Donald Trump

The worst kind of leader a country can have is one who not only proves incompetent, corrupt, or disinterested but who actively destroys their country. This is why Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan end up alongside Andrew Johnson at the bottom of nearly every ranking of US presidents. Pierce's approval of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and his subsequent failed responses to the Ostend Manifesto and Bleeding Kansas contributed more to the tensions over slavery that ultimately tore the Union apart than any other president in US history. Buchanan sat on his hands when those tensions finally erupted into southern secession at the end of 1860 and beginning of 1861, only acting when it was to appease the childish and violent south, even then with his efforts being in vain. But a president doesn't have to literally destroy their country to be a bad president. They can still be abysmal without being that abysmal. Of those sorts of presidents, the presidents who failed but not to the point of destroying American civilization, I believe that Donald Trump is the absolute worst.

While Trump was an awful president, he did have a few bright spots. He signed the First Step Act, which reduced the length of federal life sentences and provided more funds to programs seeking to end recidivism in crime. He also established the Space Force, helped reduce tensions between North and South Korea, and helped bring an end to ISIS' reign of terror throughout the Middle East. These are all positive things that the US benefitted from and that the rest of the world - especially the Middle East and East Asia - benefitted from. However, most of these achievements are minor in comparison to all the damage he did to America and to the world. He was the worst president who didn't actively and immediately rip the Union up into a northern nation and a southern nation.

In terms of the economy, Trump often gets credit for the high employment numbers and amount of financial activity that existed during his tenure. However, the economy was already doing well toward the latter portions of Barack Obama's presidency, so Trump doesn't deserve as much credit here as he receives. Additionally, Trump cut taxes at the same time that had expanded military spending and further built up the American military. Neither of these things - reducing taxes or strengthening the military - are bad on their own. But, since Trump did them simultaneously, he ended up dramatically increasing the national debt. He cut taxes and thus decreased government revenue, yet had to spend more money on sustaining his increased military, which resulted in the US having to borrow more money and thus incurring a larger debt.

Additionally, Trump repealed the Dodd-Frank Act. Signed by Obama in 2010, this law prohibited banks from investing their money and thus people's deposits in risky hedge funds. By terminating this policy, Trump put people's deposits at risk, as banks could now take the money that Americans had entrusted those institutions with and spend them on unwise, irresponsible financial ventures. If that money is lost, the depositor(s)'s spending ability is neutered, further damaging the economy.

On social policy, the Trump Administration was also severely flawed. Trump infamously ordered the country to build a large wall along the Mexican-American border in order to curb undocumented immigration. Even if someone thinks there is a crisis of undocumented immigration - that's debatable, considering how immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens and since immigration produces more economic activity - the border wall would have been a wretched solution. People could still fly to the US and overstay their visas, dig under the tunnel, or simply use a ladder. In pursuit of this bizarre and childish policy, Trump shut down the government on several occasions to pressure Democrats into giving him money for the wall, a fact that hurt the incomes and families of government employees.

Generally, immigration was always a source of trouble and chaos for Trump and his administration. Almost immediately after assuming office, Trump issued an executive order prohibiting immigration from most of the Arab world, from Venezuela, and from North Korea. Such a decision is unconstitutional, as Congress is supposed to determine immigration policy, not the president. Furthermore, this order trapped hundreds of thousands of people in nations riddled with civil war, financial turmoil, ecological stress, and food shortages. It was extremely immoral and harmful, both for those unable to seek refuge in America and for native-born Americans, as immigration has been proven to help the economy. Trump also prohibited transgender people from serving in the military, which is needlessly authoritarian and prejudiced.

Foreign policy was hardly a source of triumph for Trump, especially when setting aside the achievements I described at the start of this article. Obama brokered the brilliant Iran Nuclear Deal, in which Iran agreed to largely dissolve its nuclear weapons program in exchange for an end to Western sanctions instituted against it. This policy both quelled international tensions and improved living standards among the Iranian people. Trump idiotically withdrew from the deal, creating renewed conflict between Iran and the US and reviving material strife in the lives of innocent Iranians who aren't responsible for the disgusting actions of their theocratic, warmongering government. Trump also vetoed a bill that would have ended US support for Saudi Arabia's genocide in Yemen. Obama was one of the first presidents to encourage international action on climate change, signing the Paris Climate Accords in which all participants agreed to reduce carbon emissions by 25% come 2030. Trump terminated this as well.

During his presidency, there were a number of severe crises which Trump either provoked or failed to adequately respond to. For example, in 2017, he used chemical weapons against Syria. Because of Syria's alliance with Russia, this could have sparked international retaliation from Russia and its allies, threatening global stability. Similarly, at the start of 2020, he killed a prominent Iranian general named Qassem Solemani, which also could have led to war. Around the time that Solemani was killed, COVID-19 emerged in China, quickly spreading to the rest of the world from there. Trump was very slow to act, not banning travel between the US and China for nearly 2 months after the first reports emerged. By that point, COVID-19 had also reached other countries, such as Italy, Japan, Thailand, and Sweden. Yet, Trump instituted no travel restrictions between America and these countries.

When COVID-19 started to become an extremely serious crisis within America itself, Trump issued next to no federal restrictions aimed at mitigating the spread. He even mocked wearing masks and presented bleach as a possible cure, both of which are absurd actions on their own, but are especially gross when done by the person supposed to be guiding us through the pandemic. He does deserve credit for financing the creation of a few COVID-19 vaccines, but that's about it. Prior to the introduction of the coronavirus vaccines, Trump allowed the virus to spread more or less unabated, with the country having to rely on the states for assistance.

Most horrifically, though, Trump seems to have very little concern for one of America's founding principles: Democracy. Like Andrew Johnson, Trump was impeached. But unlike Johnson, Trump was impeached twice. And during both impeachments, the central charges were related to his blatant disdain for the consent of the governed. In July of 2019, for example, he called Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, asking that he investigate the presence of Hunter Biden on the board of a Ukrainian oil company in order to find incriminating information to use against Hunter's father Joe Biden in the general election. Trump also doubted the authenticity of the 2020 election results despite his lack of popularity and the absence of evidence that the election was rigged. These accusations culminated in the infamous January 6th riot in 2021.

Donald Trump was an awful president. He laid the seeds for economic calamity and increased national debts, spread hateful rhetoric against and instituted unconstitutional policies that hurt immigrants, discriminated against transgender people, pursued an ineffective border wall to solve an imaginary immigration crisis, renewed international tensions, failed to quell the COVID-19 pandemic, and was one of only a few presidents to really and truly despise democracy. At the start of this article, I said that Trump was only better than people like James Buchanan because he didn't actively cause disunion. And that is true. But while Trump didn't, like Buchanan and Franklin Pierce did, tear the states apart, he has torn the people apart.