We have just finished the most catastrophic presidency in our country’s history. Donald Trump led a cast of incompetent misfits whose stupidity and ineptitude caused hundreds of thousands of needless deaths, devastated our economy and turned around almost three decades of falling abortion numbers in the US.
This article documents some of the disaster perpetrated on the United States by Donald Trump. Then, in a second article, we’ll try and understand why 74 million voters would want four more years of the death, economic destruction, moral decay, increased abortions, desecration of our laws and attacks on our democracy that Trump brought us.
Documenting the disaster
Donald Trump’s incompetence caused more needless deaths than all presidents in US history combined
One of every 597 people in the US has died of COVID-19 while one of 11 people has been infected. The map below of COVID deaths per capita illustrates the disaster. The darkest countries have the highest death rates.
Source: New York Times
There is no need to date the above map. Donald Trump has mismanaged the US’s response to the pandemic from the start. Consequently, the US death rate has continually been among the world’s highest and the US has the highest number of total COVID deaths.
How could this happen to a nation with more Nobel Prize Winners in Medicine, (113 and 38 of them are immigrants) than any other country? How could a country with the world’s most prestigious hospitals and premier medical research institutions lead the world in deaths from a virus? Add in that the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) was once considered the world’s gold standard for integrity and professionalism.
All of this expertise is negated when a country has an imbecilic leader like Donald Trump who somehow thinks he is more qualified to handle a pandemic than all these experts. Trump blatantly ignored our own and the world’s most respected medical experts and relied on his gut feelings. Over 556,000 US citizens paid the ultimate price for this incompetence.
It is difficult to imagine how anyone could blunder worse than Trump. Trump started his administration by ignoring studies by both his and the Obama Administration highlighting the lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), hospital beds, ventilators and other supplies that were in desperately short supply throughout the pandemic. Before COVID-19 was discovered, he dismantled the pandemic response apparatus that was painstakingly developed during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama Administrations.
Experts called for 10-30 million COVID tests daily with contact tracing of positive cases. Experts called for a national strategy of quarantines, shutdowns and enforced mask mandates. Trump ignored them all while the US death toll soared. The only concern Trump had for the people dying from COVID was what impact their deaths would have on stock markets. The political hacks Trump installed at his CDC even advised hospitals to put their overflow COVID patients in nursing homes.
While Donald Trump called COVID a hoax and continually downplayed how serious it was, leaders in most other nations stepped up and embraced the science Trump mocked. Australia had some of the earliest and highly publicized cases (Tom Hanks and his wife). They still require travelers from other countries to do a two-week quarantine when arriving. If the traveller thinks their rights are being infringed, they can take it up with the armed guard in front of their hotel. Australia has had one COVID-19 death in every 27,494 people, Japan one death in 13,677people, China has one death in 300,416 people and South Korea has one death in every 29,405 people.
Great leadership has allowed these countries to restore their lives and economies to a level of normalcy unimaginable in the US. Even Canada, which has the misfortune of having to share a border with the US (which they eventually closed to all non-essential travel) has only one COVID death per 1,601 people, or 37 percent of the US per capita rate.
Donald Trump’s stupidity will forever be the defining characteristic of his presidency. However, Trump’s stupidity is unique. He is simply incapable of changing course regardless of how bad things are.
Most any businessperson who fell on hard times will tell you they learned from it and move on. The next time, when cash flow and profits turn negative, they make major changes in their management. If that fails, they divest assets as fast as they can, knowing they will get more money from them than a lender after foreclosure or bankruptcy. Unfortunately, these lessons were lost on Donald Trump. Not only did he have one bankruptcy or two bankruptcies or three bankruptcies, he had an unbelievable six bankruptcies while squandering his family’s fortune and that of anyone foolish enough to provide him funding. And, he is making the same mistakes as he heads to bankruptcy Number Seven. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/27/us/donald-trump-taxes.html
One sees the same ineptitude in Trump’s mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic. Any reasonably intelligent person would notice the success other countries were having while following World Health Organization and US expert recommendations. They would compare that to the disaster taking place in the US and make a course change. Trump’s pandemic response was exactly the same as what bankrupted his businesses. He simply cannot admit that he mucked up and needs to make changes. Before the Christmas holiday, he urged Americans to travel and spend the Holidays with family and friends, helping fuel the last surge of over 100,000 US COVID deaths.
And, what happened to Trump’s precious Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) that he cared about more than the lives of US citizens? It started rallying when polls showed Joe Biden had an insurmountable lead in the presidential race. Since Biden’s victory, the DJIA has gone up almost 5,000 points or over 17 percent.
Trump – the most prolific liberal borrow and spender in US history
“I alone can fix it!” Donald Trump pledged as a candidate at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Things haven’t quite worked out that way for Trump’s economy.
| Table 1. Spending by President | ||||
| Annual Federal Govt. Spending (billions) | ||||
| President | Year before taking office | Last year in office | Percent Change | Annual percent change* |
| Ronald Reagan – Rep. 1981-1988 | $645.0 | $1,171.1 | 82% | 8% |
| George H.W. Bush – Rep. 1989-1992 | $1,171.1 | $1,524.8 | 30% | 7% |
| Bill Clinton – Dem. 1993-2000 | $1,524.8 | $1,943.6 | 27% | 3% |
| George W. Bush – Rep. 2001-2008 | $1,943.6 | $3,383.1 | 86% | 7% |
| Barack Obama – Dem. 2009-2016 | $3,383.1 | $4,200.4 | 24% | 3% |
| Donald Trump – Rep. 2017-2020 | $4,200.4 | $6,932.9 | 65% | 14% |
| * Calculated by averaging percent spending change of each year in office.
Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis; Table 3.2 Federal Govt. Current Receipts and Expenditures; Line 43. |
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Trump has been the anti-Christ of economic conservatism. Over the last 40 years, Republican federal government spending increases were more than double those run up by Democrats. Trump set new standards for out-of-control government spending with his 14 percent average annual spending increase that is almost double of any of his free spending Republican predecessors of the past 40 years.
Likewise, the deficit-loving Trump set new records for deficit spending in non-recession years with $1 trillion in 2018 and $1.1 trillion in 2019. The 2019 deficit was 69 percent higher than Obama’s last year in office. In 2020, Trump set a new record for fiscal incompetence with an all time record $3.25 trillion deficit.
As with the pandemic, Trump’s aversion to listening to experts proved disastrous to the economy. It doesn’t take PhD in economics to figure out that if a country cuts receipts with a huge tax cut combined with out-of-control spending increases, we are going to have record government spending deficits.
| Table 2. Net Savings by President | |||
| Net Savings (billions) | |||
| President | First Year in Office | Last year In Office | Average |
| Ronald Reagan – Rep. 1981-1988 | -$104.3 | -$201.0 | -$210.5 |
| George H.W. Bush – Rep. 1989-1992 | -$194.3 | -$359.2 | -$269.5 |
| Bill Clinton – Dem. 1993-2000 | -$328.7 | +$152.9 | -$108.3 |
| George W. Bush – Rep. 2001-2008 | +$1.50 | -$774.2 | -$382.3 |
| Barack Obama – Dem. 2009-2016 | -$1,475.3 | -$717.0 | -$1,026.8 |
| Donald Trump – Rep. 2017-2020 | -$540.0 | -$3,251.6 | -$1,482.4 |
| Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, Table 3.2 Federal Government Current Receipts and Expenditures; Line 49. | |||
One of Trump’s most memorable lies is that he had to spend huge amounts to rebuild the US military after years of neglect under Obama. The reality is that Obama’s annual defense expenditures were greater than the six countries with the world’s biggest defense budgets combined.
Donald Trump leaves office with the lowest Annual G.D.P. Growth Rate of any president since these records were first kept in 1937. Trump is the only president to have a negative Annual Growth rate of Non-Farm Jobs during his term since the Great Depression. Trump inherited a growing economy with an Unemployment Rate of 4.7 percent from President Barack Obama. In contrast, Trump left President Joe Biden an Unemployment Rate of 6.7 percent. This, of course, is after Trump signed two huge economic stimulus bills, one for $2 trillion and one for $900 billion. Thanks to the Federal Reserve, interest rates have been close to zero for well over a year.
This is familiar territory for Republicans. According to a New York Times analysis, “Since 1933, the economy has grown at an annual average rate of 4.6 percent under Democratic presidents and 2.4 percent under Republicans. In more concrete terms: The average income of Americans would be more than double its current level if the economy had somehow grown at the Democratic rate for all of the past nine decades. If anything, that period (which is based on data availability) is too kind to Republicans, because it excludes the portion of the Great Depression that happened on Herbert Hoover’s watch.” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/opinion/sunday/democrats-economy.html
Republicans love to blame Trump’s economic failures on the pandemic. However, during the first three years of Trump’s borrow and spend presidency, less jobs were created than during the last three years of Barack Obama’s presidency. Further, the economy was weakening in December of 2018. Trump’s borrow and spend economy would have collapsed if the Federal Reserve hadn’t come to the rescue by dramatically lowering interest rates. Trump’s liberal attempt to buy prosperity with out of control spending increases combined with outlandish tax cuts for the rich and corporations (both financed by government borrowing) eventually collapsed at the first sign of market’s comprehending that Trump was incapable of dealing with COVID-19.
Trump – the second biggest exporter of US jobs in US history
Trump started a trade war in a failed effort to bring jobs back from other countries. Obviously, it didn’t work.
| Table 3. Trade Balance by President | |
| Trade Balance (billions) | |
| President | Average Annual |
| Ronald Reagan – Rep. 1981-1988 | -$81.6 |
| George H.W. Bush – Rep. 1989-1992 | -$54.2 |
| Bill Clinton – Dem. 1993-2000 | -$179.8 |
| George W. Bush – Rep. 2001-2008 | -$611.5 |
| Barack Obama – Dem. 2009-2016 | -$414.0 |
| Donald Trump – Rep. 2017-2020 | -$502.4 |
| Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, Table 4.1, National Income and Product Accounts; Line 34. | |
Any economist of merit knows that a country’s Trade Balance has nothing to do with the fairness of trade agreements. It has everything to do with a country’s Net Savings, or the sum of Government net saving plus private net saving.
Capital outflows must always equal Capital inflows. In other words, Exports – Imports = Government net saving + Private net saving. Government spending deficits of the size Trump incurred will outpace any net private savings and we will always cause huge negative trade balances in these circumstances. We could drop all trade restrictions and allow unlimited imports and if the sum of private and government savings didn’t change, our Trade Balance would be exactly as it is today.
The flip side of the Capital outflows = Capital inflows equation is that Trump’s -$503 billion 2019 trade balance outflow of capital results in an equal $503 billion inflow of foreign capital buying US brick and mortar companies and financing our debt.
Yes, for sure, Donald Trump is the only one who could fix our economy.
Donald Trump, the most pro-abortion president in 30 years
Following the 28 percent drop in annual abortions attained during the Obama/Biden presidency, Donald Trump was actually able to turn the tide of annual abortions going down in the US. According to CDC data, abortions in the US actually increased one percent in 2018 (last year data is available). This is the first increase in three decades.
How did Trump manage this feat? The answer is very obvious. Trump defunded Planned Parenthood and did everything he could to limit the number of people accessing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance with its free birth control provision.
Annual abortions dropped 14 percent during the Clinton Administration as Democrats provided free birth control to all federal government employees. Obama’s (ACA) extended health insurance and free birth control to 20 million previously uninsured Americans. Also, in 29 states and the District of Columbia ACA packages required employers to provide free prescription birth control to employees. During the Obama years, more women used the almost fool proof Long Acting Reversible Contraceptives that they could often obtain for free thanks to the ACA.
Only a fool would expect that restricting free birth control wouldn’t result in more abortions. That fool is Donald Trump. By defunding Planned Parenthood, Trump restricted that organization’s ability to provide free birth control and education to vulnerable women. That and restricting ACA and free birth control had predictable results as far as raising the number of US abortions.
If the Supreme Court that Trump packed with right wing zealots is foolish enough to outlaw abortion, we will find that medical abortions via the internet and for profit abortion clinics in Canada will make abortion easier and cheaper in the US than it is now.
Republicans have complained for decades that Planned Parenthood was the major driver of the “abortion industry”. Obviously, defunding the organization didn’t bring about the dramatic drop in abortions they promised.
Morality, Christian values, lying, law breaking and Donald Trump
Nothing much new here. The Washington Post tally of 30,573 false or misleading claims (lies) in Donald Trump’s four-year term occupying the White House is a record that will hopefully never be broken.
Trump’s record of whoring, siring an illegitimate daughter, making a mockery of marriage with his divorces and innumerable extra marital affairs along with at least two dozen women accusing him of sexual assault is also an inexcusable assault on Judeo-Christian morality.
Donald Trump will go down in history as the only serial rapist dumb enough to brag about his assaults on tape. To Trump’s Christian In Name Only (CINO) followers, holding up a Bible in front of a church somehow off-balances his immorality, even though Trump claims to have never asked forgiveness for anything he’s done. Even Trump’s preacher, Jerry Falwell Jr., is a pervert that paid a man to have sex with his wife while Falwell watched.
Trump continually violated the very core of Christianity with his policies of taking health cars, food and housing from the poor while giving tax breaks to the rich. No religion in the world condones the separation of brown skinned children from their parents who were legally seeking asylum in the US.
Trump broke more laws while president than all the 44 presidents before him combined. Yet, his attempt to have his followers mount an insurrection to overturn the election he lost in a landslide is really an embodiment of Donald Trump’s life. Trump’s insurrection had no thinking behind it and no planning. Organization and coordination was nowhere to be found. Execution was total chaos, in this case resulting in five deaths. The end result was complete failure. Vice-president Mike Pence certified Joe Biden as president just a few hours later than planned.
Is Donald Trump mentally retarded?
Other writers soften their descriptions by saying Trump did not have the qualifications or skills to be a successful president, Frugal Ron is much more direct. If someone continually does, writes and says really stupid things, the obvious deduction is that person is really stupid. The question is, just how stupid is Donald Trump?
When Donald Trump moved into the White House, he came with some high-powered advisors. His initial group included chairmen of some of the world’s most powerful corporations, the former chairman of the National Republican Party and a host of former generals.
This did not work well. These people were not used to working with someone as stupid as Donald Trump. One remarked that Trump had the mental aptitude of a fifth-grader and another said Trump had the attention span of a five year old. One told Trump that he is a “f_ _ king idiot”, another told Trump that he is a “f_ _ _ king moron”.
After the 2018 mid-term elections, Trump cleared out the last of his advisors with above average intelligence and replaced them with yes men and a couple female press secretaries that were as intelligent as he is himself.
Throughout Trump’s presidency, I estimated Trump’s IQ was in the 75-80 range. I based this on his ignoring experts in dealing with COVID-19, his idiotic trade war that he thought was going to end the US’s balance of trade deficits, his foolishness in believing that if he cut taxes (revenue) dramatically and made huge spending increases he could balance the federal budget and how he managed to turn around the three decade drop in annual abortions. Sure, there was Sharpie-gate, the cognitive test he passed that Trump thought qualified him as a genius and of course, the idea to drink disinfectant along with a host of daily idiocy that gave late night TV comedians a plethora of material.
My view of Trump’s intelligence changed after the recent presidential election. One might think it couldn’t get weirder than the President of the United States ordering poll workers to stop counting ballots while Trump was still ahead. But, it certainly did get weirder.
Trump’s lawyers argued in front of more than 30 courts that the election was rife with fraud, yet never produced a single shred of evidence. And yet, Trump still argues the election was stolen from him. Trump’s ridiculous conspiracy theories clearly show that he doesn’t recognize reality – a sure marker of extremely low intelligence.
Whether my current estimate of Trump’s IQ, 65-70, is a few points too high or too low is really an academic argument. What we do know is that Donald Trump is stupid and the consequences of his stupidity on our lives have been catastrophic.
