Sunday, January 22, 2017

The Worst Human Being Ever Elected President Of The USA

That would be Donald John Trump, and I mean this judgment on a pretty traditional moralistic basis.  It may be obvious, but maybe not.  Anyway, I want to get this off my chest before we simply get swamped with all the probably bad policy things he will be doing in the near future.

Before I dump on him, let me note at least one more or less good thing, the same one that Hillary Clinton was able to come up with at the end of the second debate when asked to say something nice about him: he does seem to have been a mostly good father, at least to his oldest three children.  Now I could get off on some of his creepy remarks regarding Ivanka, and I am not sure how moral his two older sons are, although they do not seem to be unhappy or deranged or anything.  Tiffany seems to be somewhat estranged and off, but basically OK as well, I guess, and while some have been huffing and puffing about Barron not paying much attention at the inauguration, well, he is only 10, and I wish him the best. Anyway, not obviously bad as a dad.

I am mostly of the mind that sexual conduct is irrelevant to someone;s ability to  lead a country, and many world leaders have had scandalous sex lives reflecting their huge egos associated with lots of out of control sexual activity.  And we have certainly had some other presidents with records of apparently lots of extramarital sexual activity, notably Harding, JFK, LBJ, and Clinton, with probably some others in there as well, but with their activities unreported.  There were others that had reported affairs, notably FDR and Ike.  But Trump's activities have involved more flagrant contempt for women than any of these, with his nasty remarks, such things as wandering into the dressing rooms of the Teen Universe festival, and more accusations of rape than the others. Clinton has Paula Broderick, but Trump has his first wife, who withdrew the charge she initially made, and then a reputed underage woman whose name remains unrevealed, who was to bring a suit but pulled back.

As it is, noting a very conventional measure, he is the first president to have been divorced twice, both times following his cheating on existing wife with subsequent one.  The only other one to get divorced at all was Reagan, who was in Hollywood and only did it once.  There is, of course, the highly questionable conduct of Jefferson with Sally Hemings.  But I note that it was against the law to marry a slave in those days, although I suppose he could have freed her.  And there was the very odd detail that she was the half sister of his late wife.   As it is, I still know some old and conservative people in Virginia who refuse to accept the evidence that he fathered her children.

Bringing that up does bring up one area where Trump has been better than a whole bunch of our former presidents, including four of our first five: he has not owned any slaves.  But then I would argue that people should be judged by the standards of their times and compared to others of their times.  Certainly in terms of their views regarding policies, most earlier presidents were more sexist and homophobic and racist than Trump, if for nearly all of them less compared to other people of their periods than is Trump now compared to people of this time.

Of course many earlier presidents have done some pretty horrible things as president, and it may come to pass that Trump will not do things as bad as these.  John Adams, the only non-slaveholder among our first five presidents, signed the Alien and Sedition Acts.  Jackson forced Native Indian tribes to move with many dying on the Trail of Tears, a policy much admired by Hitler.  Lincoln suspended habeus corpus.  Wilson approved the Palmer raids.  FDR set up the internship camps for people of Japanese descent.  Truman dropped atomic bombs on Japan.  Nixon broke into competitors' offices and then lied about it. W. Bush invaded Iraq, and more.  For some of these things Trump has supported similar policies, if not too likely to fully follow through on them.  So, he has advocated making it easier to  sue the media for libel.  He has advocated a new Trail of Tears to deport massive numbers of people. He has suggested bringing back and expanding torture, as well as loosening various civil liberties in order to fight terror. But already on some of these he appears to have backed off. And, of course, some of the worst of these things were done in the midst of wars far worse than what we are involved in now, when, well, war is hell.

So where does he really look clearly worse than any of the rest in his personal moral conduct?  Well one of the biggest is his lying and another is his crookedness and financial corruption.  The best defense is an offense, and it is not at all surprising that among the memes he pushed at the GOP convention and regularly supported by his supporters who have  chanted "Lock her up," even at the inauguration when she appeared, was that HRC was a liar and a crook.  Well, she certainly did make some false statements, and she and Bill also had an unpleasant money grubbing aspect that reflected itself in everything from walking off with stuff from the WH when they left it and her abysmally stupid paid speeches to Wall Street banks, although the charges against them regarding their foundation look about as silly as the ones against her about Benghazi and her emails, especially when compared with the corruption and absurdity of his foundation, now being shut down.


But various studies showed Trump to be by far the biggest liar of all of the 23 candidates last year, with only Ted Cruz close to him.  He told so many lies that one could not keep track of them. The minute there was outrage about one, he would be issuing another. He has already put two out since his inauguration, one about the numbers attending and the other that it was the media who falsely claimed that he had differences with the CIA.  He has lied so frequently that the minute one is getting outraged by one lie, he puts out another.  One eventually just says, "Oh, there he goes again," and his supporters, those at least who realize he is lying a lot, simply view it as an acceptable part of his personality showing that he is strong, or something.  He can get away with it, good for him!

Certainly other presidents have lied, often about substantial policy matters, such as LBJ prior to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that was used to justify the escalation of the Vietnam War.  But I cannot think of another president with such a record of just lying all the time repeatedly almost every other day, not a one.  If somebody can name one, please be my guest, and unfortunately it looks like Trump plans to continue doing it big time, which could end up having some really bad consequences.  It is one thing to lie as a candidate, and the number of presidents who broke campaign promises is  huge, but lying repeatedly, especially if he does it to foreign leaders, well, we simply have not see this, not remotely on this scale anyway.

Another is his level of his financial corruption and crookedness.  The simplest case of this is the simply enormous number of contractors he has shafted and not paid, or paid way less than they were legally owed, over the years.  This is fraud and theft, and while he has paid numerous fines for all this, he has not been in jail, and he has somehow managed to turn this into "being a good businessman," despite his numerous bankruptcies.  Oh, he did get nailed on his seriously fraudulent "university," but got off lightly with only paying $25 million, when the losses of those he defrauded on that far exceed that amount.  On top of this we have his refusal to release his tax returns, not illegal, but justified with something phony, that he cannot because he is being audited when that does not prevent one from doing so (Nixon did so)  We have suspicions of him being seriously in hock to a foreign power (Russian oligarchs, who reportedly poured money into his org after his 2009 bankruptcy when US banks refused to lend to him).  And he has not sold off his holdings or even put them in a blind trust, instead putting his sons in charge of his business dealings.  With foreigners openly staying at his hotel in Washington to curry his favor, he looks to be the first and only president to be blatantly in violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution.  The presidencies of Grant and Harding were notorious for their corruption, but most of that involved their cronies and appointees, not them personally, and as it is Trump's appointees may well give the people in those administrations a serious run for their money.  This bodes to be by far the most corrupt administration ever, with the stink starting from the top, not bubbling up from the bottom.

Finally there is the matter of his completely unacceptable personal insults of other people.  He has made many, but the two that really stick in my mind are his slam on John McCain for getting captured during the Vietnam War and his very recent blast at John Lewis for being "all talk and no action."  But there have been many others.  Now maybe if previous presidents had had access to twitter, they would have been just as obnoxious and awful as Trump has been, but I doubt it.

Anyway, I could go on, but I would simply challenge anybody, any Trump supporter, anybody, to name another president who was a worse human being on moral grounds than Donald J. Trump.

Oh, I do have one figure to compete with him at the presidential level, but only a candidate and vice president.  That would be Aaron Burr.  He killed a political rival (Alexander Hamilton) and, after Jefferson dumped him as VP, he was arrested for treason in 1807 for plotting to lead a secession of portions of the Louisiana territory, although he was not convicted as he had only plotted it and not done it.  Heck, maybe Trump is even worse as a human being than that bad actor.

Barkley Rosser


19 comments:

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

I just saw that Kellyanne Conway when asked has said that Trump will not release his tax returns period, even if they stop being audited. So, it most certainly was a lie that he was not releasing them because they were being audited. But, hey, who cares?

Sandwichman said...

Maybe The April 15th Movement will demonstrate who cares?

Sandwichman said...

ON second thought make that the April 15th GENERAL STRIKE!

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Well, maybe Kellyanne was just throwing pooey alternative facts at us as you have reported, Sandwichman, and Trump will release his tax returns tomorrow, :-).

Anonymous said...

Aren't you a sensitive little snowflake

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

No, I am a mean and nasty avalanche that will fall down on your house and totally destroy it, "Anonymous."

Jerry Brown said...

Well I realize Dick Cheney was not technically the President at any time, but I might prefer the Donald to him.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Jerry,

Hard one there, the Cheney certainly was bad and played a dirty and unprecedented role in torturing data at the CIA to get us into the disastrous Iraq war, which benefited Halliburton, the company he once was CEO of. He might even give Burr a run for the money as worst VP, although when he shot that guy in the face it was apparently accidental, and the guy did not die or was even too seriously wounded, in contrast to Burr's very conscious shooting to kill and succeeding of Hamilton.

But, much as Cheney is a certainly unpleasant character, I think at the personal level he easily worse than Trump. There has been no hint of sexual scandal about him and he has supported his lesbian daughter in public personally, even as he has not more broadly supported LGBT rights. He certainly told a lot of untruths in pushing the Iraq war, but he does not seem to be the almost daily liar that Trump is. His former company benefited from his actions, but key point: it was his former company, he having divested himsslf of any ownership of it when he became VP, in sharp contrast to how Trump is behaving, and I think he publicly released his tax returns too.

Then there is this matter of insulting people. Now Cheney certainly has had harsh statements, many of them not true, about various political rivals and opponents. Indeed, there is a long tradition in US politics of presidential elections involving nasty commentary, from sexual innuendoes (dating to Adams spreading the true story about Jefferson and Sally Hemings) through thinks like Nixon accusing his rivals of being commies, and so on. There has also been a tradition of such politicians making personally snarky remarks, although some of these have involved some wit to them. But, again, I think Trump has simply reached new lows in terms of both nastiness and just plain falsehood and absurdity. We should view McCain badly because he was a POW? John Lewis is "all talk and no action"? I don't know. Maybe Trump will end up being a better president than Cheney (or Ted Cruz, or some others) would. But as a moral human being I think he remains the bottom of the barrel.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Meant to say in second paragraph that Cheney NOT easily worse than Trump personally.

Jerry Brown said...

Well you might be right. The only thing I would say is that Trump is not yet responsible for policies that caused war and death. There is some hope he is less of a neocon than many in the Bush administration were. Cheney wasn't President but I view him as partially responsible for the Iraq war. I'm not sure Trump even knows what he is doing half the time but quite sure Cheney knew exactly what he was doing, and all the consequences of it, all the time.

BTW, very good comment of yours on Mike Kimel's piece. Completely agree with you.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Cheney was clearly substantially responsible for the Iraq war, probably as much as any of them.

Regarding Trump, he is all over the place and unpredictable. Of course he campaigned on having totally opposed the war and dumping all over HRC for her vote for it in the Senate, although that resolution included a clause that there was not to be a war without Bush exhausting all avenues for peace, which he violated. But as we know, this was just one among so many other lies as he in fact supported it at the time of that vote and in more venues and outlets than just his widely quoted remark on Howard Stern. It appears that it was only in late summer of 2003 that he finally really and fully turned against it.

He has engaged in a lot of loose talk about foreign policy, so I do not know what to expect out of him. He has been all friendly with Putin and Russia, but he seems to be going out of his way to pick a fight with China and has been totally blowing all usual norms aside. So, we really do not know what he is going to do.

reason said...

I'm just puzzled by one thing in this piece. You say: "But I cannot think of another president with such a record of just lying all the time repeatedly almost every other day, not a one."

I'm pretty sure he lies more frequently than almost every other day. He lies several times every day.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Hard to keep count, reason, but you may be right. I only know of those that he says publicly enough for them to be reported, and that rate well exceeds any of our previous presidents by a very long shot.

Bruce Webb said...

Barkley a minor push back. Lincoln suspended Habeus but I have seen nothing to suggest this wasn't Constitutional.
"The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."
There was clearly a rebellion and good evidence of immediate and organized sedition in New York. Now some innocents likely were included. But that is what suspension of Habeus will do. It doesn't make the larger action illegal, stills less unconstitutional.

Sandwichman said...

Didn't I already tell you to shut your pie hole, Eggmount? I'm going to impose on Barkley's ownership rights for this post and delete your narcissistic ass myself. Does that make me a WORSE human being than Barkley? I sure hope so.

KakaRoach Handjob momentarily graced this comment section with the following insightful and relevant on-topic commentary:

"Barkley Rosser and Sandwichman as ‘The Worst Human Beings Ever Corrupting Economic Blogs’ because they will suppress this post as they have many times suppressed posts which expose their abject incompetence and stupidity"

KakaRoach Handjob's future contributions will also be deleted as are (following inspection) advertising spam with links to porn sites.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Gosh, S-man, I never even got to read the post. Oh well. Egmont certainly is annoying, but being accused by him of being one of The Worst Human Beings Ever Corrupting Economic Blogs would be an honor.

BTW, a week after posting this it would appear that DJT has been more than living up to my description of him. This refugee ban catching even a bunch of green card holders en route back to the US and with a religious element to it, issued on Holocaust Remembrance Day (when he also failed to say a word about Jews) simply verifies my claim, even if a court has partly pushed the worst of it back.

And I find it funny that he has put the portrait of one of his most serious rivals for the title into the Oval Office, Andrew Jackson, with him clearly viewing the Trail of Tears as something to be emulated. There were definitely a bunch of people crying after he put out his order on Friday.

Sandwichman said...

Sorry, Barkley. The devil MADE me do it. Some spammer who uses the name Fika Fikasomething keeps posting multiple spams and there is a new anonymous dude trying to gaslight. Unless my econospeak colleagues object, I will send these nuisances to the trash bin.

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