be convicted of any crime. Presently, he is indicted in two cases, both relating to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results (resulting in the 2021 U.S. coup attempt). He was also charged with espionage due to mishandling classified documents, but a biased Republican judge threw the case out on a technicality.

After being indicted in a 4th criminal case for illegally forging business records after paying hush money to a porn star, on May 30, 2024, Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts, with all charges elevated to a felony due to being part of a conspiracy to corruptly influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Separately, on February 16, 2024, Trump lost a civil fraud trial in New York and was ordered to pay a $355 million penalty. In addition, the judge (Arthur Engoron) imposed a three year ban on Trump and his adult sons from serving in top leadership roles at any New York company (including his own). In another case, he was found liable for sexual abuse against a woman in the 1990s.

To the surprise of no-one, he claims that all of those indictments and convictions were nothing more than a political witch-hunt and that he did no wrong.

Despite being a rapist and convicted felon, Trump won the election for US president in 2024 on an ALL-CAPS law-and-order/white supremacist/fascist/climate change denialist, anti-LGBT platform, the "build the wall", "stop migrant invasion", ending urban blight, fighting foreign drug cartels, "Great Iron Dome Missile Defense", (highly-unlikely) "large tax cuts for workers", and ending incentives to purchase electric vehicles. This makes him to be the first convicted felon to be elected president.

But first…

Cadet Bone Spurs, not reporting for duty. (In case you're curious, he is wearing the uniform of the New York Military Academy, 1964.)

Some insight into Trump can be gleaned from his past. Indeed, he was raised by a literal sociopath and a complete racist, but that doesn't answer the full question. Trump couldn't just sail into power in a hypothetical, politically stable America. Of course, there is some history prior to the rise of Trump in the United States, which clarifies the picture:

Going back a few decades

See the main articles on this topic: Southern Strategy and Ronald Reagan

Despite the party's origins, mid-20th-century Republicans believed they could improve their electoral odds by winning the South. Barry Goldwater first accomplished this in the 1964 US Presidential election, sweeping the Deep South. He managed this primarily because of his record voting against anti-racism legislation, whereas incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson campaigned for civil-rights expansion. This proved to the Republican Party that they can win the South, and when your next nominee is the Tricky Dick himself, anything for votes! While Nixon initially failed to win the Deep South, he succeeded in 1972 when he destroyed George McGovern. However, this was only the beginning of the GOP's rapid descent.

Enter Ronald Reagan, working alongside racist ratfucker, Lee Atwater, who started his 1984 presidential campaign in fucking Mississippi. His Reaganomics genius, anti-fact social conservative mentality, and perfection of dog-whistle politics massively accelerated the rightward shift already imposed by the Southern Strategy,^{[citation needed]} which Reagan himself used to get elected.

“”He [Reagan] was addicted to faux facts. He would often cite apocryphal quotes and anecdotes and statistics that weren’t really true but would keep citing them anyway, even when it was pointed out that he didn’t have any basis for doing so. You can argue that acclimated the Republican party to the fire hose of falsehoods that you see from Trump. Even more fundamentally, Reagan’s policies truly favoured the wealthy and increased income disparity in the United States. You can argue that those policies, whether it was the tax cuts, lack of anti-trust, anti-union activity, all the rest, by widening those income disparities opened the way for populism in America, both from the left and the rightwing populism that Trump exploits today.

—Max Boot, who once admired Reagan in his youth, and is author of Reagan: His Life and Legend

Scummy business

“”In 1995, when he offered this company, if a monkey had thrown a dart, at the stock page, the monkey on average would've made 150 percent. But the people that believed in him, who listened to his siren song, ended up losing well over 90 cents in the dollar. They got back less than a dime.

—Warren Buffett on Trump's Atlantic City hotels business

Complete incompetence

Yes, this was real.

“”When it comes to great steaks, I've just raised the stakes! Trump Steaks are by far the best tasting, most flavorful beef you've ever had. Truly in a league of their own.

—Donald Trump on his Trump Steaks™ partnership with Sharper Image (an electronics store).

“”The net of all that was we literally sold almost no steaks. If we sold $50,000 of steaks grand total, I'd be surprised.

—Jerry Levin, CEO of Sharper Image, Trump Steaks™ post-mortem.

It's always been a bit of a mystery just how much Trump buys into his own bullshit. He estimates his net worth at "OVER TEN BILLION", which is impossible for him to prove, but also impossible for anyone to disprove. This isn’t just based on his assets (which are not terribly liquid), but also how he feels about his worth daily. In truth, the record shows a middling businessman with many structural advantages, who came out on top because of how rigged the system is. It's not hard to make a lot of money in New York real estate, especially when your rich daddy gives you a big head start. In fact, over time, it becomes practically impossible to lose money. This is relevant to his claim that he can do an exceptional job of running the US government, since he hasn't been truly tested in a situation with no fawning yes-men or training wheels. Oh fuck.

Really, the Trump Brand still exists and is fiscally solvent because of his daughter Ivanka. Supposedly, his sons are both dumbasses, but she is scarily intelligent. It was her idea to start selling off the name in exchange for royalties without putting up the capital costs of construction and running a property; Donald originally opposed this, but it is now the cornerstone of the company, since it's effectively free money. In 2016, Ivanka was apparently worried about damage to the Trump brand, trying to spin out a separate sub-brand; she's the one who staged a family intervention and convinced dad to fire his campaign manager.

Trump's record on predicting economic trends is also laughably lousy:

• In 1999, he predicted an economic crash worse than the Great Depression.
• Then, in 2001, he reversed his position and claimed the US market was strong right before a minor recession hit.
• In 2005, he claimed the real estate market was strong and followed this up with the launching of "Trump Mortgage" in 2006. Trump Mortgage subsequently went out of business when the housing market crashed the next year.
• In 2011, he predicted massive inflation, suggesting the price of a loaf of bread would soon be $25.

Criminal connections

"Одобрено Дональдом Трампом, 45-м президентом США" (Approved by Donald Trump, 45^th President of the United States), according to the Ураласбест (Uralasbest) asbestos company

“”That may be Trump's one skill – performing so many outrages that he gets us to sideline some of them while we try to deal with the worst/most recent.

—Ophelia Benson

His connections with mob figures run deep, according to journalist Wayne Barrett; they're mostly associated with his casino and huge erections, not exclusively limited to buildings. In 2015, it was revealed Trump was involved with Colombo crime family figures during the making of Trump's first name-branded product: a Cadillac limousine in 1988. Trump will never willingly release his tax returns, and Ted Cruz suggests those returns could show the extent of his mob dealings. Trump and some of his spawn have been named as material witnesses in a massive tax-avoidance scheme by mob-connected Felix Sater. As an aside, it has been reported that Trump himself paid no income taxes in 1978, 1979, 1984, 1992, and 1994.

The tax schemes have apparently caught up with the Trumps: in 2018, The New York Times accused Trump and his siblings of engaging in vast tax fraud beginning in the 1990s based on confidential tax returns and financial records. Following the Times' report, New York state tax officials began their own investigation into these allegations.

The house that Donald built with illegal immigrant labor

Trump's connections to organized crime, according to Politico, date to shortly after his earliest forays into Manhattan real estate. Trump made friends with Roy Cohn, formerly Joseph McCarthy's legal counsel during the McCarthy Senate hearings, but who by then was a mob lawyer. Cohn likely introduced Trump to Genovese crime boss Anthony Salerno. In his 1997 book, The Art of the Comeback, Trump denied that there was any association between asbestos exposure and cancer, stating "I believe that the movement against asbestos was led by the mob, because it was often mob-related companies that would do the asbestos removal. Great pressure was put on politicians, and as usual, the politicians relented." Ironically, it was Trump's hiring of organized crime-controlled companies that enabled his demolition contractor to hire the illegal workers that were exposed to asbestos. Trump was still pushing asbestos denialism in 2018 via his EPA director Scott Pruitt, who announced that the EPA would cease evaluating asbestos hazards in the environment. This is some four decades after the last known time that the asbestos industry itself engaged in denialism.

In 1979, Trump hired a demolition contractor to take down the building on the site of the future Trump Tower. The contractor used undocumented, non-union Polish workers who were exposed to asbestos. Though the site was a union site, there was no picket because it was a mob-controlled union; Trump was fully aware that the Polish workers were in the country illegally. It came out in 2017 after a judge released the documents that he paid $1.4 million to settle the resulting class-action lawsuit. Trump used overpriced concrete from companies controlled by Salerno and Gambino family crime boss Paul Castellano to build Trump Tower and Trump Plaza. In fairness, though, the mob essentially controlled the entire construction industry in NYC at that time, so whether he can be blamed for this is debateable.

Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, prior to its bankruptcy and sale.

When Trump sought to build casinos in Atlantic City in 1982, he could hide his mob connections by persuading the New Jersey Attorney General John Degnan to only investigate him for the prior six months. At least one Trump company has been exposed as having ties to international money laundering from an ex-Soviet Union state, and it has been speculated that the Trump casinos may have been used for laundering before bankruptcy. Trump bought land in Atlantic City at an inflated price from hitmen connected to Nicky Scarfo, of the Philadelphia crime family, as well as purchasing or leasing other land that likely benefitted the Scarfo mob.

In 1994, Trump was videoed having a conversation with Robert LiButti, an associate of the infamous "Teflon Don" John Gotti. Although Trump denied personally knowing LiButti, LiButti's daughter says her father was a personal friend of Trump and was granted personal use of Trump's private helicopter, and that Trump was invited to her 35th birthday party. LiButti was also a regular at the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, which received a hefty fine in 1991 for having shuffled black and female casino workers to keep them away from LiButti, a noted racist. He was convicted of tax fraud the same year he and Trump were seen together, so you can see why Trump liked him so much.

A Saudi prince claims he bailed Trump out twice when the mogul got into financial difficulties. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal bought up a private yacht that Trump was forced to cede to creditors during the 1990s and later helped buy a NYC hotel when Trump was short of funds a second time. Said Saud is now embarrassed by the association.

On January 1, 2017, Trump hosted and appeared on stage with Joey 'No Socks' Cinque at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. Cinque is a Gambino crime family affiliate who was convicted of felony possession of a trove of stolen artwork.

At the end of his presidency, Trump ally Roger Stone presented him with a list of people, convicted and otherwise, who he felt Trump should grant presidential pardons to. The list included Colombo family figures Michael Sessa and Victor Orena (who were involved in the family's labor racketeering and general misconduct), million-dollar drug dealer Scott Robinson (whom Stone said had "busted [his] ass" helping Trump to get elected), and Black Mafia Family leader Demetrius Flenory, whom Stone advocated pardoning in order to win favour within the black community. Although no pardons ever materialised for anyone on the list, Trump was evidently willing to consider helping organised crime figures in order to score political points against Biden.

At a photo op in 2022, Trump was seen with former Mafia hitman John Alite, although it's unclear whether Trump knew who he was. The DJT has also posed for photos alongside Joey Merlino, the alleged leader of the Philadelphia crime family who has previous convictions for racketeering and extortion.

Trump has lied on numerous occasions about his connections to organized crime, including under oath.

Trump also was good friends with P Diddy, a now disgraced ex-music mogul indicted for sex trafficking. He even defended Diddy on The Apprentice, calling him a "good guy" during a dialogue with a contestant who indicated the opposite.

A photo of Donald and Melania Trump with P Diddy taken at Mar-a-Lago in 2005.

To summarise the summary and return to this section's opening quote: Donald Trump's life and career have essentially been one decades-long Gish Gallop through the ethical badlands.

Golf

The President at his own golf club with Rush Limbaugh

Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, the real-life Auric Goldfinger has been trying to build a golf course on (what used to be) a protected wetland habitat in his mother’s native country. He tried to have several of his Scottish neighbors evicted, including a local farmer by the name of Michael Forbes, who refused an offer on his property. For this, Forbes was awarded the "Top Scot" award in 2012. His actions were parodied in this song.

Since then, the Scottish government's plans to increase wind turbine capacity (Trump's opposition to which even led to a heated discussion over Twitter with the host of the British version of The Apprentice, Lord Alan Sugar) have encouraged Trump to cancel his plans, proving once and for all that they are worth every penny. Trump reported to Scottish authorities that he lost millions on the project, whereas in his US presidential disclosure, he claimed that the project was highly profitable.

Trump University

“”People don't know how great you are. People don't know how smart you are. These are the smart people. These are the smart people. These are really the smart people. And they never like to say it, but I say it and I'm a smart person. These are the smart; we have the smartest people. We have the smartest people. And they know it. And some say it, but they hate to say it. But we have the smartest people. Government will start working again. Fixing things.

—Giving people hope

No one has more scorn for the victims of a con-man than the con-man himself.

Trump University was essentially a diploma mill, a scam in which people were promised an education in real estate by hand-picked experts in exchange for exorbitant "tuition". Salesmen were told to apply high-pressure tactics on vulnerable people. Some students were given instruction on raising their credit card limits to pay, others had to cough up their disability money, etc. In return, they received bare-bones real estate education from people Trump never even met, though he was very much involved in the marketing aspects. He got a cut in return for these "institutions" being allowed to use his name.

An even bigger issue lies with the name Trump University itself and its claims to offer certain degrees: graduate, postgraduate, and doctoral. This is in violation of New York law, which requires you to obtain a charter to call yourself a university. In 2014, the New York Supreme Court held that Trump was personally liable for running an unlicensed school and making false promises through his "university", the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative; this was confirmed by the testimony of a former salesperson and the court-released "Trump University Playbook". About 8000 former students sued Trump U. in two separate class-action lawsuits, one of which involved the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act. In August 2016, Judge Curiel ruled that Trump must face a civil trial for fraud and racketeering under RICO, which automatically requires triple damages.

This is the case in which Trump attacked a “Mexican” judge's ancestry (he's actually from Indiana) because he made a judgment Trump didn't like. But all this shows is that Trump is willing to do anything to help us make him realize his American dream, even if it means ruining us financially.

“”Why isn't this man in jail for fraud? In addition to his phony Trump University, there was also a Trump Institute that used plagiarized materials to peddle real estate advice.

—PZ Myers

Trump managed to settle the Trump University lawsuits for a fraction of the damages. No, we're not sure how this works.

The multilevel marketing company

In 2009, Trump "partnered" with the founders of Ideal Health International (est. 1997), a multilevel marketing business, rebranding this pyramid scheme as The Trump Network. "Partnering" in this case is just another Trumpian term of art. It was yet another Trump brand rental where he claimed not to be involved with the company's operations, even though he, company representatives and advertising for the network implied there was an actual partnership "that was certain to lift thousands of people into prosperity"; after the brand rental came to an end in 2012, its assets were bought off by a Canadian and rebranded.

The "business", which consisted of selling a urine test device with customized vitamins, not only made investors lose money buying the highly overpriced products, but also buying customized infomercials on local TV channels.

Fraudulent valuations

In 2019, the former Trump attorney Michael Cohen testified in Congress that the Trump Organization manipulated its business asset valuations in order to obtain favorable financial terms (for example, inflating asset values when applying for a loan in order to get favorable treatment, while deflating asset values when reporting to the government in order to reduce real estate taxes.) The manipulation of these valuations was egregious enough to potentially be fraudulent. Several other media outlets came to the same conclusion after their own investigation.

One particular noteworthy example of this manipulation was Trump's own home in Florida, Mar-a-Lago. In financial documents, Trump presented the home to be worth as much as $612 million. In contrast, an outside appraisal put the value of the property as $28 million.

Such raised some major red flags with Letitia James, the newly elected attorney general of New York, who had won the 2018 election in part by vowing to investigate Trump's New York business dealings. After a lengthy investigation by James (in part lengthened due to attempts from Trump to stonewall the investigators), in 2023, New York sued the Trump Organization, claiming that Trump's valuation manipulations was indeed fraud.

In late September 2023, Manhattan Supreme Court judge Arthur Engoron concurred, finding that between 2014 and 2021, Trump overvalued his assets to the tune of between $812 million and $2.2 billion. Engoron issued a partial summary judgement in favor of the state of New York. A civil trial was set up in October 2023 to determine how much Donald Trump and his business owed in penalties.

On February 16 2024, Engoron issued his judgement regarding the penalties. Trump was ordered to pay a fine of $454 million. Engoron also barred Trump for serving as a director or an officer of any New York corporation for three years. Other members of the Trump Organization, including Trump's sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., were also issued fines and business leadership bans.

"Charity"

As of 2015, Trump owned 30% of the Bank of America building in San Francisco, location of the "Banker's Heart" statue. Apparently, this is where he left his heart.

Donald Trump has been called "the least charitable billionaire in the world". Take, for example, his donations to 9/11 charities: $1,000 (his own backyard, no less). The donation went to the anti-psychiatry Scientology front group, the "New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Fund", which was co-founded by Tom Cruise. Trump, who owns 40 Wall Street, actually received $150,000 for damages due to 9/11 from a special federal fund earmarked for "small businesses", even though the building wasn't damaged.

Many of Trump's larger donations are on their face self-serving, in the form of donations to:

• His sons' schools
• Golf-related charities
• Celebrity-related charities
• Land donations with golf easements
• Asbestos-contaminated land from failed golf-course projects ("Donald J. Trump State Park")

To prove his anti-vaxx bona fides, Trump's foundation gave $10,000 to Jenny McCarthy's "charity" Generation Rescue.

As for real charities, Trump has a pattern of stiffing them: The Donald J. Trump Foundation had actually received more donations from a single other donor (World Wrestling Entertainment) than Trump himself contributed during the period 1990 to 2009 when he gave a paltry $3.7 million. In 2014, Trump personally gave $0 to his own foundation.

The office of Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi was reported to have been considering an investigation of Trump University just before requesting and receiving a $25,000 political donation from Trump himself. The donation allegedly came illegally from a non-profit Trump family foundation, which is not allowed to make political donations because of its tax status. It's also come out that he may not have been donating the proceeds of several business ventures to charity as he had promised to do, which could amount to fraud. This is aside from the veterans' charity snafu. These include Trump U, Trump Vodka, and his new book Crippled America, all high-profile activities with profits supposedly going to benefit charity. The harsh spotlight of a presidential run was suddenly not working out for him. The Trump Foundation has been illegally soliciting money in the State of New York because it is not registered to do so as required by law. On October 3, 2016, the Trump Foundation was ordered to cease and desist fundraising immediately by the New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office. The charity did not register properly as it should have and investigations by the Washington Post suggested Trump benefited personally from spending by the charity. Additionally, the New York tax-collecting agency opened an investigation in July 2018 into the Trump Foundation, which could result in criminal charges.

Become president, give nothing back

The question naturally arises, does this have anything to do with his presidency?

Yes! Trump used his office to enrich himself and his associates, retaining ownership of his businesses in violation of the US Constitution. He had the gall to charge the Secret Service for the "privilege" of protecting him, golfed more than 500 times at his own clubs on taxpayer money, and raking in cash from foreign governments through the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC. Trump's businesses brought in $1.9 billion in revenue in the first three years of his presidency. Perhaps not the most intellectually inspired choice voting for a person who is completely out of touch with ordinary people, but Trump himself hasn't cared about intellectual matters; he is a master in conning people, a skill he frequently operated on during his tenure as president.

Tax returns

Donald Trump is the only presidential candidate in decades other than Gerald Ford who hasn’t released his tax returns; Ford published a summary of his instead. Trump specifically said he was unable to because he was under an audit at the time, however there is no law preventing somebody from making their tax returns public while also under an audit, Richard Nixon even did so back in 1960. Although the chances of the bill passing are low, Democrats are proposing legislation requiring presidential candidates to release ten years of tax returns. In support of forcing Trump to release his tax returns, the organization Americans for Tax Fairness argued that this would shine a light on the means by which wealthy people evade taxes in general and on Trump's potentially illicit business interests in particular. Trump has been accused of using public office to enhance his private business interests, which we can easily see as valid given the above evidence.

According to legal experts, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated Trump's ties to Russia, almost certainly had Trump's tax returns. However, he could not release them unless they were relevant to a criminal case.

Rhetoric, deceit, mental health and overall behaviour

See the main article on this topic: Rhetoric of Donald Trump

Trump's most recent book

Donald Trump is notorious for his rabble-rousing and inflammatory, pernicious rhetoric, especially as used toward his political opponents and journalists. He frequently uses coarse language, and has the verbal ability of a grade-schooler on a broken record: no big bad words or nuance. This makes a dangerously convincing combo with the power of repetition, especially when Trump speaks to his audience's racist, antisemitic, xenophobic, or sexist insecurities. This is why people claim that he says it "as it is" when he does nothing of the sort. In fact, the incoherent and often perfidious way he talks (such as labeling news he dislikes "fake news") muddies understanding of his real thoughts and is open to interpretation; it also frequently sets off political fact-checkers like Politifact, FactCheck.org, and Snopes. For instance, his claims that "when Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best" and "they're animals" set off a debate over which group he's really referring to. His poor English is exacerbated when other countries try translating what he's saying.

Psychologists at the University of Texas and Princeton University studied over three million texts dating back to 1789, belonging to political leaders of Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, plus news stories, books, movie subtitles, and cable news transcript. They noticed a clear trend of politicians speaking more simply but with greater confidence. Donald Trump accelerated that trend. In fact, he ranks first on confidence, but last on analytical thinking compared to all other U.S. presidents. John Quincy Adams topped the U.S. chart with just under 99 points in analytical speech, while Trump scored only 16 in a 2015 debate. The average for U.S. presidents is 90, with everyone other than Trump and Barack Obama scoring above 70. In speaking with confidence, Trump's score is 89; the average for U.S. presidents is 64.

The Harvard Republican Club refused to endorse Trump, which is the first time in 128 years they would not endorse the Republican candidate. "He isn't eschewing political correctness. He is eschewing basic human decency."

Trump thinks that slurs are "just words".

Perhaps the most enduring phrase from Trump's 2016 has been his slogan, Make America Great Again. While Trump claimed to have coined the phrase, the similar Let's Make America Great Again was famously the slogan of Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign, and the phrase was also used in speeches by Bill Clinton in 1992.

Compulsion to lie

Trump typo. Or was it?

“”Never has more ignorance been stuffed inside one head.

—Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School

Trump's near-total disdain for the truth has been characterized as either gaslighting everyone he speaks to, or as pathological lying, though not in a clinical sense. His gaslighting also forms part of the full-spectrum of DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim and offender) behavior, and shows up as his unwarranted and perpetual expressions of victimhood.

The alarming nature of Trump's behavior after the 2016 election led psychologists to break the so-called Goldwater rule of the American Psychiatric Association's code of ethics which rejects a clinical analysis of an individual who is not a member's patient. In 2017, John D. Gartner, a psychotherapist who formerly taught at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, has explicitly broken the rule without caveat to warn the public of Trump's dangerousness. Gartner said, "Donald Trump is dangerously mentally ill and temperamentally incapable of being president." Gartner diagnosed that Trump has "malignant narcissism", an extreme mix of narcissism, antisocial personality disorder, aggression, and sadism. Many other mental health professionals have also expressed their concern over Trump's mental state. Dr. Allen Frances, the chair of the DSM-IV taskforce, the one that wrote the definition of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), stated that while Trump "may be a world-class narcissist", he does not have NPD. Dr. Allen went further to state, "He can, and should, be appropriately denounced for his ignorance, incompetence, impulsivity and pursuit of dictatorial powers."

Mental health issues

By 2019, Gartner has called for a professional examination of Trump's mental health because of apparent worsening of Trump's speech patterns that could indicate dementia: confusing people and generations, semantic paraphasia, and tangential speech.

Later, he totally did not have a series of mini-strokes before his unexpected visit to Walter Reed Medical Center.

In February 2024, when Joe Biden was still likely to be standing the following November, Gartner once more called attention to Trump's frequent paraphasias, calling Trump "dangerously demented." Gartner stated:

“”I had to speak out now because the 2024 election might turn on this issue of who is cognitively capable: Biden or Trump? It's a major issue that will affect some people's votes. Not enough people are sounding the alarm, that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public. There is also this focus on Biden's gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains. Biden's brain is aging. Trump's brain is dementing.

Examples given by Gartner and psychologist Vincent Greenwood for Trump's recent paraphasias are:

• Beneficiaries becomes benefishes.
• Renovations become renoversh.
• Pivotal became pivobal.
• Obama became obamna.
• Missiles became mishiz.
• Christmas became Crissus.
• Bipartisan became bipars.
• Venezuela became Venezuero or Venezwheregull
• Snake mountain became steak mountain or steak hill
• Migrant crime became migrant cime

But from this one can see there were earlier signs of dementia as evidenced from paraphasias during Trump's presidency. In 2017, "coverage" became "covfefe". ("Who can figure out the true meaning of 'covfefe'??? Enjoy!" he later tweeted.) In 2018, the countries Nepal, Bhutan and Namibia became "nipple", "button" and "nambia".

HS quarterback

He wins bigly every time!

“”He's like that right-wing uncle you dread seeing at Thanksgiving, just with a national media profile – and your uncle couldn't be happier about it.

—Paul Waldman

A significant Overton window shift has been anyone believing that Donald Trump is "anti-establishment". Liberals and conservatives are just wired differently. Republicans generally respond better to displays of strength and forthrightness, whereas Democrats typically respond better to bipartisanship and compassion. For better or worse, Trump looks at life like buying a used car. You go in with bluster and threaten to walk if they don't give you what you want.

With that in mind, it's no surprise that the candidate with the best “tell it like it is” game on Twitter and in debates won. It's a strategy in touch with the perceptions of the GOP base. Many still think that Romney had the general election sealed up, but choked. (In truth, Romney failed because he couldn't even build up a coalition of his fellow Republicans, with near sixty percent of them opposing him when he got the nomination. The Republican base was unable to see past their visceral and totally-not-racist hatred of Obama to recognize that to the rest of the country, he was a popular incumbent and thus their party's chances in the 2012 election were always a longshot.) It's why Don's portrayal of his opponents as boring, dumb, nerdy, losers, low-energy, chokers or "choke artists" has been so effective.

In the minds of the base, it's never been the case that the country has become more progressive, or that 12 years of Bushes were more regime change and Reaganomics than voters ever wanted. Nope, the perception is that McCain, Romney, Bush, Rubio – these candidates all “choked”, in concert with the American people wanting them all to be President but just not knowing it yet. They're all presumed guilty of giving the country two more Democratic terms based on supposed personal and strategic failures, never on a disconnect between what voters wanted and what these candidates were selling. The RNC propping up Romney (again!) in opposition to Trump shows that they can't even grasp this basic fact about their own voters.

Idiocracy, the ass-clown

See the main article on this topic: Idiocracy

Trump is neither an intellectual nor someone interested in deep thought or reading, both of which are crucial when running a country. Indeed, he has been accused by many of being the Dunning–Kruger effect incarnate, and it becomes rather hard to argue when David Dunning himself tends to agree.

Trump is quintessentially an ass-clown, part asshole and part buffoon. Given that Trump would much prefer being recognized as the unapologetic asshole and that he hates being laughed at, it is far better to laugh at his stupidity at every chance possible. Humor provides a powerful means of confronting authoritarians: authoritarians such as Trump come to power by creating fear, and consequently cannot stand to be laughed at.

Unclear yet present danger

“”He's always been that guy, and you denied it and ignored it and hand-waved it away and made excuses every step of the way because you were convinced that you were so much smarter than the rest of us. You were so certain that you had received some superior wavelength giving you special insight into the Donald; only you could tell that it was all an act. Only you could grasp that his constant courting of controversy was just to get attention from the media. Only you could instinctively sense that his style would play brilliantly in the general election and win over working-class Democrats. (SPOILER ALERT: It isn't.) You insisted that you could “coach him”.

—Jim Geraghty

Human beings are really bad at processing information that falls outside of their heuristics and reconciling information that seems contradictory on the surface-level. Consequently, if a candidate does not fall squarely into one of the two buckets we associate with politics – "conservatism" and "liberalism" – then he must be in the middle, despite not logically fitting as a "moderate" in any sense. And because many people subconsciously believe in the golden mean, Trump is using the same strategy almost every authoritarian populist has used to craft a successful coalition: pair radical ideas from one end of the spectrum with ones that either come from the other extreme end or are appealing for their "moderation".^{[citation needed]} For example, pair your extreme views on immigration with opposition to trade or rhetoric opposing "hedge fund guys" and other selected wealthy capitalists who are unpopular across the board. This becomes a net win for Trump. He "tells it like it is" or "calls out both sides". Donald is an empty suit, and he invites us all to try him on:

Debate Trump: Taxes too high, wages too high. We're not going to be able to compete against the world.

Gasbag Trump-on-the-stump: The influx of foreign workers holds down salaries, keeps unemployment high, and makes it difficult for poor and working-class Americans . . . to earn a middle-class wage.

Subtext: To those of you working 2-3 jobs at $8.00 per hour, once I deport all the illegals you're still going to be making $8.00 per hour. F**k you very much.

Feud with HBO and Last Week Tonight

In March of 2013, Trump attacked Jon Stewart on Twitter for changing his name from Leibowitz to Stewart, tweeting:

“”If Jon Stewart is so above it all & legit, why did he change his name from Jonathan Leibowitz? He should be proud of his heritage!

Two years later (in 2015), while spending a portion of May 31 embarrassingly trying too hard to flame Stewart, Trump also insisted that the original tweet quoted above never took place while repeating the accusation, tweeting:

“”All the haters and losers must admit that, unlike others, I never attacked dopey Jon Stewart for his phony last name. Would never do that!

Trump then proceeded to weave the tale that John Oliver (Stewart being the former boss and colleague of Oliver) had tried to get Trump to appear on Last Week Tonight, something which Oliver maintains has never happened. Oliver even checked to make sure nobody had accidentally invited him, and nobody had.

In response to all of this, on February 28 of 2016, Oliver started the #makedonalddrumpfagain campaign, explaining:

"Trump" does sound rich – it's almost onomatopoeic. "Trump!" is the sound produced when a mouthy servant is slapped across the face with a wad of thousand-dollar bills. "Trump!" is the sound of a cork popping on a couple's champagne-iversary, the day the renovations in the wine cellar were finally completed.

The very name "Trump" is the cornerstone of his brand. If only there were a way to uncouple that magical word from the man he really is. Well, guess what – there is! Because it turns out, the name "Trump" was not always his family's name. One biographer found that a prescient ancestor had changed it from – and this is true – Drumpf. Yes; fucking Drumpf! And "Drumpf!" is much less magical.

It's the sound produced when a morbidly obese pigeon flies into the window of the foreclosed Old Navy. "Drumpf!" It's the sound of a bottle of store-brand root beer falling off the shelf in a gas station mini-mart. And it may seem weird to bring up his ancestral name, but to quote Donald Trump, "he should be proud of his heritage" – because Drumpf is much more reflective of who he actually is.

So if you are thinking of voting for Donald Trump, the charismatic guy promising to make America great again, stop and take a moment to imagine how you would feel if you just met a guy named Donald Drumpf. A litigious serial liar, with a string of broken business ventures and the support of a former Klan leader who he can't decide whether or not to condemn. Would you think he would make a good president, or is the spell now somewhat broken? And that is why tonight, I am asking America to make Donald Drumpf again!

Oliver also revealed that HBO had even officially filed paperwork to trademark the name "Drumpf". HBO has also purchased the domain donaldjdrumpf.com and released an official Chrome browser plugin called the "Drumpfinator", which changes every instance of "Trump" to "Drumpf" in the browser.

Now, for people who don't know about that little spat, the Drumpf meme might come across as Oliver making fun of Trump's German ancestry. Crucially, however, the serious thought underlying the (entirely overtly satirical) relabeling of Trump to Drumpf is that Trump's image and persona are based on the Trump brand – and thus, if people instead knew him as Donald Drumpf (the way his family's name was spelled before the Thirty Years' War), then hopefully people would stop automatically knee-jerk associating him with the fame and fortune attached to the Trump brand, and instead see the man (Donald) for who he really is as a person. The Trump fortune was in fact predicated upon Fred Trump's lying to Jewish customers about his German ancestry and claiming that he was Swedish, a lie repeated by Donald in The Art of the Deal.

Credentialism

See the main article on this topic: Credentialism

During his 2016 campaign, Trump frequently referred to his degree from the University of Pennsylvania as "super genius stuff", and claimed that it was difficult to get admitted to Wharton. At the time of his admission (1966), Wharton admitted 40% of applicants, fairly high. James Nolan, an admissions officer and friend of Trump's brother Fred Jr., was leaned on by Trump's father to get him admitted. Nolan was unimpressed by Trump, stating later, "I certainly was not struck by any sense that I'm sitting before a genius. Certainly not a super genius." Later, it was alleged by Trump's elder sister Maryanne, that his friend Joe Shapiro was paid to take his college entrance exam (SAT). Elsewhere, SAT fraud has resulted in criminal charges, and could result in the rescinding of a degree. But no worries, Trump has rightfully earned a B.S. in B.S.!

Pretending to be religious

Perhaps he needed help figuring out where to sign? (We're told he reads very little.)

“”Can you believe that bullshit? Can you believe people believe that bullshit?”

—Trump, in private after a laying on of hands by evangelical leaders

“”"[It] was the theo-political equivalent of money laundering. Dobson and his gang are making Trump clean so that he is worthy of evangelical votes.

—John Fea, history professor at Messiah College

Of course, winning votes and popularity among the US conservatives requires you at least masquerading as a religious person. He pulled in Mike Pence to give him a hand there.

It should not have surprised anyone that Trump embraced prosperity gospel-types, particularly heretic/charlatan Paula White. Both the Trump family preacher, Norman Vincent Peale, and the prosperity gospel concept were rooted in the 19^th-century New Thought movement. Trump has frequently cited Peale, who was described as a 'Christian libertarian', as an influence. James Dobson of Focus on the Family believes that Trump was recently born again, but not everyone agrees.

When asked the inevitable leading question, "What is your favorite book?" Trump answered with the usual pandering reply, "The Bible!", although he couldn't provide a favorite verse. Eventually, Trump found one: "Two Corinthians" (he meant Second Corinthians, which incidentally is a book, not a verse), which earned him an endorsement from Jerry Falwell Jr. With a bar that low, who needs legs to get across? It also leads one to wonder how frequently he takes holy communion, despite Trump's claim of "as often as possible" – quite the dedication to drinking wine for someone who is also a teetotaler.

Regarding the prospects of electing a hypothetical born-again Trump prone to fiddling with the nuclear football when bored or intoxicated, Hemant Mehta remarked that:

“”If Christians do vote for the nuclear weapon-loving Trump, they probably have a better chance of meeting God real soon ...

While not dying from nuclear war, many Trump supporters in fact did get to meet their God. Just through something microscopic since 2020.

Creepy behavior

Access Hollywood

In October 2016, The Washington Post obtained video caught on a hot microphone in 2005 of Trump talking to Billy Bush who was, at that time, anchor of a television show called Access Hollywood. In the clip, Trump discussed a failed attempt to seduce a woman ("I did try and fuck her. She was married") and creepily infamously described his celebrity status as a carte blanche excuse to molest anyone he wanted ("When you're a star, they let you do it. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.").

This naturally became a significant scandal during the 2016 presidential election, and could have been a fatal blow to Trump's campaign had Wikileaks (with the help of state-sponsored Russia hackers and trolls on r/thedonald) not coordinated their own October surprise with leaks of DNC emails, aka the Podesta Emails. Since what became known as the Access Hollywood tape was revealed, at least 26 women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct as of September 2020, allegations which Trump categorically denies but stretch back to the 1980s.

E. Jean Carroll sexual assault and defamation

In 2019, advice columnist E. Jean Carroll published an article in New York magazine, as well as detailing in her memoir published that year, allegations that Mr. Trump allegedly raped her in 1995 or 1996. Trump, of course, denied all allegations. In 2022, New York governor Kathy Hochul signed the Adult Survivors Act into law, an act which empowered survivors of sexual offenses to file suit regardless of when the abuse occurred. Minutes after this law took effect, Carroll's attorneys sued Trump over the alleged sexual assault incident. On May 9 2023, a jury found Trump guilty of battery and defamation and rewarded Carroll $5 million in total damages for both claims. Notably, Trump did not personally testify in his own defense; made bizarre public posts about the case on Truth Social while the case was ongoing (earning a rebuke from the presiding judge Lewis A. Kaplan); and, in a deposition for the case created in October, appeared to double-down on his Access Hollywood "grab them by the pussy" remarks. Carroll was supported by other witnesses that described how Trump also engaged in inappropriate behavior (non-consensual kissing and groping) with them.

Prior to the above battery / defamation case, Carroll had previously sued Trump for defamation in November 2019, only to have the case stall in court. In September 2023, Kaplan ruled that Trump was liable for defamatory comments brought up in the 2019 case as well. In addition, one day after the May 2023 verdict, Trump (not knowing when to keep his mouth shut) made additional defamatory comments about Carroll; this defamation was amended to the original 2019 complaint. A trial on this case (whose purpose was only to set damages) began in mid-January 2024; the trial notably featured Trump furiously walking out of the courtroom during closing arguments. After closing arguments, the jury deliberation was swift; on January 26 2024, Carroll was awarded an additional $83.3 million in damages for defamation.

Extramarital affairs hush money

In addition to the sexual misconduct allegations, Trump has engaged in several affairs, alleged and confirmed. Prior to his presidency, in one early, highly gossiped about case, Trump reportedly cheated on his then-wife Ivana Trump with a model (and eventual second wife) named Marla Maples. This led to his first divorce.

During Trump's first presidential campaign, two adult models, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, alleged an extramarital affair. In the case of McDougal, the National Enquirer bought the story for $125,000, but never ran it. (Later, the office of the National Enquirer admitted that they buried the story "to prevent it from influencing the election".) In the case of Daniels, Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen chose to pay Daniels $130,000 in order to keep quiet about the affair. Cohen then sought, and received, reimbursement (to the tune of $420,000, paid in monthly installments) from the Trump organization to cover this expense.

In 2018, the Wall Street Journal published an article detailing Cohen's $130,000 payment. This opened a flurry of investigations into whether there were any financial shenanigans associated with the hush money, resulting in multiple convictions. In August 21 2018, Cohen plead guilty to eight charges of tax evasion, fraud, and campaign finance violations that occurred due to the hush money payment. Cohen told the federal court that Trump directed him to make the payments. One week later, the Manhattan District Attorney's office opened an investigation into whether the Trump Organization also broke any laws. In 2022, two Trump Organization companies were convicted of all 17 charges of tax fraud it was indicted with; its chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg also pled guilty to fraud and tax evasion charges.

Other dubious sexual behaviour

Countless women have accused Trump of sexually assaulting them. His first wife, Ivana Trump, accused him of rape in a deposition in 1989 at the time of their divorce, though she later said her account only used the word figuratively.

In 1996, Trump bought the Miss Universe Organization beauty pageant corporation (which also ran affiliated beauty pageants like Miss USA and Miss Teen USA). During Trump's first presidential campaign, multiple contestants reported that Trump would enter the dressing rooms of the contestants while they were in various stages of undress (including the dressing room of the Miss Teen USA competition, when many of the girls were underage). Other contestants have alleged other sorts of creepy behavior, such as inappropriate kisses on the mouth and boorish banter. Trump denied these allegations when they came out, but in 2005, Trump seemed to admit to this behavior when talking to radio shock jock Howard Stern.

“”I’ll tell you the funniest is that I’ll go backstage before a show and everyone’s getting dressed... No men are anywhere, and I’m allowed to go in, because I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it. … ‘Is everyone OK?’ You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. ‘Is everybody OK?’ And you see these incredible-looking women, and so I sort of get away with things like that.

Reactions from the "Moral Majority"

Following decades of preaching family values and supposed Bible-based morality (including a huge evangelical trope against pornography), the Religious Right and the Moral Majority did not condemn someone very prominent who allegedly committed marital infidelity with a porn star. Instead, many leading fundamentalist Christian figures completely defended Trump's reputed porn-star-fucking. Usually, the defense was something along the line of the politics being more important than the sin.

Robert Jeffress:

And let’s be clear — Evangelicals still believe in the commandment: Thou shalt not have sex with a porn star... However, whether this president violated that commandment or not is totally irrelevant to our support of him.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, who previously said evangelicals were willing to give Trump a "mulligan" for his past transgressions:

The President has not engaged, to our knowledge, and I think we would know, in any of the behavior that he did in the past, prior to the election. What he has done is he's actually followed through on political promises.

Franklin Graham, going for the fake news defense:

President Trump I don’t think has admitted to having an affair with this person... and so this is just a news story, and I don’t even know if it’s accurate.

Jerry Falwell Jr., who later was revealed to be no stranger to this type of sin:

He is not the same person now that he was back then. I believe he has changed... That is why our faith is based around the idea that we are all equally bad, we are all sinners, we need Christ's forgiveness. That's why evangelicals are so quick to forgive Donald Trump when he asks for forgiveness for things that happened 10-15 years ago..

A Pew Research poll showed that white evangelical support actually increased after the Stormy Daniels affair was reported. Of course, this is not surprising given many of these people have admitted to being more dedicated to Donald Trump than Jesus Christ, with the aforementioned Robert Jeffress even saying he would vote Trump over Jesus in a hypothetical election.

For many, the events all but confirmed the moral hypocrisy of these evangelical leaders, even leading to a rebuke in the National Review. A few commentators saw the hypocritical quotes as proof that the only "values" evangelicals really valued were worship of the patriarchy and the white male privilege, and observed how many of these evangelicals who were so quick to forgive Trump were hardly forgiving (and in fact, outright hostile) when it came to other "sinners", particularly LGBTQ individuals.

2016 presidential campaign

George H.W. Bush started this when he considered Trump for vice president and planted the idea in his head, not realizing that Trump was some kind of Cthulhu in the making and unknowingly screwing his second son out of the chance.

If there is anything this election has taught us, it's that Trump is playing Korean Starcraft while everyone else is playing checkers. He registered the slogan "Make America Great Again" six days into Barack Obama's second term. There has been some (mostly baseless) speculation that Trump's entire candidacy is revenge for Obama's Roast jokes.

Testing the waters

“”My audience, 90% of them, they support you.

—Alex Jones to Trump, in a 2015 Infowars-exclusive interview

Trump was a long-shot Republican contender for the 2012 Presidential nomination, so he could have run against Barack Obama. Trump had no political experience, though he had a good deal of bankruptcy business experience. Trump's ongoing activities were hard to reconcile with "conservative" positions: he owes a substantial portion of his wealth to his involvement in the gambling industry, and his apparel line is manufactured in the very country that he wanted to hit with punitive tariffs. In 2011, he also became the first presidential hopeful to use the word "fucking" in a speech.

When compared side-by-side with old Fox News personalities, it's pretty clear Trump was doing something akin to that (You suck, America! Now buy my book and I'll tell you why). Content to surf the media wave and pocket the donations, Trump didn't hesitate to jump on the birther bandwagon, demanding to see Obama’s long-form birth certificate. He also believes Bill Ayers ghostwrote Dreams From My Father.

He dropped out of the race after the aforementioned speech, which went against his work ethic heavily endorsed on The Apprentice. (Don't give up!) It can be speculated that this was an elaborate ruse to pump up the show in ratings. After NBC took The Apprentice off the air in '07, Trump returned to hawking steaks.

The nostalgic days of 2015 when no one thought he was going anywhere.

Much to the dismay of GOP power-brokers and the delight of comedians everywhere, Trump declared in June 2015 that he is again running for POTUS on the 2016 Republican Presidential ticket. Blunders and confusion mark the Trump campaign, with some even going so far as to suggest that Trump may be suffering from Alzheimer's or senile dementia due to his age; since his father suffered from Alzheimer's before his death in 1999, this conspiracy theory isn't as far-fetched as it sounds...

He immediately received backlash for his racist comments against Mexican immigrants during his announcement speech, which cost him his beauty pageant and other television deals.

Trust me with donated campaign money

Trump gave $35,000 to an advertising company called Draper-Sterling. Like, from Mad Men. The firm doesn't exist, and this is their address in New Hampshire. So far he has paid $4 million to himself for flying in his own plane, $200K to Trump Tower, and $400K to his campaign headquarters in Palm Beach (his own country club). Most hilarious is $1.8 million paid to the company making/distributing Trump hats, which is owned indirectly by Trump’s son Eric. Suspiciously much money ($6 million estimate) goes to Trump owned companies and Trump's family. Hillary Clinton joked, "What is Trump spending his meager campaign resources on? Why, himself, of course."

It's like Trump is skimming off the top, except his fundraising is so bad that the "top" is the whole thing. It's also unheard-of for a major party convention to be begging for $6 million at the last minute. These should be huge red flags to anyone.

Platform

“”They don’t really know or care what he stands for, only that he’s an extended middle finger at the hated political class and the national GOP. He FIGHTS!... His appeal to them isn’t so much ideological as it is nihilistic.

—Rick Wilson, GOP strategist

Donald Trump has plenty of bad ideas. The people are being conned and misled, as is so characteristic of Trump's schemes. He has a whole AOTD chapter dedicated to making promises, no matter how grand, by drawing on the emotional side of a person. Because this is when you can start working them.

Issue	"Solution"
National Security Trump infamously skipped the military because he had a bone spur, but doesn't remember which foot it was on.	As with most of Trump's positions, the answer is "all of the above". (America can't afford to be the world's policeman. We need to expand the military.) Trump thinks we should "close up" the internet to stop ISIS. Just like that! Which likely means, Whatever I don't like will be shut down. In what Tricky Dick on a bender might mistake for a foreign policy strategy, Trump said that the way to defeat ISIS was to "bomb the shit out of them", then send [Exxon]Mobil to suck out all the oil. He advocates for civilian deaths in war, saying we should "take out their families." Further, he's talking the whole family: grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, half-siblings, children, siblings-in-law, and their children. Whoever has a familial connection to the terrorist, he wants to wipe them out, regardless of their culpability. (Clue Brick: It's also a war crime under Article 33 of the 4th Geneva Convention.) He'll bring back torture, though he knows it doesn't work, since "they deserve it anyway." He'd also "go much further" than waterboarding suspected terrorists, and thinks that dipping the bullets in pigs' blood before shooting Muslim prisoners is a cool way to deter terrorism, and certainty not a recruiting bonanza. Trump supports the ability of the NSA to be able to collect bulk metadata and has enjoyed himself at the idea of the surveillance of mosques.
Border security	Hispanic people are lazy and come here to get welfare and commit crime. Also they're stealing all our jobs. Oh, and also rape our women. The wall Trump proposes to stop illegal Mexican immigrants is a non-starter. Mexico will not pay, and Pew research suggests more Mexicans are returning to Mexico than are emigrating to the United States. Moreover, the majority of US construction workers are undocumented Mexican immigrants. D'oh. He's talked about the materials the wall will be built of. He's talked about putting his name on it. Metaphorically, of course. The wall is about his only concrete idea (pun intended) that he has consistently campaigned on, and he's already waffling on it. He has since doubled down, explicitly calling for a national database that registers and identifies all Muslim Americans. (We really need more Inquisitions.) In a rally in Wisconsin, he clarified to Chris Matthews that the register wouldn't apply to wealthy Muslims. That the policy only applies to poorer Muslims might make them more disposed to fight ISIS and help MAGA! He's like the kid that just read the back of the book before writing a book report, and will literally fight you if you tell him he got the whole general plot wrong.
Foreign policy	It's abundantly clear he doesn't know anything about foreign policy. You get a nuke! You get a nuke! Everybody gets a nuke! In response to further military provocations by North Korea that apparently failed to alert him to the fact that North Korea probably wanted him to overreact like this, Trump gave a speech at the United Nations on September 19th, 2017 that can be considered quite batshit with some justice, especially considering a singularly odd reference to a mid-70's song by Elton John. Trump has begun to pivot away from his earlier statements ("sorta neutral") about Israel. But that's just evidence of his famous "flexibility." Trump also wants to Mafia-ize the U.S.'s national security posture. (It'd be a sad sight if Russia invaded you next week.) The military is oversized because of their own military adventures, and he has the gall to chastise Europe for not chipping in. Trump has hinted he may go to war if Mexico refuses to pay for nonsensical building projects. Trump said, in interviews with The Atlantic and the New York Times, that he would ignore NATO's defense policy if NATO members do not increase defense spending. He has however stopped short of saying the US should actually leave NATO; Trump is also lukewarm on the idea of actually going to war to defend fellow NATO member states, using tiny Montenegro as a particularly surreal example - because, as he put it,"They're very strong people, they're very aggressive people. They may get aggressive and, congratulations, you're in World War Three." Trump does "not so much" trust intelligence (presumably because he doesn't have any of his own), because Iraq.
Economic plan	Get rid of NAFTA, NATO, NASA, the NAACP, and anything with an N. It's dizzying how quickly Trump has hitched himself to the Brexit campaign (right down to NAFTA's equivalent of "Article 50"). He argued that Hillary Clinton is "100% wrong" because her view of the referendum differed from the outcome, whereas Trump wisely chose the side that "won." Trump is doing the media's work for them by branding Brexit a dry run of what a Trump presidency would be like. He has even gone so far as to call himself "Mr. Brexit", claiming that as the crooked media kept skewering those damn polls for the remoaners, the crooked media is skewering these damn polls over in the US for Clinton. What is his position on jobs? He's going to "bring them back!" Republicans and Democrats have already dropped the ball on helping those most affected by outsourcing; Trump wants to roll back free trade and raise tariffs, but that won't necessarily fix the problem. On the contrary, it's a threat to eliminate hundreds and thousands of American jobs. Their paychecks wouldn't even keep up with inflation if they get what they want. But the average voter won't look a whole lot deeper than that free trade is "killing us!" Trump's 18th century economic plan (aka mercantilism) sounds like the work of a businessman who's made strategic use of bankruptcy. It would wreak havoc on the dollar and turn US Treasury Bonds from the safest place to put your money into a risky proposition which investors would stay away from. You can't unring the bell on his plan; just ask any country that ruined their currency long-term for a short-term benefit. The Trump Tax Cuts aren't just right-wing, they're crazy-wing. They've been criticized by conservatives for the huge deficits that would result, and by liberals since the main beneficiaries of his cuts are the very wealthy.
Environment "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."	Jerry Brown tends to be frugal with his endorsements. Hearing Trump say asinine things regarding climate ("there is no drought!") must have pushed him over the edge. But when it affects Trump's golf course, then climate change IS real, it IS happening, and urgent action must be taken.
Energy	Trump wants to pull out of all climate agreements, get rid of environmental regulations, and increase the use of coal (which is not surprising, given his statement that "I have friends that own [coal] mines". Standard GOP pandering. He also states that he wants energy independence. He dislikes renewable energy, saying that "wind [turbines] kill all your birds" (a patently false claim — cats kill many times more birds) and that solar power doesn't work well (another absurd statement). Wait... is he still using "America First"? (He's going with the Third Reich's "worker's party" thing too.) Can't tell if he is intentionally fucking with us, or is actually adopting Goebbels' playbook.
Healthcare	So, pretty much Obamacare except that the insurance companies can headquarter in whichever states have the weakest consumer protection laws and force their plans on everyone else. For all of Trump's macho-man image, this is a remarkably pusillanimous plan. Trump's candidacy is based on ditching GOP orthodoxy, but this healthcare plan is a standard Republican nothingburger that is indistinguishable from what a lot of others have offered up. This indicates that Trump does not feel secure about his position in the nomination process, and is trying to signal to the establishment that he can adopt some of their stances, too.
First Amendment	It's becoming of a bit of a running gag how Trump keeps threatening to sue people who are critical of him. (As you may have guessed, Trump rallies tend to be a gold mine for muckraking reporters.) So of course he wants to "open up the libel laws," which would completely undo the First Amendment, making it easier to sue media outlets that dare to criticize him. Since actions speak loudest, especially where Trump is concerned, what has he done in the meantime? Ejected journalists at his rallies simply for being journalists. No person, no problem! Khizr Khan's claims at the 2016 Democratic National Convention that Trump had not read the US Constitution seemed to be reinforced by Trump's comments that Khan "had no right" to claim that he had not read the Constitution – clearly not reading the First Amendment, giving him the right to free speech. Is someone protesting in a way Trump doesn't approve of, such as burning an American flag? The solution is simple: lock them up for a year or strip them of their citizenship - although the Supreme Court might take issue with the legality of such a move. Come to think of it, Trump took issue with this strategy until he got elected President.
Abortion	It sounds like the main takeaway from Paul Ryan's sit-down was that Trump agreed to nominate anti-abortion advocates to the Supreme Court. In 1999, Trump said that while he hated the concept of abortion, he viewed himself as "very pro-choice." At that aforementioned event in Wisconsin, Trump floated an idea to punish women who seek abortions. While speaking with MSNBC host Chris Matthews about how he would enforce it, he very quickly reversed the statement to say that he would make the procedure illegal and punish doctors who do so. The best part was when he said that penalties for abortion should not apply to men. Shhhhh... Trump is pointing out the inherent contradiction in the conservative platform. Trump has been confronted with a near-total ban of abortion in some states following the Supreme Court's 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, one that Trump took credit for from his court appointments. During his 2024 presidential campaign, he couldn't decide whether this was politically beneficial for him or not and waffled on abortion bans. What he does know though is that hates Democrats for his fantasy of what Democrats support: “”It must be remembered that the Democrats are the radical ones on this position because they support abortion up to and even beyond the ninth month. The concept of having an abortion in the later months and even execution after birth. And that's exactly what it is. The baby is born, the baby is executed after birth is unacceptable. And almost everyone agrees with that.
LGBT rights A polygamous relationship gone wrong	While lukewarm on LGBT people getting married and serving openly in the military, in 2000 he concluded that “‘Don't ask, don't tell’ has clearly failed,” and even blasted Pat Buchanan for engaging in the sort of chicanery which Trump is now. Flash-forward: Now he's touting "traditional marriage"—a concept he grudgingly admits is totally alien to him. He has promised to appoint judges to overturn same-sex marriage if need be, despite dismissing traditional marriage as a "dead issue" in the past, and attending the wedding of David Furnish and Elton John. In the Prime Universe, Trump opposed the transgender "bathroom bill," saying trans people should be free to "use the bathroom they feel is appropriate." Mirror!Trump, on the other hand, says it should be up to the states, and is actively working to remove all protection and rights for transgender people. He's stated that he "wouldn't block laws" that permit discrimination based on sexual orientation. But at least he won't behead anybody.
Second Amendment	In the course of a single convoluted sentence, he managed to say we shouldn't have guns in classrooms, we should have guns in classrooms, switched back to we shouldn't, and then finally wound up saying we should. The secret service had a word with Trump after he claimed that "the second amendment people" should go out and shoot Hillary Clinton. Trump and Obama/Hillary at least agree on one point: he is against allowing people on the no-fly list to buy guns, even if they have not been convicted of a crime. Weakness on guns combined with anti-Latino rhetoric could possibly open up Texas, so expect this to be backtracked in a few days or hours.
IRS	With Trump cratering in the polls, he suggested that we repeal the Johnson Amendment of 1954, which prohibits tax-exempt organizations (namely churches) from purchasing and running political ads. Nobody seriously expects the IRS to enforce the law, but it's meat that Trump is throwing to the evangelical wing and they're eating up like fools. He needs them now, because a lot of them are threatening to sit out the election. Voting for a thrice-married adulterer isn't their thing. Trump wouldn't be able to change the law via executive action (tax law is Congress's domain), but he could order the IRS not to enforce the ban, which would amount to the same thing. That being said, it would be hilarious if American mosques started electing more Muslims to public office.
#Metoo movement	“”Peoples[sic] lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused — life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process? —Donald Trump It has been noted that Trump only complains about lack of due process when it pertains to people that he is supporting. Trump once took out a full-page New York Times advertisement calling for the execution of the Central Park Five, and continued to call them guilty even long after the accused were fully exonerated based on DNA evidence.

... and that, boys and girls, is how a former pro-choice liberal in a shitty toupee stole the Republican Presidential Nomination.

Where did we go right?

Trump accumulates a few nuggets of cocktail party knowledge about political topics (7-11 was an inside job!) and sort of freewheels through it while trying to steer the conversation back to the main talking points, which are Building Stuff and Making America Great Again®. On Baltimore, he knows that people torched a Rite-Aid. On climate change, he knows the difference between climate and weather, kind of. Someone back at headquarters didn't know there were two different organizations called "La Raza" and sent out orders to use that defense in the Trump U. case. Trump was endorsed by the National Enquirer and has parroted their "journalism" as fact, like the thing about Cruz's father and JFK. (Also, the only person directly quoted in the Enquirer hit piece is Roger Stone, who also wrote a book on how he thinks LBJ killed JFK and regularly makes appearances on Infowars.) His responses on China actually betray a sort of thought process: what he's advocating sounds like an intentional invocation of Nixon's Madman Theory, and Nixon went to China, so we guess in Trump's head those things are somehow directly related. His wife Melania's speech to the Republican National Convention was supposed to cap the RNC with a sincere defense of her husband. Instead, part of it was grabbed from Michelle Obama.

There's actually considerable biographical evidence that Trump is serious about Building Stuff: sources close to him claim that he was deadly serious about the wall; the reason he likes it is that it gives him a physical thing to focus his imagination on, and he is not generally interested in abstractions. As you'll note below, interviewers can get Trump to agree to pretty much anything, as long as they frame it as something novel. He genuinely has no clue how the Executive Branch is run.

Situations keep arising for him to show what kind of leader he would make, and he keeps fumbling them; he lives in the moment and doesn't seem capable of long-term planning. The way he handled the Orlando situation is probably the best example of this. Any credible Republican would spit-roast Clinton over the e-mail server and coast to the White House. Trump, instead, will posit that Bill had a bathroom quickie with Coney while the pair of them giggled about how they faked the moon landing and poisoned the populace with fluoride. Any legitimate criticism of Clinton just gets lumped in with his never-ending miasma of conspiracy theory horseshit ("people are talking about" and "I'm just asking").

Adults in the room

Trump's "short list" for vice president included Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Newt Gingrich, Ivanka Trump,^{[No, not The Onion]} Joni Ernst, Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, Joe Scarborough, and Jan Brewer. On July 15, he announced that Governor Mike Pence of Indiana would be the nominee.

Meanwhile he's been assembling a team of the worst politicians you can imagine. Corrupt shit-bags like Chris Christie and Newt Gingrich, ratfuckers like Roger Stone, and now Rick Scott—though really none of these people made it to the White House.

Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind

Bircher tactics work. If this election is a litmus test, then the entire Republican party failed it. And that really gets to the heart of the problem: The "Silent Majority" has always held these beliefs under the surface. They've not been very politically active; they're too busy hating the world for changing to even bother voting. But now, Trump has re-activated that base. This is right in Trump's own wheelhouse anyway. People forget that Trump joined the Reform Party back in 1999 and attempted to win their presidential nomination in 2000.

So now, left with no Bush or Cruz, they've swallowed hard and endorsed Trump. But you can tell their endorsements are half-hearted. Trump might be a big player in New York real estate, but he's not a team player—the dressage crowd who somehow manage all to be related to one another (yep, even Obama is related to some of our famous political leaders). Adding to that, this is a guy who flaunts his wealth like someone who just won the lottery and has a gold-plated stroller for his kid. It's taking everything the party holds dear—capitalism, family values—and turning it into a reality TV joke.

It was expected to have down-ticket effects that the GOP are not happy with. Not only was Trump capable of fumbling the presidency right into Clinton's hands, he was thought to cost the GOP significantly in the legislature. Polls had Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson getting creamed by Russ Feingold in no small part because Johnson can't step out of the shadow of Trump. And Trump's poisoning of the GOP won't stop after the election. Nobody knows how Paul Ryan is going to rebuild his image after an hour or more of accumulated footage where he weakly endorses Trump while simultaneously disavowing everything he says. And Christie... wow. Where to even start? He went from a contender for the White House to the guy who fetches McDonald's for the blowhard who claims he saw radical Muslims in Christie's own state cheering on 9/11.

The party is already fissured, and if enough people voted Trump in, career politicians would have to adopt platforms more in line with Joe Sixpack if they want to be electorally successful. And with Antonin Scalia's death, the stakes were just too high to let the presidency slip away. But when they thought that they're going to lose the presidency—and suffer serious losses in the fall—the party is finally ready to take their medicine. Like a gangrenous leg you must amputate. They are in for a very unpleasant time in Cleveland (As long as everyone is armed, we'll be fine!), and Trump will run as a zombie, but the party will emerge more-or-less intact.

Some were openly calling for the Republican Party to refuse funding to Trump and give money to other vulnerable candidates instead.

Trump embodies every stereotype the left has tried to stick Republicans with for years. It will be impossible to deny your party is sexist and racist when he is the standard bearer for it. Actually, not impossible. There are plenty who still deny it. Republican talking heads are half-entertaining rumors that Trump, a longtime friend of the Clintons, is actually one of the most successful political double agents ever planted. It's easy to see the appeal of this theory: it's painful for conservatives to admit the party is getting its just deserts for pandering to cretins; they'd rather just pretend that it's due to Hillary's witchcraft.

Stop and frisk

Nowhere was Trump's ineptitude on greater display then in the first debate when Trump argued in support of New York City's Stop-and-Frisk ordinance. In his rambling policy proposal, Trump showed he didn't understand the difference between local, state, and regional issues, and the limits of federal and presidential power. New York City's Stop-and-Frisk law was an anti-gun measure based on the idea that people don't kill people, guns do. Trump vehemently argued in support of this entirely local issue while campaigning for federal office, after having secured the backing of the National Rifle Association.^{[citation needed]}

Then, in an effort to show understanding of African Americans' issues and concerns, Trump made the statement that Obama's hometown of Chicago had 4000 shootings since Obama came to Washington. In fact, Chicago had 4000 shootings in just the past year, and Trump was arguing for federal legislation to disarm law abiding citizens.^{[citation needed]}

Trump's fellow RINO Rudy Giuliani, who evidently advised Trump on these alleged "facts", defended the stupidity while displaying his own total ignorance of America outside the New York media bubble and the New York City political milleu.^{[citation needed]}

The victory parade

After a win that contradicted most pre-election polls, the celebrants include a motley crew of dictators, theocrats, and extremists.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin
• The KKK
• Prominent Salafist groups (including the Taliban, al-Qaeda and DAESH)
• The European far-right, including Geert Wilders, Golden Dawn Party spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris and National Front Party leader Marine Le Pen
• Right-wing Israeli populists
• Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte
• Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey

First term

“”That was some weird shit.

—George W. Bush, on Trump's inauguration

Women's March in Washington, D.C., 2017. Thank Goat for the nearly 82 million who voted Democratic in 2020 ...
(uncensored photograph, no thanks to The National Archives)

Trump taking the oath of office (which apparently meant very little to him)^{[citation needed]}

Trump's ambitions for the Oval Office began years before he actually won the 2016 Republican Party presidential nomination. Indeed, he's been involved in politics for quite some time.

Following an escalating series of gaffes and scandals in the run-up to the 2016 Presidential election, at least 160 Republican leaders withheld or renounced their support for his candidacy. Despite significant backlash from the public and his own party, he won the Republican nomination, and against all odds, was elected President of the United States, despite having lost the popular vote. On Inauguration Day, Trump had the dubious honor of having the single largest number of protesters in American history – the Women's March.

Despite Trump's campaign mythologizing about his "coming from outside the system" and being "free of cronyism" (imagining a Democrat-disgruntled working class being the ones to carry him into office), his actual supporters generally have above-average incomes, typical of the same voter demographic that has always supported the GOP. In American terms, Trump has pretty much styled himself as the second coming of Richard Nixon, complete with his enemies lists and paranoia. In turn, Trump actually appears to have secured the conspiracy theorist vote, a demographic which, these days, appears to include both himself and his trophy wife.

A 2021 informal and unscientific poll of 142 presidential historians rated Trump 4^th last among all of the 41 presidents who had completed a term, followed by Franklin Pierce (appeased The South to no avail), Andrew Johnson (first to be impeached), and James Buchanan (whose incompetence and pro-slavery sympathies helped bring about the Civil War). Not to be underperformed, Trump came in dead last for moral authority and administrative skills.

Trump-Russia connection

See the main article on this topic: Trump-Russia connection

Republican Robert Mueller, the Special Counsel who chose not to prosecute Trump.

“”While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.

—William Barr quoting the Mueller report in his summary.

Despite its popular name, the Trump-Russia investigation or the Russia probe examines more than ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Other countries with potentially illegal connection to Trump and his associates include China, Israel, Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. In particular, Trump, his daughter Ivanka, and her husband Jared Kushner have business interests in Qatar, the UAE, Israel, and China. Nor is it limited to the office of the Special Counsel; there is a separate criminal investigation by the FBI. In fact, by December 2018, investigators have begun scrutinizing virtually all aspects of Trump's public life, his presidential campaign, his inaugural committee, his charity, his business dealings, and his presidency itself. Meanwhile, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the House Oversight Committee are conducting their own investigations on alleged Russian meddling and any collusion with Trump aides. These are arguably some of the most high-profile criminal cases in United States history.

The investigation of the Trump-Russia connection is not limited to the office of the Special Counsel; it has also included a separate criminal investigation by the FBI and may include other as yet unknown investigations. In mid-2018, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein revealed a broad effort by the Department of Justice to combat Russian "information warfare" waged against the United States to undermine her democracy and critical infrastructure. Indeed, the Russian attempt to influence the 2016 Election was "just one tree in a growing forest", he said.

On March 22, 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller submitted his final report to Attorney General William Barr. Barr informed Congress in writing he would brief them on the "principal conclusions" and restated his commitment to "as much transparency as possible." Polls show that Americans would like to see the report. Earlier in the month, the House voted unanimously in favor of a non-binding resolution urging the Justice Department to make the report public. According to Barr's summary of the report's findings, Mueller found no evidence of any collusion between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia. Because Mueller did not really answer the question of whether or not Trump obstructed justice, Barr asserted there was no concrete evidence for it. However, Barr acknowledged that Russian officials had offered to assist the Trump campaign. The end of the Special Counsel probe does not mean the end of legal troubles for Donald Trump, who still faces investigations from New York state prosecutors and from Congress. During the Special Counsel investigation, FBI agents traveled across the United States and to numerous other countries. Some witnesses were interviewed immediately after they had landed at an American airport. Charges were brought against dozens of individuals. However, no Americans were charged with conspiring with Russia.

Even then, in 2019, just two months earlier it was revealed that after Trump removed FBI Director James Comey over the investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the FBI began investigating whether Trump was a knowing or unknowing asset of the Russian government assisted by Russia to act against the interests of the US government. And yes, Trump has put forward policies clearly in favor of the Russian government's interests, most importantly on the matter of the NATO alliance of the US as the leading country of the alliance along with European countries, Turkey, and Canada, with Trump indicating in public statements that the US could abandon the NATO alliance. And that's just brilliant for all of us, right?

Undermining democratic institutions

See the main article on this topic: Authoritarianism of Donald Trump

Democratic backsliding is how democracies become authoritarian states.

How to destroy a democracy

• Centralise power ☑ Trump made it a mission to hollow out all functions of government that aren't his direct word. Start with a brutal budget that shows a narcissistic level of discontent for the poor and those in need, then cripple the non-elected civil service, and then weaken the state department monetarily and kill its diplomacy. Job done, the military-industrial complex has never been stronger.
• Empower the junta ☑ Naturally, Trump's autocratic nature repays the police unions who endorsed him in the first place, and this pays himself to give even more methods to abuse authoritarian tactics. Mass arrests occurred on the literal day he was inagurated. If that wasn't enough of a statement, Trump handed back police access to excessive military equipment, used his rhetoric to destabilise the law itself, made mass crackdowns and arrests a normal part of the day,^{[citation NOT needed]} and using secret police tactics to kidnap and terrorise protesters. Even in this brief summary, it poses terrifying similarities to how other tyrants used the police to enforce their agenda.
• Attack the media ☑ Once you have empowered the police to be your personal weapon, the next step is to terrorise the press. Trump implemented a massive crackdown against reporters so they couldn't report on his actions, allowed the police to repeatedly arrest reporters for doing their jobs, outright ordered police to tear-gas reporters, and loathes American journalism so much that he directly ordered violence against journalists. Again, this is exactly what tyrants do.
• Post-truth alt-right rhetoric ☑ As discussed extensively before, Trump's rhetoric has the power to cause violence and instability, by it's sheer power to manipulate the truth, and then repeated ad infinitum. His massive personality cult relies on the ability to cling to the insecurities of his followers.

Democracy watchdog Freedom House's report states that Trump's victory was a destabilizing threat to democracy. In 2017, The Democracy Index listed the U.S. as a flawed democracy, but the reduced rank was not caused by Trump. The lower rank was instead caused by the same factors that won Trump the election and contribute to the rise of far-right parties in Europe. That factor is the decline of trust in government. A lack of confidence in government may well lead to political apathy, lower voter turnout, and consequently a government that more poorly represents its people (along with currently anti-democratic measures such as Voter ID laws and gerrymandering, and arguably the first past the post system and the electoral college). And it's equally worth noting that Russia often has a hand in democratic backsliding, namely in the former Soviet sphere and post-communist countries.

Of course, you would expect Donald Trump to find a way to get himself impeached due to his complete ignorance of democratic principles. And whaddya know? On December 18, 2019, Trump became just the third President in United States history to be impeached, in this case due to a coordinated campaign within his administration to pressure Ukraine for dirt on his potential political rival, Joe Biden, in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. The US Senate almost immediately voted to acquit President Trump on February 5, with Mitt Romney being the only member of Trump's party to vote for removal on either count.

Cabinet members, or how to create a cesspool

See the main article on this topic: Cabinet of Donald Trump

Trump's cabinet in August 2017.

He ran on a populist platform, pledging to "drain the swamp", meaning prevent Wall Street from controlling government, not a destructive anti-environmentalist platform. Now that he won, that means all of his supporters (and some former detractors) are lining up for sweet positions in his administration, including Wall Street. Besides promising to "hire the best people", he also promised to "drain the swamp", but his nominations and hiring practices prove that instead of draining or filling the swamp, he's creating a noxious cesspool; the people he chooses tend to be either on a pillage-and-burn mission or totally unqualified for the job. The worst thing is that his supporters don't care as long as the cesspool monsters are not "politicians", whatever that means. The result is possibly the most fervently right-wing cabinet in recent memory and one that's still filled with quite a few politicians.

And this isn't going to go into how swamps are, in reality, biodiversity-rich hubs that provide a ton of benefits, not like Trump cares a single bit about the environment. Trump may be draining literal swamps, which is hardly a good thing, as he's threatened national parks by trying to allow exploitation and decreasing their sizes.

The Trump team was actually well-prepared to fill the cabinet just before the election. Chris Christie, who had run against Trump in the primary but then joined the campaign, had prepared a 30-volume set of dossiers on possible cabinet picks that was ready one day before the general election. Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, had a grudge against Christie; Christie as a US Attorney had previously sent Kushner's father (Charles Kushner) to prison for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. The 30 volumes were summarily thrown out, and Christie was fired two days after the election at the behest of Kushner and Steve Bannon. The vetting process was then led by Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who hired overwhelmed 20-year RNC staffers to do the vetting from scratch. Said one vetter:

“”You know, I'm like, 'Oh gentle Ben [Carson] is unqualified and thinks that pyramids store grain or whatever. Great. At least he's not beating his wife and his wife's not appearing on Oprah [a reference to Andrew Puzder].

Another vetter said:

“”I think I truly understood what less than half of the people were being vetted for. Totally inadequate resources for the overall process. ... We would probably run through dozens [of contenders] a day.

Policies

See the main article on this topic: Policies of Donald Trump

Overcrowded conditions in a Texas Border Patrol station

Starting right on the first week of his presidency, Trump has begun dismantling Obama's legacy. This is indeed one of the guiding principles of the Trump administration.

His policies prove that elections do have consequences. Policies have virtually always ranged from ignorant to borderline, or outright, cruelty. It's the USA's consequence for letting their political spectrum stunt on the left-wing while creeping ever further to the right. There is a lot of history behind this, but here are some highlights of far-right policy in full blow:

• Kids in cages: Immigration policies of Donald Trump reach a level of callous that defies reality. The most infamous of which was separating Mexican families at the border and placing children in literal cages, as well as pretty much leaving immigrants to commit suicide in ICE detention. Even elsewhere, in Virginia reports emerged of children being stripped and forcibly injected with drugs without their consent, and with pregnant women being left to miscarry courtesy of ICE torture. Such savage and vicious policies look more like a Soviet gulag than anything, but rest assured that this is all the work of Donald Trump; a man so willing to ignore common decency for his own gain, with followers either completely blind or equally as heartless. His stance on immigration appears to at least in part come from a belief in the Great Replacement: that Latin Americans were seeking to displace White Americans in the employment, housing, and education sectors.
• Reversing civil rights: As well as scapegoating and torturing immigrants, don't think you're off the hook unless you are white, straight, Protestant Christian, male and a "true American conservative". He cut or outright removed federal government agencies and budget relating to civil rights, banned Muslim-majority countries entry to the US among other religious discrimination under the "religious freedom guise", dozens among dozens of anti-LGBT actions which empowered homophobia, and hosility to women including cutting funding for many organisations, ramping up the abortion gag rule to absurdity, pushing abstinence-only education, and inadvertently worsening the college campus sexual assault epidemic. Remember, "the cruelty is the point". Even after succeeding President Joe Biden's mountains of work to undo the damage, the ripples are still felt.
• Drain the swamp, literally: Earlier we mentioned "draining the swamp". Again, it works both ways because Trump couldn't give one shit about the environment. Eager to boost the coal industry, Trump crippled the EPA to a shell, which has caused unnecessary suffering and death elsewhere. This is not all; Trump squeezed down national parks and monuments, made massive price increases to renewable energy with cuts to federal funding of such, left Puerto Rico to rot after a hurricane, and most crucially, left the Paris agreement until Biden brought it back. This obviously had disastrous effects over the four years, and a pattern with many of these is Trump's pattern to intentionally cut policies and relief that will help people, putting his far-right narcissism in full display.
  • ... and fuck the animals too: And to rub some more salt in, Trump removed regulations on animal food and let puppy mills and experiment labs go on with extreme animal cruelty, since reporting of such incidents was demolished.
• "Edyucayshaun": Because making America great again is such an important thing, Trump appointed the Secretary of Education as someone married to Amway fortune and anti-public education activist: Betsy DeVos. Having no qualifications to her name and being a fucking fundamentalist is a lethal combo, as she campaigned for a voucher system that doesn't work, reinstated ACICS despite them propping up diploma mills, lied to the Senate, and definitely had not visited struggling public schools on purpose. In an already deeply flawed education system, it's nice to see Trump not concerned about US education sliding into Eastern Europe tiers.
• Foreign policy chaos: Trump is, as you may expect, a warmonger and a seasoned chickenhawk. While predecessor Barack Obama was criticised for foreign policy especially regarding human rights, Trump took this beyond defensible bounds, with his administration ordering record numbers of bombings and airstrikes on Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia, at a horrific civilian cost. He did this with almost no accountability, as he revoked an Obama-era rule on reporting civilian deaths in drone strikes. While he wasn't "bombing the shit out of" people, Trump pretty much caused instability anywhere you found him, moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, which obviously reignited civil unrest, viciously sanctioned Iran beyond the bounds of safety, successfully alienated the United fucking Kingdom of all countries by lying about them imposing surveillance of Trump Tower, and— oh, screw it. Just read our page about it and watch the madness unravel further. In 2019, Trump and John Bolton attempted to organize a coup against Venezuela, and Trump claimed Venezuela was "really part of the United States".
• Blatant authoritarianism: Just see above ...

The first post falls

See the main article on this topic: 2018 midterm elections

Stung by the results of the 2018 midterm elections — when Democrats gained control of the House — Donald Trump got a bit angry about the lack of funding for his border wall, and shut down the federal government for the longest period in US history. It really stuns even the most staunchy idealist looking at Trump's sheer inability to learn and childish abuses of power on full belt. This loss, and the ongoing Russia probe, made himself distance from the ordinary presidential duties, or so it seems, sending aides, including Vice President Mike Pence, to various events in his stead.

Such behaviour, and the shift seen in the voting population, would prove an omen for Trump's catastrophic loss in 2020.

American carnage

A bloodied protester is hauled away by unidentified federal police in Portland.

Following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of an on-duty police officer named Derek Chauvin, protests broke out nationwide, with hundreds of cities hosting thousands of people speaking out against police brutality, white supremacy, and authoritarianism. Trump, having given the police and himself far too much extra power by this point, responded by calling on the military to "dominate" the protesters. He lived up to his word by calling in hundreds of out-of-state National Guards to patrol the streets of D.C. against the mayor's wishes. This led to numerous instances of police-driven and police-instigated violence against even reporters and journalists, with a grand total of 140 attacks on journalists from May 28th, 2020 to June 1st, 2020. Anchored by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, President Trump and Attorney General William Barr ordered the police to teargas peaceful protesters so Trump could walk across the street and take a picture with an upside down Bible in front of a church, in a perfect encapsulation of his presidency. He would later use Homeland Security to continue cracking down on protesters, including kidnapping and detaining people for questioning in unmarked vehicles, and teargassing the fucking mayor of Portland, unmistakable hallmarks of authoritarianism.

White House outbreak of COVID-19

President Trump was hospitalized at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for COVID treatment.

Throughout 2020, Trump refused to take adequate action against COVID-19, downplayed and lied about its severity, outright hindered efforts to get masks delivered to people, ignored expert advice to wear masks and socially distance, while politicizing mask-wearing nationwide despite their effectiveness against the virus, purged anyone who dared to speak out against his orders, repeatedly held "super-spreader" rallies without masks, suggested the idea of injecting disinfectant to stop the virus, and pushed to reopen businesses, schools, and the rest of the economy while suppressing warnings against doing so by scientists and doctors. A study conducted by a group of economists at Stanford University calculated that rallies Trump held were responsible for at least 700 COVID-19 deaths (not necessarily among attendees). The day before it was reported that over 200,000 people had died, Trump was claiming the disease "affects virtually nobody," while the US fell into an economic and humanitarian crisis.

By January 20th, 2021, his last day as president, he presided over a grand total of 400,000 deaths from COVID-19, and one estimate in October 2020 of worst-case total US deaths from COVID was 620,029 essentially came to pass by June 2021. Given that initial disease response (lockdowns and mask-wearing) is critical in reducing total deaths, a large proportion of the total US deaths would be attributable to him regardless of whether the deaths occur after he is out of office. A post-Trump analysis by a Lancet commission report in February 2021 estimated that 40% of the 470,000 US COVID deaths (188,000 deaths) could have been averted if Trump had taken the pandemic seriously; the study compared death rates among G7 countries.

Oh, and it was found later he intentionally botched the public response, claiming he "didn't want to cause panic", yet stuck on spitting invectives against Asian-Americans, leading to catastrophic spikes in anti-Asian racism across America, which continued into 2021. Even after his departure from the White House, many of his federal judges were blocking federal and state government agencies from enforcing policies intended to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Not only did this lead to more cases and deaths, but it has prevented the government from responding to future pandemics. This goes all the way up to the Supreme Court, where three of six conservative justices were appointed by Trump, because they ruled in favor of allowing churches and other places of worship to be exempted from pandemic restrictions on account of "religious liberty."

In late September 2020, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died of cancer, and her last wish was for her not to be replaced until a new president was inaugurated the following year. Despite the Republican party arguing for such a delay when Antonin Scalia died in early 2016, Trump ignored her wishes and immediately nominated Amy Coney Barret, Ginsburg's ideological opposite, and held a Rose Garden event announcing Barret's nomination. Within days, it was revealed that Hope Hicks, a White House aide, had contracted COVID-19. First Lady Melania Trump tested positive, but Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. tested negative. Campaign manager Bill Stepien tested positive, as did Ronna Romney McDaniel, the RNC Chairwoman. Senators Mike Lee, Ron Johnson, and Thom Tillis all tested positive. Former Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie were also tested positive.

Trump revealed that he had tested positive for COVID-19 and was hospitalized at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, as he was said to have trouble breathing. Doctors revealed that he had exhibited symptoms on October 1, including a "mild cough, and some nasal congestion and fatigue." Evidence suggests Trump actually had the infection on September 30, but proceeded with his plans for a public rally that evening and a fund-raiser on October 1.

Leaving the White House

See the main article on this topic: 2020 U.S. presidential election

What Trump gets against insanely large voting numbers he inadvertently inspired
> Make America Decent Again.

Sure enough, tens of millions of Americans were utterly sick and tired of his incompetence at leading America^{[citation NOT needed]} and decided to get rid of him. November 3rd a somewhat delayed reaction, and even with the vote count incomplete due to mail-in ballots, Trump demanded to have the votes stop and declared himself the victor. Nobody cared, and the count went on. On the morning of November 7th, 2020, everyone was relieved to know that President-elect Joseph R. Biden, Jr, the gaffe-shooting Amtrak machine had won, and was set to be sworn in come January. In fact, Trump lost his reelection bid by a simply staggering margin against the Democratic nominee, losing no less than five states that he won in 2016 and losing the popular vote by at least seven million. Worse? Trump got taken out in Georgia and Arizona. Two Republican strongholds fractured a little, faulted to Trump's incompetence and unpopular Republican policy as well as officials in these two states, knowing full well how unpopular Trump is with most people, working extremely hard to try to get the general public voting.

In the following months, the most watchful observers braced themselves for the biggest, yuugest, most beautiful meltdown in Trump's entire lifetime; already he had tweeted:

“”I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!

—Actual tweet by @RealDonaldTrump on November 7th!

His most loyal supporters broke into utter hysteria. It was shaping up to be a hilarious and shocking period. Trump continued to deny the results and eventually filed dozens of frivolous lawsuits while spreading baseless claims of election fraud. In 2021, only weeks before Biden's inauguration, the recording of a secret tape was leaked, showing Trump attempting to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R-GA), whose home state went for Biden, to "find" enough votes to flip the state. Despite the established insanity of his presidency, not one person expected his final attempt to hold onto power to go as far as it did ...

Coup attempt and second impeachment

See the main article on this topic: 2021 U.S. Capitol riot

The Beer Hall Putsch. No, sorry, this is actually the 2021 US Capitol Putsch.

While the aforementioned phone call certainly qualifies as an impeachable offence, on January 6th, 2021, in perhaps the single most infamous and dangerous thing he has ever done, besides his horrible handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump instigated an attempted self-coup by egging his armed supporters into storming the fucking Capitol, so they could stop Congress from certifying Biden's win in 2020. Said supporters were actively trying to assassinate multiple members of Congress, including Vice President Mike Pence, who refused to reject Biden's certification (which isn't even in his powers as VP, for obvious reasons), and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; and it's quite easy to infer that they likely would not have stopped there. The ensuing mob violence killed five people and nearly led to the slaughter of an entire branch of government, as the entire Congress fled underground and evacuated the building, leaving the Capitol at the whims of Trump's mob until the National Guard came in to retake the building. In the midst of this chaos, Trump refused to deploy the National Guard (Pence did it instead), ignored panicked calls from his fellow Republicans, and reportedly relished in the violence being done in his name and by his words (read: cruelty).

After Congress reconvened and certified Biden’s victory, Donald Trump became the first President ever to be impeached twice. He is also the only incumbent president who refused to accept defeat during the election, the only one to have instigated insurrection, and the only one to have incited an attack on the Capitol. Although he was acquitted after leaving office, the damage was already done; his legacy is marked forever by this event, and it can be brought up at any time to paint him as the extremist that he truly is. This mark will be hard to scrub off, as he was permabanned from most of his social media accounts right after this event, due to the very real fear of more violence incited by his dangerous rhetoric. Gone is his ability to incessantly babble his way out of a bad situation, and people are left with this final memory of his presidency.

With nothing else to do, he gave a Farewell Address in the tradition of most Presidents the day before he hit the the road. January 20th, 2021 was a day that many anticipated. He decided not to witness Biden's inauguration (The first President to skip inauguration since Richard Nixon, and left for Marine One in the morning. He made a speech at Joint Base Andrews, implying he could be back in some way, before getting on Air Force One for one last time to his Mar-a-Lago estate. To the cue of YMCA, Trump finally left D.C., and as one last act, pardoned tax evader Al Pirro. Trump’s first term came to an end, but the post-Trump interim has begun.

Biden interregnum

Trump remained adamant about returning to the White House in 2024. While super early polls suggested Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis, as a strong contender, Trump has claimed that he could beat him, and DeSantis has fallen behind in Republican primary polling, and eventually dropped out. In March 2022, Trump announced that Mike Pence would not be his running mate, which if he follows through will be the first time since Ford, in his failed second term election bid in 1976, for a candidate to pick a different person than his first vice president as his running mate.

On the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Unsurprisingly, Trump spoke favorably about Putin's decision to invade Ukraine, calling him a "genius" and "savvy".

Overturning of Roe v. Wade

On June 26, 2022, Trump held a rally for U.S. Representative Mary Miller (IL-15), in which she made a remark claiming the overturning of Roe v. Wade was "a historic victory for white life", with Miller clapping while Trump nodded and smiled in agreement. In a January 2024 town hall with Fox News, Trump took credit for the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe: "For 54 years they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it. And I'm proud to have done it."

FBI visit

Classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago by the FBI.

On August 8, 2022, the FBI executed a search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, looking for documents meant to be turned over to the National Archives. On August 12, the search warrant was released to the public alongside court records showing that top secret documents, including nuclear secrets, were recovered during the search. The warrant specifies three federal laws suspected to have been violated, including the Espionage Act (18 U.S. Code § 793). Many of Trump's supporters were furious over the raid and has led to multiple violent threats and acts towards the FBI, with some politicians even calling for abolishing the Bureau altogether.

In a filing by Trump's legal team, outlining their defense strategy, they argued that he still had "Q clearance" at the time that the FBI raided his residence. Q clearance, which is issued by the Department of Energy, allows people to view nuclear secrets. What the filing apparently did not mention, however, was that even with Q clearance, a person is not to allowed to view nuclear secrets except on a need-to-know basis, which Trump would not have had as an ex-president. The lawyers were most likely feeding a bone to anyone still in the QAnon sphere of influence.

2024 bid

On November 15, 2022, Trump formally announced he would run in 2024. The DOJ said that Trump's 2024 candidacy won't stop criminal proceedings against him.

NFT, WTF?

“”"I can’t believe I’m going to jail for an NFT salesman."

—Baked Alaska, Capitol rioter, after Trump's big NFT cards reveal

On December 14, 2022, Donald Trump posted a video on his Truth Social account with the caption, "AMERICA NEEDS A SUPERHERO! I will be making a MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT tomorrow." The post featured a video featuring a comic book cartoon of Trump ripping off a suit to reveal a superhero costume with a letter "T" as laser beams shot out of his eyes. Speculation was rife on social media what this announcement could be, with possibilities for the announcement including Trump announcing a running mate for his 2024 campaign or Trump announcing a return to his recently un-banned Twitter account.

The next day's big reveal: NFT digital trading cards. At $99 each, the cards feature (hilariously) machismo-style, cartoonish images of Trump cosplaying as an astronaut, a fighter pilot, and more. Reportedly, many of the cards' images were lifted, crudely-altered stock footage and clothing photos found online. Even by the low standards of NFTs, the cards were widely seen as ugly, cringe, beyond parody, and an obvious grift of his supporters. The announcement was met with mockery on social media. Even many conservatives (including Steve Bannon, Fox News editor Chris Pandolfo, BlazeTV host Chad Prather, and others) were flabbergasted and embarrassed by Trump's "Pokémon cards" (as Prather put it in a tweet).

Despite the WTF nature of the NFTs, the grift was successful: all 45,000 pieces sold out in 12 hours, raising millions for the company that produced the NFTs and for Trump (who licensed his name and likeness to the company).

Indictment, arrest, and convictions

On March 31st, 2023, Trump was indicted for falsification of business records to cover up hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. Shockingly, he did not take it very well, claiming it was a political "Witch-Hunt" and that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg was "doing Joe Biden's dirty work". Certain other groups claimed it was a sign that the deep state would soon be exposed; the credibility is non-existent. To add another bucket of salt to poor ol' Donnie's wounds, he is now to face 34 felony charges. He was arrested on April 4, 2023.

On May 30 2024, Trump was found guilty of every single one of these 34 felony charges. This is the first time that a former or sitting U.S. president has ever been convicted of criminal charges.

Kicking him while he's down

Before the hush money case had even gone to trial, Trump was indicted again on federal charges in June 2023, alongside his valet Walt Nauta. The initial charges against Trump (37 in all) related to the above-mentioned documents Trump had been hoarding at Mar-a-Lago and included 31 charges under the Espionage Act of unlawfully retaining national defence information. An updated copy of the indictment brought further charges against Trump and Nauta, and charged Trump employee Carlos de Oliveira with helping to conceal the documents from subpoena. A copy of the original indictment can be found here for those interested, and the updated version is here. Unfortunately, the federal judge assigned to the case was a Trump appointee named Aileen Cannon who proceeded to repeatedly undermine the prosecution through either incompetence or bias. Judge Cannon eventually dismissed the case completely, claiming that the appointment of the special prosecutor on the case was illegal and unconstitutional; the Justice Department will appeal the ruling.

But wait, THERE'S MORE!

On August 1st, 2023, after 2 years of debates and legal proceedings, Donald Trump was finally indicted for interfering in the 2020 election following his defeat and the subsequent January 6th Capitol insurrection He was indicted on four counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights. Fittingly, he was charged under Section 241 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, which was originally adopted in 1870 as part of the Ku Klux Klan Acts to protect rights guaranteed by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution that were enacted during Reconstruction. An annotated copy of the indictment is available here courtesy of CNN. Unsurprisingly, he pleaded not guilty and call his arrest "a sad day for America." Top that all off, he went as far as to threaten the people investigating him. Totally something an innocent person would do.

Where will it end?

In the latest chapter in the Trump indictment saga, on 15 August 2023 Trump, several of his lawyers (including Rudy Giuliani), his former Chief of Staff, the state GOP chair and assorted co-conspirators were all indicted on racketeering and conspiracy charges in Georgia. Like his third indictment, these charges related to his illegal attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state via fake electors and pressuring state officials to "find" votes. He was booked in the Fulton county PD on August 24 and released on a $200,000 bond. Fulton county made sure to get an unartistic photo of him that captured his character.

His arrest was not only justice, but also karma: the son of a klansman was indicted by District Attorney Fani Willis, the daughter of a Black Panther Party member. Surprise, surprise, he pleaded not guilty.

For most people, indictments and jailing would bring a political career to a disgraceful end; for Trump it's an opportunity to double down. He has gone so far as to use his mugshot in campaigning, and to sell alleged pieces of the suit that he wore for the mugshot.

Descent into fascism

The flag may be different but the methods are the same.

“”Trump’s opening himself up to the Hitler comparison...You could say the ‘vermin’ remark or the ‘poisoning the blood’ remark, maybe one of them would be a coincidence. But both of them pretty much makes it clear that there’s something thematic going on, and I can’t believe it’s accidental.

—Mike Godwin, stating that comparing Trump's rhetoric to Hitler's is apt, and not an example of Godwin's Law.

Trump, with his rhetoric and tactics (such as directly quoting Mussolini in a tweet), was classified by political analysts and historians (including Umberto Eco and Jason Stanley) as an authoritarian, even a fascist, since his presidential run in 2016. The capitol insurrection on January 6th strengthened his classification as a fascist, and it’s only gotten worse from there.

In late 2023, Trump made two remarks that critics found disturbingly close to the rhetoric of fascist regimes. In a Veterans Day speech, Trump stated:

We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections... They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream.

The usage of the word "vermin" attracted particular rebuke, drawing comparisons to the rhetoric of Hitler, Mussolini, and other authoritarian dictators. In particular, the Nazis were very fond of slurring Jews as "the vermin of mankind".

In a speech in Durham, New Hampshire in mid-December 2023, Trump described immigrants as "poisoning the blood of our country":

They’re [Immigrants] poisoning the blood of our country... That’s what they’ve done. They’ve poisoned mental institutions and prisons all over the world — not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country, from Africa, from Asia — all over the world. They’re pouring into our country, nobody's even looking at them, they just come in, the crime is going to be tremendous...”.

The phrasing was criticized for the similarity in his rhetoric that Adolf Hitler used in Mein Kampf. The rhetoric drew criticism not only from Democrats like Joe Biden (who noted the similarity to Hitler), but even from a few Republicans, including Mitch McConnell and Susan Collins.

Trump again drew condemnation for his fascist rhetoric in a campaign ad his team posted, where a heading titled “a unified reich” appeared halfway in the video. Although it was discreet, many people caught a glimpse in pauses, and showed that Trump’s team are sympathetic to fascists (many of them being Nick Fuentes fans, much like DeSantis’ former speechwriter who created the Nazi laced ad that ultimately killed DeSantis’ campaign).

Assassination attempts

On July 13^th at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, a man named Thomas Matthew Crooks climbed to a rooftop nearby where Trump was speaking and opened fire with a legally purchased AR-15 style assault rifle owned by his father. Trump was struck near the top of his right ear by a single shot, thus completing his apotheosis amongst conservatives. Early reports indicated that one rally attendee was killed, and at least one other badly injured. Crooks was killed by Secret Service agents at the scene. Trump's campaign almost immediately confirmed that he was 'fine'. The attack was swiftly denounced by Joe Biden. Despite this, outrage towards Biden came from the right in full force. This ranged from criticizing his rhetoric, to arguing that he and the Deep State were in cahoots with each other in order to take him down. There were also some on the left who pushed the theory that Trump himself staged the incident.

As the investigation progressed, it was revealed that not only had members of the crowd been trying to alert the police to a man crawling across the roof of a nearby building, the building itself had been identified as a potential problem before the rally, yet no team was placed where Crooks eventually fired from. A major security / planning fuckup was impossible to deny.^{[citation NOT needed]} The Republican party and their mouthpieces took the opportunity to blame the whole situation on DEI hiring in the Secret Service. United States Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned after acknowledging in a congressional hearing that, as director, responsibility for the incident fell on her. To her credit, she owned it from the outset. Conservative pundit Meghan McCain demonstrated support for her gender by retweeting self described theocratic fascist Matt Walsh who said "There should not be any women in the secret service. They are supposed to be the very best, and none of the very best at this job are women."

… and again

This was not the end of violence however. On September 15, Ryan Wesley Routh fired shots near Mar-A-Lago, but was quickly detained.

Second term

This section requires updating.

Despite all the madness, and chaos inflicted by the MAGA world, when Election Day came, none of these things mattered. The frustrations of inflated prices were what drove most to the election in roves. Enough in a sense to give Trump the opportunity to serve a second term, complete with a new legion of yes men on his side. Voter concerns for republicans were about the economy, immigration secondly, and foreign policy in third. Despite the fears of inflation, during the Biden presidency, 16 Nobel economists were in agreement prior to that election that Trump would make inflation worse.

Rare moments of sanity

“”Our country is divided and out of control. The world is watching. Our country is totally divided and our enemies are watching.

—Trump accidentally says something truthful, but lacks the self-awareness that he is both the benefactor and partial source of the divisions.

Despite his deplorable reputation, Trump is no exception to the stopped clock principle. Here is an incomplete list of the [somewhat] right things he has done.

• He regularly calls out the neoconservatives and their hired help. His annihilation of the Club for Growth was also on point.
• Trump's comments on George Bush having advance foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks and the lack of strategy post-9/11 from the Bush administration have led some in the right-wing news media (even confessed truther Alex Jones) to label him a "truther", although this isn't very accurate, as Trump backtracked from some of the advance knowledge comments, and he is not known for trutherism. He also believes the famous “28 pages” redacted from the official 9/11 report were done to please the Saudis, which would appear to be partially accurate.
• On the bureaucracy front, he dropped a requirement that federal government agencies report on their Y2K preparedness 17 years after it came and proved to be a big pile of nothing.
• His administration sided with South Dakota in a Supreme Court case that allows states to collect sales tax for all online stores, even if they don't have physical establishments in the charging state.
• His claims on the troubles with (unfettered) free trade are largely correct. The Trump administration withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and worked on modernizing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
• He signed into law a bill that upgrades the birthplace of the famed civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta, Georgia, into a national historical park. He also signed bills linking historical sites related to the civil rights movement and commemorating the first Africans' arrival in the English colonies in Point Comfort, Virginia, in 1619.
• Despite his "tough on crime" policies, he commuted the sentence of Alice Johnson, a first-time offender who was sentenced to life imprisonment on nonviolent drug-related charges. Trump later granted Johnson a full pardon.
• He issued an executive order forcing the Department of Defense to provide army veterans with mental health facilities after they leave the service.
• His administration banned bump stocks by defining them as "machineguns", which are illegal under the National Firearms Act.
• Even though it was a jab at the Obama administration, he issued a pardon posthumously to former heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson (1878-1946). In his lifetime, Johnson was prosecuted for transporting a white woman across state lines in his car.
• During the 2016 Presidential Campaign, he advocated for allowing people to purchase health insurance across state lines. However, he did not implement this plan.
• He supports paper backup ballots.
• On March 16^th 2021, in a blow to Trump-worshipping anti-vaccination conspiracy theory movements such as QAnon, Donald Trump urged America to get vaccinated for COVID-19, calling it "safe" and "something that works". His followers booed him at a rally in Alabama, but he tried to quell them by saying they have freedom. Trump repeatedly continued to recommend the COVID-19 vaccine.. This is despite his previous attempts to stop isolation and mask-wearing, so it may be less of a startling moment of sanity and more of a consistent practice to side with whatever keeps his businesses afloat. On the insanity side, though, it was later revealed that the Trump White House overruled a proposed 2020 CDC policy that would have put some limitations on church gatherings during the pre-vaccine phase of the pandemic, likely resulting in increased deaths of Trump's supporters.

Iraq War?

See the main article on this topic: Iraq War

In 2002, Trump appeared on Howard Stern's show and voiced his support (such as it was) for the Iraq War based on the "business opportunity" in the region (as Clinton put it) in 2011. However, Trump personally had a financial interest in opposing the war in Iraq and expressed concerns about the war soon after it had started: by 2004, it was well-known that Trump was an opponent of the Iraq War. In Las Vegas, Trump swerved the entire Republican Party, blasting the war louder than any Democrat would have:

Thousands and thousands of lives, we have nothing. Wounded warriors all over the place who I love, we have nothing for it.

Then, during the election, Trump used the Iraq War as one of the most common sticks to beat Clinton with, even going to far as to suggest Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton were the "founders" of Daesh for leaving a power vacuum in the region: a power vacuum Trump also would have left, as he was calling for the immediate withdrawal of the US from Iraq as early as 2007. When asked about running mate Mike Pence's decision to vote in favor of the Iraq War, Trump rather patronizingly said that Pence was "entitled to a mistake", and as for Hillary, "she's not".

It is clear then that Trump's views on Iraq are not as well-informed as they initially appear.

List of nicknames

“”Long live Emperor Trump!

—A Chinese fan on social media

Donald Trump is a man of many nicknames: "The Donald", "John Miller", "John Barron", "David Dennison", "Don the Con", "God-Emperor Trump", "Mr. Brexit",, Honest Don and Cadet Bone Spur. One might also add "The Waanald", in light of his constant whining on Twitter and elsewhere whenever someone says something about him he doesn't like.

During the George Floyd protests, Trump hid in the White House basement and turned off the lights, a feat that earned him the nickname "Bunker Boy".

Trump supporters

Well, let's give Denny his due: when has he ever given us any bad advice or led us in the wrong direction?

La Familia Trump consists of the usual suspects: a pack of celebrities as unfit to hold office as the man himself. We have dossiers on most of them:

• Jake Angeli: Became a terrorist to defend Trump.
• Joe Arpaio: Cartoonishly-corrupt sheriff of Maricopa County. Arpaio, whose department has been sued multiple times for racist policing practices by the federal government, declared "I'm with him to the bitter end." Subsequently repaid in full with a presidential pardon for his sundry crimes and human rights violations.
• Herman Cain: 2012 Presidential candidate for the Republican nominee. Died after catching COVID at a rally.
• Kenneth Copeland: Creepy televangelist who plays as a spiritual advisor for Trump. Supported him in 2016, and maniacally laughed at Biden's victory.
• Anti-PC crusader Ann Coulter: Hopped on the Trump Train early but appeared to sour on his 'half-baked tweets at midnight'. What's that old saying about a speck in your neighbor's eye?
• Dinesh D'Souza: Such a big Trump supporter he made a movie about it.
• David Duke: Practically inevitably, the former head of the KKK tweeted that Trump was "the only way to stop the commie Bolsheviks". Bizarrely, Duke also endorsed Tucker Carlson for VP.
• George Galloway: Here's a tricky one: Who would be a more terrible president, Donald Trump or George Galloway? Fellow Brexiteer Nigel Farage appears to agree with Galloway on this one.
• Sean Hannity: His inner construction worker cannot resist. Compared Trump to King David, who "had five hundred concubines", ffs.
• Alex Jones: Vaunted anti-government loon, is spreading the Trump Gospel – in essence, becoming a cheerleader for torture, the surveillance state, deportations, and zero-percent corporate taxes – all in exchange for a plug from Donald on his show. Has since defected to Ron DeSantis, calling him "way better than Trump".
• Arthur Laffer: Trickle-down needs to be brutally murdered because it won't fucking die on its own. (Shouldn't you be wrecking Australia's economy right now?)
• Greg Locke: Pastor who denies Joe Biden won, and that Trump is the legitimate winner. Also thinks there is a pedophile ring in D.C. tunnels. Locke has recently renounced his support for Trump, due to his promotion of COVID-19 vaccinations.
• Michelle Malkin: Sees which way the wind is blowing and announced she would be "pulling the lever for Donald Trump." This from the woman who called him a "conservafraud" two years before. Others might have taken offense at Trump calling them "born stupid", but not Malkin: she couldn't Stump The Trump, and hopefully gained "wisdom" from the experience.
• Ted Nugent: Of course, no collection of wingnuts would be complete without Nugent. Political life lessons from him are like filling the seats at the BET awards with KKK members.
• Mehmet Oz: He looks healthy to me! What do you think, studio audience?
• Dennis Prager: Admits he only supports Trump out of hate for the left. One of the most adamantly anti-Trump talk show hosts of the past year was, in fact ... Dennis Prager.
• Dan Quayle: The people who know what the job actually entails want nothing to do with Trump. That should tell you everything you need to know. Dan Quayle does, so there's that.
• Donald Rumsfeld: Trump's not doing so well in endorsements; he'll take what he can get. Let's speculate on other stupid endorsements he may get. Lynndie England? Ollie North? Is G. Gordon Liddy dead yet?
• Michael Savage: Called Trump "the Winston Churchill of our time." We live in savage times indeed.
• Phyllis Schlafly: Marital rape supporter stay-at-home mom and Equal Rights Amendment opponent. Now deceased.
• Martin Shkreli: "Most hated CEO in America" and convicted fraudster.
• Ben Stein: Once a flack, always a flack. "He wants a peaceful, calm America."
• Brenton Tarrant: Made the questionable decision to express his support for the Donald in his manifesto published before a terrorist attack.
• Peter Thiel: Though he initially supported Carly Fiorina during the 2016 election, after she dropped out, Thiel supported Trump, donating $1.25 million to his campaign. After Trump's victory, Thiel was named to the executive committee of his transition team.
• Andrew Wakefield: In case you thought Trump was the stupidest person in the room.
• Allen West: Wanted Trump to constantly visit Texas in 2020 in order to fanboy over him. Not surprising, given their shared love of unorthodox interrogation techniques.
• Kanye West: Along with Herman Cain and Ben Carson, one of Trump's token black supporters.
• Milo Yiannopoulos: Refers to Trump as "Daddy". As the official spokesman for the Internet's sewer, Yiannopoulos half-jokingly yearns for a God-Emperor Trump to transform America into some sort of a fascist monarchy.

Similar people

• Benito Mussolini: Trump has adopted from him, consciously or not, many of the same gestures, rhetoric, body language, scapegoating tendencies, and authoritarian impulses all the way back when he was first a candidate for president. After serving President and campaigning for president once more, these parallels are now no longer just parallels, but profoundly problematic executive policy and ideology with millions of followers.
• Silvio Berlusconi: Il Trump Italiano. Just subtract a foot of height and add underage Moroccan prostitutes.
• Boris Johnson: British Trump, from the anti-Obama racism and anti-immigrant stances to the terrible hair and larger-than-life comedic image as a clownish man with a huge media personality. As Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris also caught flak for his less than stellar response to the coronavirus pandemic and tested positive for COVID-19. He also purges members of his own party for disagreeing with his policies, causing some of his ministers to also resign in protest. He also ran afoul of the Supreme Court, which unanimously found he illegally dismissed parliament to prevent them from scrutinizing his no-deal Brexit plan.
• Rodrigo Duterte: Former president of the Philippines who's also the oldest to be elected to their respective countries' highest office. He's been called the "Trump of the East" due to both being "self-professed political outsiders with a penchant for tough talk and shocking turns of phrase." They're known for misogynistic comments, outlandish bombast, impulsive and violent rhetoric, and being in favor of the death penalty for drug users. He was praised by Trump himself for mass murdering thousands of suspected drug users and is one of the few Filipinos he respects.
• Janez Janša: Former Prime Minister of Slovenia, Ivan Janša is known for making false claims, dressing up bald-faced lies as truths, accusing critics of being puppets to George Soros, promoting conspiracy theories on Twitter, including 2020 election denial-ism, which has earned him the nickname of Marshal Twito. He is a fan of Trump, an ally of Viktor Orban, and a notorious bigot who rails against migrants and journalists, even calling reporters "presstitutes." His career reads like a mix of Orban and Trump: beginning as a pro-democracy advocate, he turned hard right while in power, presiding over cronyism and corruption, dabbing into Antisemitism and Islamophobia, embracing climate change denial and anti-migrant rhetoric, and parading misogynistic language, up to publicly calling female journalists "washed-up prostitutes." With a coalition government in power, he has taken steps to degrade democracy and defeat any limitations to his power, including passing a law that removes the rights of most NGOs to take part in environmental assessments of infrastructure projects.
• Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's most dangerous man who served as president from 2018 to 2022, Jair reads like he was bred from a Trump cloning factory. He once said to a woman who accused him of rape, "I would never rape you because you aren't worth it." He's incited violence from his supporters, and he is a notorious homophobe, racist, misogynist, and an incendiary reactionary on every social issue imaginable; he praised a dictator (Alberto Fujimori) for strong leadership, paid homage to a fascist colonel who tortured dissidents (including former President Dilma Rousseff), and repeatedly scapegoats society's ills on the weak and vulnerable. He even says "the only difference [between me and Trump] is that I'm richer!" Like Trump, he was also a sore loser.
• Doug Ford: Canadian premier of Ontario, a "businessman turned anti-establishment politician", a "son of a wealthy entrepreneur" who "rails against elites" and "often shuns expertise". But similar to Boris, he has a stranglehold on power despite his own party not really liking him very much. He also awards family friends and political allies with patronage, and also attacks basic democracy by willfully ignoring court rulings in defiance of what the people say, as he changed the size of the Toronto city council to prevent them from voting against his policies in defiance of the courts saying such a thing was unconstitutional.
• Sebastián Piñera: Former President of Chile, another businessman-turned-chief of state, who resembles 2020-stage Trump, as an outright authoritarian who ordered the deployment of the military against peaceful protesters.
• Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: President of Turkey, another bloviating, loud-mouth racist authoritarian who ushered in a rise in xenophobia, racism against minorities (Kurds), violence against leftists (mostly Kurds and Turks), and attempts to overturn election results that didn't go his way (i.e. redoing the mayoral election of Istanbul only to then have his party lose by an even bigger margin).
• Benjamin Netanyahu: Prime Minister of Israel, who used fearmongering tactics against Arabs and Muslims to get elected, conducted a sterilization programme against minorities (Ethiopian Jews for Bibi, ICE detainees for Trump), antagonized Iran to help his reelection efforts, caused a political crisis that reached downright authoritarian levels (Bibi trying not to get indicted for corruption while navigating Israel's parliamentary politics; just about every major policy for Trump), refused to vaccinate a huge segment of the population (Palestine for Bibi, all of America for Trump), and dealt with a corruption investigation while in office.
• Narendra Modi: Prime Minister of India, infamous for presiding over thousands of religion-related murders and inciting violence (against Muslims and Christians) as Chief Minister of Gujarat, with many criticizing his inaction at best and his outright hateful language as escalating the crisis at worst. Just like Trump, his party is known for courting fascists (the BJP even came into being from a group that was actively inspired by the Nazis).
• Mohammad Hosseini: An Iranian dissident and leader of a far-right group inspired by QAnon that engages heavily in political violence, he and his group took inspiration from Trump and have even praised the former president for his stance against the Ayatollah, even copying his motto “Make America Great Again” but adopting it for Iran, “Make Iran Great Again”.

Fiction foreshadows fact

“”And every fictional depiction of Trump I’ve seen has fallen flat. He transcends parody, and he’s not a deep enough person to carry a meaningful drama.

—Drew Magary

Given that so much of Trump's life is already fictionalized, it's entirely redundant to make new fiction about his life. There are nonetheless some fictional works that foreshadowed the rise of Trump.

• In Sinclair Lewis' 1935 dystopian novel It Can't Happen Here, the protagonist Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip rises to power in the United States to become dictator, parallelling the contemporaneous rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany. Elmer Gantry was made into an Academy Award winning film in 1960.
• Stephen King wrote the science fiction thriller The Dead Zone in 1979. In 2024, King wrote: "45 years ago I wrote a book about Donald Trump. It was called THE DEAD ZONE. I named him Greg Stillson." Stillson is a malevolent "successful businessman" who rises to political power. The novel also contains a time-traveling killing Hitler plot element. The novel was made into a film in 1983 by David Cronenberg, and was also made into a 2002 TV series.
• The hero of the 2016 children's animated The Angry Birds Movie (based on the gaming franchise that started in 2009) is unapologetically angry and the film has been interpreted as being metaphorically anti-immigration, and 90% Trumpy. The neo-Nazi website Counter-Currents reviewed the film approvingly, stating, "It’s hard to avoid the idea the movie is simply a giant metaphor for the European refugee crisis. A spoiled island of happy birds doesn’t recognize the threat of interlopers." and compared the hero to neo-Nazi George Lincoln Rockwell.

See also

Spawn of Trump

• Trumpism
• Authoritarianism of Donald Trump
• COVID-19 pandemic#Calling Doctor Howard, Doctor Fine… Doctor Trump
• Foreign policy of Donald Trump
• Infrastructure policy of Donald Trump
• Rhetoric of Donald Trump
• Conservapedia:Donald Trump achievements – the go-to source to prove that little has been achieved since January 20, 2017.

Trump shell companies

• Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House – Michael Wolff's book about the Trump campaign and Trump's first year in office.
• Know Nothing Party: Rick Perry publicly called Trump a "Know Nothing" shortly after Trump announced his candidacy. (And when Rick Perry thinks you've gone out to lunch, well ...)
• Ultracrepidarian. Also, hire ghost writers to write bestseller books in your name about how smart and rich you are.
• Nepotism – his daughter (Ivanka Trump) and son-in-law (Jared Kushner) were advisors to the at-the-time President and were unable to get more than temporary security clearances due to being possible blackmail candidates.
• Paradise Papers – offshore money, which may or may not have been used for tax fraud, and happened to have named 12 filthy rich men in Trump's orbit.
• Pissgate
• Secure the border

Trump, the game

So, sue me.

• Fun:A day in the life of Donald J. Trump
• Fun:Quantum Trump
• Fun:Trump insult generator
• Fun:Trump synonym generator
• Fun:Trump tweet generator

Trump subsidiaries

• Pat Buchanan: A failed paleoconservative presidential candidate who shares many of the same nationalistic ideas about free trade, foreign policy, and immigration. Naturally, he was an early and enthusiastic Trump supporter. (Buchanan and Trump were opponents in the 2000 Reform Party presidential primaries.) And what do you know?
• Charles Coughlin: An American Catholic priest who became the granddaddy of right-wing populism, nationalistic demagoguery, and globalist conspiracies.
• Paul LePage: I miss the old LePage, straight from the 'Go LePage, talkin' 'bout the soul LePage, set all his goals LePage, I hate the new LePage, the bad mood LePage, the always-rude LePage, spaz in the news LePage
• Ron DeSantis: Governor of Florida, who goes beyond just being a blowhard. He actively prevents masks from being enforced, he refuses to promote life-saving vaccines, he punishes government employees for accurately reporting on COVID deaths, and he dabbles in outright authoritarianism every time he feels threatened by regular people. He is the closest thing to a "Smarter Trump" that we can see.
• Rush Limbaugh, or should we say "Rash Libel" for the content of his venomous prose? bloated and self-indulgent shock-jock, who like Donald Trump related provocative statements with little regard for their truth so long as they fit right-wing memes. For that he was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Donald Trump. He is Trump's "intellectual" prophet even if without much honor.
• Joseph McCarthy: There are at least 40 million illegal immigrants. Some people say there are 30 million illegal immigrants. It's probably somewhere in the middle. 32, 33, 34 million.
• Richard Nixon: Who indirectly led to the bastard even having a chance at the presidency due to Roger Ailes and the Southern Strategy.
• Sarah Palin: Basically a Nostra-dumbass. She foretold Trump without even knowing it.
• Vladimir Putin. Russian dictator and war criminal seeking an American puppet, he found a predictable puppet in Donald Fredovich Trump. (Russian naming style gives a middle name from the father's given name. Donald Trump's father was Fred Trump).
• Ronald Reagan: A B-radio and film personality who completely changed his politics to appease his masters at GE TV theater. He was picked out of a hat because the name had a high recognition value. He didn't actually decide anything; he just read the lines he was given.
• Shinzō Abe: He was a far-right nationalist and former prime minister in Japan. He is in retrospect often referred to as "Trump before Trump".
• George Wallace: The segregationist presidential candidate.

External links

• "Donald Trump Campaign Offered Actors $50 to Cheer for Him at Presidential Announcement", The Hollywood Reporter.
• "Donald Trump: 'I Could ... Shoot Somebody, And I Wouldn't Lose Any Voters'" – We're not sure the world is ready for a mad emperor Gordon Gekko.
• "The End of the World" — a 1958 episode from a TV show featuring a conman named Walter Trump, eerily similar
• Sesame Street mocking Trump: Ronald Grump Builds The Grump Tower, Grouch Apprentice with Donald Grump. Trump is so petty, this is why he wants to destroy the National Endowment for the Arts, which funds Sesame Street.
• Match of the Millennium. Trump Alert!
• See the Wikipedia article on Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations.
• How intelligent is Donald Trump?
• The many nicknames of President Donald J. Trump.
• In four years, President Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims: The Fact Checker’s database of the false or misleading claims made by President Trump while in office. (Updated Jan. 20, 2021) The Washington Post.
• His YouTube channel
• His Twitter Account - Elon Musk unbanned him
• A Rake's Progress — Trump's life story foretold in the 18^th century

Trump language

• His insults toward other candidates, The New York Times.
• The language he uses – is it "bigly" or "big league"? Neither – it's big lie.
• Donald Trump limerick generator
• Donald Trump Insult Generator, TIME.

Videos

• Never forget.
• RNC Prays For Democratic Defeat, Trump Victory - The fact that they're literally praying in an empty room is a powerful statement. So alone in their righteous anger.
• Donald Trump is the President!
• Building Trump's Wall. The B1M.
• The Tsar Spangled Banner. Sheet Music Boss.
• Donald, where's your trousers? Performed by Garret Dillahunt (as John Henry) and Mackenzie Smith (as Savannah Weaver) in Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles.

References

United States 2016 presidential election articles on RationalWiki

Topics: Affordable Care Act - Citizens United v. FEC - DAESH - Gun control - Illegal immigration - Koch Industries - United States Electoral College - Trump's Wall
Parties: Democratic Party (primaries) - Green Party of the United States - Libertarian Party - Republican Party (primaries • Convention • Tea Party)
Candidates: Bush (R) - Carson (R) - Christie (R) - Clinton (D) - Cruz (R) - Huckabee (R) - Jindal (R) - Johnson (Lib) - Kasich (R) - Paul (R) - Perry (R) - Rubio (R) - Sanders (D) - Stein (Green) - Trump (R) - Walker (R) - Webb (D) • Running mates: Kaine (D) - Pence (R)
Winner: Donald Trump

United States 2020 presidential election articles on RationalWiki

Topics: Abortion - Climate change - Coronavirus - Education - Illegal immigration - Gun control - LGBT rights - Marijuana - Supreme Court - Taxes - United States Electoral College - Universal healthcare
Parties: Democratic Party (primaries) - Green Party of the United States - Libertarian Party - Republican Party
Candidates: Biden (D) - Bloomberg (D) - Buttigieg (D) - Gabbard (D) - Gravel (D) - Harris (D) - O'Rourke (D) - Sanders (D) - Sanford (R) - Trump (R) - Walsh (R) - Warren (D) - West (Independent) - Williamson (D) - Yang (D) • Running mates: Harris (D) - Pence (R)
Winner: Joe Biden
Fallout from sore losers: 2021 U.S. Capitol riot

United States 2024 presidential election articles on RationalWiki

Topics: Abortion - Inflation - Israel/Palestine - Project 2025 - Supreme Court - Ukraine - Undocumented immigration
Parties: Democratic Party - Green Party of the United States - Libertarian Party - Republican Party
Candidates: Biden (D) - Burgum (R) - Christie (R) - DeSantis (R) - Elder (R) - Haley (R) - Harris (D) - Kennedy Jr. (Independent) - Pence (R) - Ramaswamy (R) - Stein (Green) - Trump (R) - West (Independent) - Williamson (D) • Running mates: Walz (D) - Vance (R)
Winner: Donald Trump

Presidents of the United States

v - t - e

Washington (I) - J. Adams (Fed.) - Jefferson (Dem-Rep) - Madison (Dem-Rep) - Monroe (Dem-Rep) - J.Q. Adams (Dem-Rep) - Jackson (D) - Van Buren (D) - W.H. Harrison (Whig) - Tyler (Whig) - Polk (D) - Taylor (Whig) - Fillmore (Whig) - Pierce (D) - Buchanan (D) - Lincoln (R) - A. Johnson (D*) - Grant (R) - Hayes (R) - Garfield (R) - Arthur (R) - Cleveland (D) - B. Harrison (R) - Cleveland (D) again - McKinley (R) - T. Roosevelt (R) - Taft (R) - Wilson (D) - Harding (R) - Coolidge (R) - Hoover (R) - F.D. Roosevelt (D) - Truman (D) - Eisenhower (R) - Kennedy (D) - L.B. Johnson (D) - Nixon (R) - Ford (R) - Carter (D) - Reagan (R) - G.H.W. Bush (R) - Clinton (D) - G.W. Bush (R) - Obama (D) - Trump (R) - Biden (D) (incumbent)
*Ran for VP on the "National Union" ticket together with Lincoln but was otherwise a lifelong Democrat