Donald Trump, failure
There is a cost that comes with tweeting all day, giving rallies at night, watching lots of TV and playing golf. That cost is a failure to get anything else done. It should come as no surprise to anyone, therefore, that Donald Trump has accomplished virtually nothing good while in office. What does get done in the Executive Branch of America’s federal government — when anything gets done at all — is done by others. Trump takes credit for it when it’s any good, or he thinks it is.
To be sure, Trump shows up at ceremonies occasionally, again to take credit for other people’s work, and to sign important bills. And he also signs lesser documents that are slipped in front of him while he watches TV. He has been known, begrudgingly, to attend occasional security briefings. But he rarely listens at those briefings, or, he will pick up on some irrelevance during a briefing and pontificate on it endlessly and pointlessly.
One of Donald Trump’s signature boasting points during his failed presidency is job creation. But Trump has lost four million jobs in almost as many years, and when he departs in January he will be the first president since Herbert Hoover to end his administration with fewer jobs on the books than he began with.
Nor is Donald Trump’s job failure exonerated by the pandemic. The fact that most of those jobs were lost because of the pandemic is also Trump’s fault. Trump’s refusal to do anything about coronavirus, even now, eight months on, is a vestige of his laziness. He prefers to tweet, play golf and give super spreader Nuremberg-style rallies instead. He has virtually forgotten about the pandemic and would never even mention it at all if he hadn’t come down with it, and if reporters didn’t keep bringing it up — to his considerable irritation.
What Donald Trump does have time for, when he’s not tweeting, playing golf, or giving rallies, is destroying Barack Obama’s legacy. His virulent hatred of Obama dates back to Obama’s rise to national prominence. Michael Cohen gives the details in his book, “Disloyal.” Trump was outraged that an intelligent, educated black man could be a legitimate candidate for president of the United States. Trump hated Obama from the very first.
But then, Trump has been a malevolent racist his entire life. In 1973 Trump and his father Fred were sued by the Department of Justice for refusing to rent their apartments to people of color. And, of course, in 1989 Trump took out full-page ads in the New York Times calling for the executions of five innocent black teens falsely accused of raping a white woman. Even when the young men were exonerated by irrefutable DNA evidence Trump refuses — to this day — to admit he was wrong.
It frankly pains me to have to point all this out, because Trump could have just as easily been a hard-working, highly-effective president and it wouldn’t change the fact that he’s a terrible one. He’s terrible because Donald Trump is a rapist and a murderer, a traitor and a career criminal, a defiler of the United States Constitution and a racist and a liar. Those things remain unchanged by his work ethic.
But some people seem to insist on crowing about Trump’s record as president and dismissing his disgusting crimes and horrible bigotries as “Trump just being Trump.” So I have a duty of care to point out that they have nothing to crow about. If you forget about the fact that Donald Trump is the biggest, most racist criminal you have ever met in your life, it still doesn’t change the fact that he’s crap as president.
There are a million reasons why Donald Trump is unfit to be president of the United States, this has been another one. There are no legitimate reasons to vote for Donald Trump in November. So don’t. Vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and let’s end this national nightmare together. Remember, despite all Donald Trump’s efforts to make it otherwise, our country remains the United States of America. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.