Farewell President Omnishambles

This coming Wednesday, a reign of error will end. 

Come 12:01 PM, on January 20th, Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States, and Donald J. Trump will become a "Former President." I can't say that I was a fan of number 45, nor will I miss his presence in the highest office in the land. In fact, come a minute past noon this Wednesday, I will be breathing a sigh of relief.

Now, before we get into what will essentially be a tirade, let's clear up one thing. If you don't understand the title of this piece, I'd recommend you watch this brief clip of Armando Iannucci's The Thick of It that features the origin of the word, expertly delivered by the 12th Doctor himself, Peter Capaldi. (Don't worry, I'll wait.)

Besides all the tomfoolery that number 45 made "presidential" when he came into the White House (the lying, the scandals, the casual misogyny, the braggadocious wind-baggery), let's not forget all of the shit that he stirred up so much, it's splashed all over the walls. He alienated our allies, withdrew from vital world efforts on climate change, hobnobbed with dictators, nearly sent us head-first into wars with North Korea and Iran, inflamed relations with China, and, while he himself might not have colluded with a hostile foreign power to win the election, his rat-infested family certainly did. 

The Trump family has been for the Presidency what an above-ground swimming pool is for a house; it may have appeared like a glamorous idea (to some, yours truly not included) at first, but all it did was leave a big dead ring of grass in on lawn and sink the value of the property.

Trump will go down as one of the worst presidents in history. I make that assertion, however, not based on everything I listened previously, but on his domestic record. 

I didn't even bother to include his actions leading to the fuckuppery that was the events of Wednesday, January 6th, 2021, where he urged his followers to attempt a coup. That was merely a coda to the clusterfuck of his term in office, the final nail in the coffin of his public reputation. For me, his attempts to keep his power, to undermine the public confidence in our election system, is merely the cherry atop a massive "fuck-you Sundae". So rather than linger on that, let's look back at the rest of his term and what other failures history will undoubtedly hold against him.

Let's start with the Oompa Loompa-in-Chief's attack on the ACA. 

One of the biggest campaign promises he made (and failed to keep), was to repeal the Affordable Care Act, better known by its media name Obamacare. Trump painted a target on the name legislation of his predecessor out of pure spite for making fun of him at the Correspondence Dinner. However, not once did he propose an alternative to replace the plan. Paul Ryan's American Healthcare Act, which was a half-baked waste of paper, would've been a disaster for the American people. It was only due, as Frontline's reporting on that period showed, to all the political in-fighting by the Republicans that it died early. Still, the Republicans tried to move forward with, instead of a repeal and replace, just a repeal motion in the Senate. It was only thanks to John McCain's decency to see that this was a foolish move that that too died. 

But was Jabba the Grapefruit's crusade done there? Oh, hell no. Next came the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Note that the act, for one year--the mid-term election year of 2018 at that--lowered taxes for most Americans. Then, the next year, they skyrocketed for most Americans again? In more honest times, we used to call that "buying votes." But that's what happened. The tax code changed so drastically that most miscellaneous deductions were, in fact, eliminated, while raising the standard deduction considerably. This meant that the habits of most American taxpayers were suddenly all thrown out the window. Charity? Good for nothing. Union dues? Worth fuck all. Paying a professional to have your taxes done? Unless you've got a hot-mess tax situation, you might as well do it yourself. 

Concurrently, the massive tax breaks for the rich that the TCJA put into place became PERMANENT! Trump was planning his retirement two years in, knowing full well, his tax situation would be significantly better, along with the tax situations of all his cronies in Congress who have multi-million dollar fortunes.

And he did all this while pretending to be on the side of the working class in this country.

That roundly brings me to my third stick with which to beat Captain Orange-Face's smarmy mug: his inflaming of racial and class tensions in this country.

Now, I won't say that Trump injected racism into America. That's always been here. It's in the very bones of our history, like a case of pneumonia that reemerges when the wrong infection enters the system. Trump is that infection. In his populist, red-meat blather (it was never eloquent enough to be called rhetoric), emboldened the most hostile members of the populous to come out of the supremacist closet and declare that they believed the big lie of racism to be true. 

With that wedge, he divided the country to further distract people from what (I increasingly believe to be), the real root of division in this country: the wealth divide.

His greatest failure, however, undoubtedly, arrived in his final year in office: his response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bob Woodward's Rage

In Bob Woodward's book, Rage, his follow up to Fear, Woodward discloses that, in recorded conversations with the President, that Trump knew about the COVID-19 virus in January. He knew how it spread and how deadly it could be. He knew what precautions other countries were beginning to take in confronting it.

And he did nothing. 

He underplayed the virus. He didn't support the advice of his CDC advisors, including Dr. Fauci. He advocated publicly against the wearing of masks. He continued to hold super-spreader events, such as his own rallies. He advised at-home cures, like injecting bleach into your arm. All this while he knew the truth. 

(If you don't believe me, watch this 60 Minutes interview with Bob Woodward for the book back in September of 2020.)

As of the writing of this, there have been 23.4 million cases of COVID-19 across the country; there have been 396,000 deaths.

Had the president done what he should've done to curtail this crisis before it became a crisis, he might still be in the White House. Sure, he may have alienated his base by insisting on a lockdown, forcing people to stay home for two months to flatten the curb, and urging Congress to pass expensive, but necessary safety-net legislation, but perhaps the majority of the country would've thanked him for it this past November. 

Instead, we have the death toll we have, and it's still rising. We have a medical force that's physically, psychologically, and emotionally exhausted. We have an economy that's in the shitter. We have millions of children, whose educations have gone off the rails, and as a result, we have millions of families whose lives have gone to complete disarray. Millions of Americans are out of work, their businesses have closed, and their homes are on the verge of being taken away from them due to foreclosure or eviction. 

In his last interview with Bob Woodward in August (as those of you who watched the 60 Minutes clip will know), when Woodward put the question of what other steps he could've take to prevent COVID-19 from spreading out of control, Donald Trump said the following:

"Nothing more could've been done."

Bullshit.

All that has followed--the collapse of normal American Life, the economic downturn, and, most of all, the deaths--is on his hands and the hands of those who enabled his spread of misinformation and lies.

For that, above all else, Trump will go down as our worst president in history. Come 1 minute past noon on January 20th, I will not be sorry to see him go; I only hope that America will never make such a stupendous mistake like this again.

I hope the American people have learned--especially following the events of January 6th--that the corner stone of our country, the democratic process, the vote, is one of the most important rights we have. We must never forget how powerful it is. We must never allow anyone to tell us that our vote doesn't matter. We must never lose a chance to exercise that right.