Donald J. Trump, 45th and 47th President, Leaves Behind a Legacy of Chaos and Failure
Donald J. Trump, reality television personality, convicted felon and twice-impeached President of the United States, has died in office. Across two presidencies, Trump displayed an extraordinary talent for turning boasts into humiliations, allies into enemies and entirely avoidable problems into international crises.
His first term established the formula. Trump spent four years behaving like Vladimir Putin's obedient little lapdog, attacking NATO allies while treating the Kremlin with bizarre deference. In Helsinki, he stood beside Putin and publicly cast doubt on his own intelligence agencies rather than blame Russia for interfering in the election that made him president. If Putin had Trump on a leash, he rarely needed to pull it.
Then came COVID-19. Trump privately acknowledged that the virus was deadly while publicly playing it down, presiding over a national catastrophe with his usual mixture of denial, bullshit and self-congratulation. He finished the term by losing an election, refusing to accept it, trying to overturn the result and watching his supporters storm the Capitol. He left office as the first U.S. president ever impeached twice.
Retirement did little for the dignity of the office. Trump became the first former American president convicted of a felony, guilty on 34 counts. The United States then responded to this unprecedented achievement by electing him president again, apparently deciding that one Trump presidency had not been a sufficiently thorough test of the country's structural integrity.
The second term brought the Putin routine back almost immediately. Trump promised to end Russia's war against Ukraine, berated Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office and smugly informed him that Ukraine had "no cards." The war carried on, Ukraine took the fight deep into Russia, and Trump eventually found himself praising the same Ukrainian effectiveness he had mocked. The supposed master negotiator could bully an ally on television. Getting Putin to end his war proved rather more difficult.
Trump also wanted history to remember him as a peacemaker. Instead, his second term put the United States into a war with Iran that was still dragging on more than five months later, while the Strait of Hormuz remained a crisis and Trump repeatedly announced that peace was just around the corner. He proved much better at promising to end wars than actually ending them.
His signature economic masterstroke was a global tariff spree sold with the endlessly repeated claim that foreigners would pay. American importers paid the duties, the Supreme Court struck down the centrepiece of the scheme, and his administration was forced to refund roughly $100 billion before Trump started rebuilding the tariffs under different laws. The Art of the Deal had evolved into losing in court and trying again with different paperwork.
Trump promised to drain the swamp, restore with different paperwork.
Trump promised to drain the swamp, restore American greatness, end wars and make other countries respect the United States. He leaves behind two impeachments, 34 felony convictions, an attempted overturning of an election, damaged alliances, unfinished wars and eight years spent looking suspiciously like Putin's favourite American.
Donald Trump's death finally accomplished what elections, impeachments, prosecutors, courts and basic human embarrassment repeatedly failed to do: it shut him up.