Donald Trump's Presidency: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

At the end of Trump’s turbulent and controversial era, Biden was inaugurated on the 20th of January. The old White House twitter account released a send-off video of the former president entering his helicopter scored with the strident, patriotic blasts of a brass band as he saluted towards the military guards. This video testified the insecurities of a nation that has comprised for its relative infancy and lack of identity with years of aggressive foreign policy and competitive global capitalism. With the resurgence of China and the frustrations with immigration and poor working conditions, the American people demanded change. After years of the distant and bureaucratic stencil of Clinton and Obama, the redneck working class and many republicans were inspired by the unorthodox populist approach of Trump in the 2016 election. However, Trump was in many ways a continuation of the presidents before, only with an unforgiving border control, a denial of climate change and a dishonest and rambunctious ego that sprawled across every frontpage headline. Many in the liberal establishment spoke with vitriol towards Trump yet the candidates they proposed were almost ideologically identical as real alternatives such as Sanders are muffled by the hand of the wealthy. The disconcerting economic consensus of American politics between the Democrats and the Republicans is so similar that Trump even politically affiliated with the democrats from 2001-2009.

Economically, Trump pursued his pledge to lower the tax burden on the wealthy to 37% as his presidential predecessors had before him. Despite his façade of populism, this is the policy of an establishment figure serving his crooked tycoons and own interests. America’s bloc of privatised services put strain on the average American with health insurance costing roughly $1,000 a month, having inflated by 3 times since 2008 from the avarice allowed by a deregulated system. In this same period of exponential consumerism, the stagnation of average wages at a measly $7.25 minimum wage and growing unemployment (at over 14.7% as of April 2020) has punished the drudgery of the working and lower-middle classes. This injustice is not spawned through indolence, as many of these classes work tirelessly in poor conditions, but instead by a state shirking away from its responsibilities. The scarcity of these wages is even limply justified by a prickly tipping culture and the gaping ravine in income and opportunity is sneered at by the neo-liberal mantra of the most individualistic nation on earth. Any suggestion, by figures such as Bernie Sanders, to redistribute a reasonable fraction of the absurd profits of the wealthiest and reinvest it into nationalised sectors of healthcare, infrastructure and education while lowering the cost of living is sneered at by the panicked establishment and branded as “communism”. This neo-liberal American climate remained hopelessly unchanged with Trump, suspending upwards of 100 federal regulations, and even attempting to dislodge Obamacare which, while inadequate, was better than nothing. Trump himself paid $750 in tax returns in 2016 and 2017 (according to the NY Times) which is around 7 times less than that of the Average American (according to Business Insider) despite having a Forbes-calculated net worth of $2.1 billion as of 2020. Despite Trump’s protectionist attempt to increase manufacturing in the US with a trade war against China in 2018, the Wall Street Journal concluded that manufacturing peaked in 2018 and employment in industry slowed. This reflects the falseness of Trump’s promises to improve industry while he deprived employment through continual deregulation. His denial of climate change, as seen with his withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord, was another favour to the fossil-fuel monopoly who exhaust the earth for the lust of profit.

In terms of state expenditure, his stance on rebuilding infrastructure was slightly more successful but its progress was undermined by a deregulated and privatised economy. There were some rail and road refurbishments were delivered to more rural areas with a $1.5 trillion proposal. However, this programme soon became fruitless as the much-anticipated infrastructure package was frittered away, including $200 billion on seducing private investment. While some changes resulted in successful rebuilds of crumbling rural roads and bridges, the uncertainty of private investment led many of these schemes to half-baked drafts and cowardly U-turns such as the Gateway Project. Trump eulogised his work with a curled, smug lip even with the flaking, windswept roads of Massachusetts, Hawaii and Alaska at his heels. While Trump’s industrial and infrastructural spending rose from Obama, his flattery for big business left his delusional promises in the dirt as he depended on the undependable shoulders of private investment.

Trump’s public profile was certainly his ugliest and crudest element. Trump was the most vulgar and erratic ego in the history of American politics. His rapacious pursuit of power was central to his reign. He often laced himself in a knot of contradiction and deceit, having allegedly changed his political positions 141 times in the first year of his campaign (according to NBC News in 2016) and lied 30,534 times in his campaign overall (according to The Washington Post Factchecker). Ranking among this includes his claim that drinking disinfectant may be a cure for coronavirus and his suggestions of voter fraud in both 2016 and 2020. In 2016, unsurprisingly as he was elected, he conveniently withdrew his claim which lays bare the blatant bitterness of his claims. In 2021, his subtle endorsement of the Storm on the Capitol was the militant tantrum of his wounded ego in the face of defeat. Trump’s continual address of criticism as “fake news” and his overcompensation with unfounded, knowing disinformation rooted the delusion of his clench-fisted supporters. He tried to invalidate the criticism from the MSM with the calculated and shameless abuse of reporters, journalists and politicians which were commonplace throughout his political career. Notable occasions of this include his abuse of Biden’s son during presidential campaign debates, his insult of a CNN reporter as “a rude and terrible person” in 2018 and his mocking of a disabled reporter in 2016. He polished his wayward and predatory past with teams of lawyers that insulated him from allegations of tax-avoidance, endorsement of far-right conspiracy-theorists, encounters with “Stormy Daniels”, allegations of sexual assault and various examples of misogyny. Trump’s untouchable confidence ultimately led to his downfall as the gulf between his drumming of propaganda and the unchanged conditions of his working-class voters became too apparent. Resultingly, he plummeted in his approval ratings as he failed to address his campaign promises and tried to rally his indoctrinated voters. This foghorn of indecency used his father’s business exploits to secure political power and left presidency like a wailing infant, lifted from a cradle, as his calculated bullshitting grew more predictable by the day.

Trump’s foreign policy was an unnerving and unpredictable stir of border control, military tension and bizarrely: inadvertent consensus with Russia and North Korea. Firstly, with border control Trump lowered the influx of Mexican economic migrants, which is arguably beneficial for the cultural stability of a country, but he ruthlessly refused Muslim refugees and kept many waiting at the border in conditions that violated federal guidelines. His proposal of the Trump wall that “Mexico will pay for” culminated in a 40 mile stretch of new barriers that can be merely walked around and was funded by taxpayer money. His swift closure of the borders following the COVID-19 pandemic was a surprisingly applaudable response which may have limited many deaths. Militarily, his theatrics and posturing towards powerful global enemies was driven through twitter and on a razor-edge of uncertainty. The military interventionism of Trump was a parallel of those before him with many drone-strikes as seen in April 2017 and 2018 against ISIS often enflaming tensions and resulting in him surpassing the reported figures of civilian casualties caused by another aggressive warmonger in Obama. However, Trump has managed to cool the tensions between the US and both Russia and North Korea. Despite the scare of WW3 in early 2020, the situation settled with Trump reportedly exchanging over 27 “love letters” (as he referred to them as) with Kim Jong-un. His notably rather passive relationship with Putin’s Russia may have been the result of substantiated evidence of collusion with the Russian government in manipulating the social media feeds of the public during the 2016 election. This may simply be born from the bitterness of democrats and it is well documented that Trump has respect also has great respect for Putin. His rivalry with China and never threatened military action and was the excessive warring of tariffs and even the ban of Huawei in the US. Trump’s military intervention with an airstrike on Iran grazed the surface of a major, possibly nuclear, conflict. However, American Presidents angering the Middle East is a story we have heard often thanks to the drone striking tactics from both republicans and democrats that has enflamed world-wide terrorism that rocketed during Trump’s tenure.

Overall, Trump’s presidency was a period of near military scares, incessant dishonesty, climate change denial, administrative incompetence, and disparate economic continuity (apart from the unavoidable toll of COVID-19). He did produce some minor infrastructural changes but to an extremely inadequate degree, while the voters he postured to represent were severely let down as industry globalised trade carved through any plans of manufacturing revival. The only arguable good was the gleeful schadenfreude of the rest of the world watching an egotistical but incompetent nation crumble and whine as an absurd theatre-villain beamed across our screens. However, one of the biggest issues with the media crusade against this admittedly beastly opportunist, is the assumption that other politicians from the democrats and republicans were ideologically any better. For the so-called land of freedom, America needs the essentials of a social democracy and to blunt the teeth of predatory capitalism through higher, progressive federal and corporation tax. Then the expendable gluts of America’s billionaires and elite could drip down into better welfare, better working conditions for the exploited and a better society. Until this happens, every president will be another bloodthirsty, deceitful puppet for the global elite.