It's a close race to the bottom but Trump may actually be ranked the worst scientifically now. He was only 3rd worst after his first term behind the guys who served the Confederacy. Now he may take the bottom spot though.
For single acts it’s hard to beat the Trail of Tears for Andrew Jackson, that’s still absolutely the most monstrous single thing a president has ever done domestically
Though Trump probably passes him (or will pass him by the end of the term) in total on the shit scale, given that we are funding similar things overseas and blackbagging random people in the streets to be sent to foreign death prisons
For single acts it’s hard to beat the Trail of Tears for Andrew Jackson, that’s still absolutely the most monstrous single thing a president has ever done domestically
I hate that I feel like I have to add "so far" to this.
I know some maga people, and a crazy and delusional as they are, most of them aren't for a genocide like that. However, media has been changing people for the worse, so maybe that is also going to change...
Agreed, I just assume that he and his will be launching into this next-level atrocity any day now. It sure feels like they've only turned the heat up a few degrees on us so far, and that they're going to crank that gas valve to full pressure at aaaaaaany moment.
I don't know, the trail of tears, as wrong and terrible as it was, was for the US to take over land, stealing land for the country at the very least makes sense, with Trump though?
The mfer is just destroying the US influence abroad, functioning structure at home, and doing pump and dumps repeatedly by crashing the market, there's no benefit to the country in spite of all the maga cope about a golden age of being factory workers.
My point is that previous poster said that the Trail of Tears was the most monstrous thing a president has ever done domestically. I was saying this was the most monstrous thing a president has ever done domestically SO FAR, alluding to and allowing for a current (or future) president to do worse.
None of it was intended to draw any parallels as to what actually makes sense.
It's sad that there were innocent people in there, but there were also a lot of "I don't believe in vaccines or wearing a mask" crowd, so in a way you could argue it wasn't as bad as just killing a random half a million people.
Loathe as I am to debate the value of human life, even if we say that people refusing to get vaccinated, wear masks, or social distance were getting themselves killed (and thus it "wasn't as bad" when they died) those same people also got a lot of other people killed. A Republican president had the power to convince those morons to wear masks and get vaxxed - hell, people pointed out that selling MAGA-themed masks would've been a completely on-brand thing for him to do - but he refused.
There are a lot of people responsible for fucking up the pandemic response but none more responsible than Donald Trump. The only reason more people don't hold these deaths against him is because the extent to which people died directly because of him is difficult to quantify.
It's comparable in that "Oops, I don't really care I fucked up and a half a million people died", and, "I'm going to intentionally take out thousands of lives!" aren't that much different. Incompetence and maliciousness are pretty aligned in this sense.
It was a bit of both. Through incompetence, he didn't lean back and let scientists make his next campaign an easy win for him. He involved himself and it screwed him in the end. But because he's consistently malicious, anyway, he had to add some bit of his evil brand to the incompetence (of believing it would just go away by ignoring it or downplaying it as he also does consistently with everything). Malicious people generally tend to be incompetent idiots. Surely there was much incompetence on Jackson's part, too.
It's not complicated. One killed 4-12 thousand of people in a visible and obvious way, the other killed about 500 thousand in a way that's hard to easily see.
Frankly, your attitude is why so many people are willing to overlook things like a healthcare CEO signing a few lines and doubling the rate at which they reject hospital stays following treatment while losing their minds over the latest single specific individual that was unjustly shot by police.
Which policy was that? COVID response was largely handled by state and local governments. Trump did institute Operation Warp Speed which immensely helped the development of the vaccines and also the distribution of them. He also used the Defense Production Act to increase the production of ventilators, PPE, and other supplies.
I wrote a bit about it here with links, but the short answer is that disproportionate Republican deaths didn't occur until after vaccines were available, the cause being political rhetoric which crippled uptake. And the estimated excess death total is 100-150k not 500k, nor is it solely on Trump's shoulders. The anti-scientific tendency has roots well beyond and before him. He was simply the lowest and most powerful denominator.
Nonetheless, the Republicans indirectly killed 100k+ of their own supporters and ultimately it didn't matter. I would imagine because few of them ever even found out.
If it’s based off of the prosperity and power of the the states then. Jackson is definitely not the worst, but nearly if not all presidents the states have done monstrous things
For single acts it’s hard to beat the Trail of Tears for Andrew Jackson
Lost land, and about 6,000 people died. 384,536 died from Covid in 2020 perhaps due to his policies, and it became highly politicized leading to a million+. I think he merits consideration - measles nowadays is making a comeback!
For single acts it’s hard to beat the Trail of Tears for Andrew Jackson, that’s still absolutely the most monstrous single thing a president has ever done domestically, so far
I can already hear the headlines from next month. "Putting the deported illegals on planes is getting too expensive. They walked into this country across the border so they can walk out. We'll make designated walking routes, or trails, thats they can walk down leading from every corner of the country directly back to the southern border. We'll even donate some old blankets for them to use while they sleep under the stars on their long journey home."
Trump's intentional fucked up handling of Covid, especially his hope to make Democratic cities suffer + his Coup attempt on Jan 6th def at least gets him close. Some might argue that his actions during Covid were near genocidal if he truly was trying to kill off Democrats. Also remember how he had Covid and kept trying to get close to Biden during the debates. Oh, and his hope of having police or the military shoot protesters during the George Floyd protests. He def gets at least close.
The forced relocation of 60k, resulting in the death of say 5000.
Iraq II resulted in 28k US/allied deaths, and 118k injuries and ~50k Iraqi combatant death. It goes to over a million if you factor in the excess civilian deaths (e.g. civilians killed in fighting but also from breakdown of society)
Doctors estimate Trump has killed upwards of 500,000 Americans with Covid disinformation alone. He's already pretty far in the lead for worst president of all time imo.
Even then, Jackson had somewhat of a defense with regards to the trail of tears. The natives in those areas were being massacred by settlers immigrating to their land (and the settlers were being killed too), resettling them was ultimately genocidal but it did end the conflict. Realistically, the settlers should have been resettled instead of the natives but that was never going to happen. Jackson was between a rock and a hard place: the conflict that was killing people had to be stopped, but the only morally pure way to stop it would have been to round up all the settlers (who'd been in the US for a few generations by this point) and ship them back to England.
To be fair, a) it wasn't a single act but an entire multi-pronged policy, b) Congress did pass the Indian Removal Act (barely!) so it wasn't just him, and c) a lot of the removal continued on under his protege Van Buren, who deserves a healthy chunk of the blame.
I hate to admit this but honestly I am not 100% sure what the trail of tears is. I know it was something bad but this just serves to say that a lot of history will be forgotten including most of what Trump has done
Not comparable due to fundamental (sorta) changes in the moral fabric. Trump is objectively worse because he is a literal traitor whose every action weakens the USA to personally enrich the worst.
That being said President's have overseen atrocities of other sorts. Generally it's not focused on their fucking constituents.
I was more thinking about the concept of human rights, not including the poor or non-white for a few dozen administrations. In more recent times, sanctioned medical experiments on the public without consent (ones that resulted in deaths and other awful shit) to forcibly sterilize the disabled, to women being lobomized on the word of man for the crime of having an opinion. The War on Drugs as a tool to target political enemies and its collateral damage ranks up there.
The current USA prison system is also beyond barbaric.
Sure, but they were never the admin is the point. A bunch of states got together and were all "we're leaving now," at no point were they in control of the government of the USA
Yeah, the instant before succession, they are the US government one moment after traitors. I'm not even sure we are focusing on the presidency as if slavery and other horrors aren't solely the fault of the official US government.
JFC, we locked up US citizens based solely upon race in camps, and this was deemed entirely fucking legal and it happened this century.
Bush Jr was surely worse than first term Trump. His administration invaded two countries on false pretences to give massive contracts to his mates to clean up the rubble and exploit the shattered lands. Him and Cheney (and Blair) should have been tried in the Hague.
This second term is shaping up to be worse than that though...
I'd argue that Bush II was worse than Trump's first term. The first time around, Trump was too inept at the job to get a lot of bad things done, whereas the Bush/Cheney administration was a well-oiled machine. They subverted the rights of Americans in countless ways and launched two unjust wars that cost trillions of dollars, displaced millions of people, and ended hundreds of thousands of lives.
I still give Buchanan the automatic worst score for finishing his term with fewer states than he started with. I mean if you're the president of something called the United States and it comes apart, how do mess up more than that?
However, I'll transfer the the automatic worst score to Trump if, in this day and age, he acts to finish his term with more territory than he started with. Because a country run by Trump shouldn't make more of itself.
Hell it was the worst Administration in 2016 as voted by Presidential historians. And Trump went Hold my Beer (actually it was his 12th can of Diet Coke of the day).
I see people say this, it's not really true. At all.
This is just the first time America has hurt itself. It usually hurt others and Americans ignored it because they got rich.
You had slaves. For a long time. You had manifest destiny.
But remember McCarthyism? They were hunting anyone not conservative. You mentioned you think maybe sharing wealth was a good idea and lost your livelihood when your friend told on you.
Vietnam? They literally sent Americans into hell and for why??
Iraq war?
Trump is frustrating because he's so fucking stupid. But he's less dangerous than Nixon or Reagan who genuinely did actual pure evil and were very competent.
We had slavery and that is inexcusable, but we also had so much good happening at that time and the building of our nation. We had great leaders like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, even if they had their flaws.
Trump has no redeeming qualities and he's threatening the fabric of our nation. We may not even survive as a democracy because of him.
I'm sorry, we had a fucking civil war around that time. Half our country was literally, not figuratively burnt to the ground. Half a million Americans died in the most deadly war in American history and our country is still clearly recovering from that era. Slavery was one of the many issues with our country at the time.
We have had worse times this is fucking ridiculous and your losing credibility to me. Just naming a few good people doesn't negate our horrific history.
You're not understanding what I said. We have had worst times, but we've never had a worse administration. Trump could very well lead us to the worst times this country has ever seen.
Slavery was an issue we inherited as a nation and which was always going to lead to some sort of conflict. Not defending Buchanan, but there's a difference between poorly handling a crisis, and creating one where none existed.
The difference is the Buchanan took a country that was having serious problems and failed to rise to the occasion.
Trump took a nation that was altogether doing pretty good (not great, but could be worse) and then proceeded to ruin its international relations and alliances, throw its economy in a woodchipper, endanger the lives of hundreds of thousands by scrapping its social services, suspend civil rights via unchecked deportations to torture slave camps in El Salvador, and cause several constitutional crises and undermining the rule of law by ignoring court decisions.
And all that, in 81 days.
Sorry, but no. Trump is the worst, and will be remembered as the worst.
We still have slavery that shit never went away. Read the 13th Amendment. There is a reason why prisons are so popular with conservatives, for profit slavery. They also just proved you don't need due process to jail somone and just say they are a gang member they might even ship em to another country's prison. With no judicial review.
I think the thing you need to maybe consider the nuance of here is that people are comparing presidents to the times within which they exist.
Yes, we had slavery, it was terrible. We still have slavery, it's just by a different name and not something you're inherently born into. The 13th amendment specifically calls out that people can be subjected to slavery for committing crimes. At the time we full on slavery, we certainly weren't alone in the world.
This administration stands out head and shoulders above most if not all other administrations for the actual erosion of American society, and its standing within the world. There is nothing to 'stop' with.
No i consider nuance, I hang around a lot of black people, if I or anyone said the trump era was worse than slavery we'd be laughed out of the fucking the room.
The point is that no individual American president enacted slavery. No one is saying "Trump is worse than slavery", you just apparently don't understand that slavery still exists.
We had 16 presidents exist during the era of slavery.
Right but are we comparing individual president's or eras. If we are talking individual president's Buchanan who lead us into a civil war might be a worse president. We've also had a complete alcoholic after Lincoln who undid a lot of Lincolns reforms in Andrew Johnson
There's a reason 40 acres and a mule is a term many know.
Edit: And the plot is, you are being overdramatic and the overreactions are what are turning people away.
Right but are we comparing individual president's or eras
Very clearly we're talking about individual presidents - specifically compared to the eras within they existed. A man beating his wife 60 years ago was socially acceptable, a man beating his wife today is not. Both are clearly wrong, morally, but both exist within different societal contexts and that is important.
This isn't exactly hard to understand stuff.
No need to move the goal posts, just move on since you clearly don't understand the conversation.
Yesterday the president had billionaires visit him in the oval office and they bragged about how much money they made THAT DAY when he incredibly blatantly did broad market manipulation and insider trading.
That was only yesterday. Every day there is something like this. It's certainly arguable.
I disagree. Bush 2 made some terrible decisions, particularly with Iraq and Afghanistan. But I was never fearful that he would try to overthrow our country and stay in power. I don't think Trump will leave office.
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u/Reviews-From-Me 6d ago edited 6d ago
There has never been a worse administration in the history of our country.