Extract from ABC News
Analysis
He took an escalator in and is taking a helicopter out. When it comes to rides, what a wild one the Donald Trump presidency has been.
As a journalist covering US politics pretty much every morning for the past four years, it has been exhausting experience.
The New York businessman ripped up the presidential rulebook as soon as he walked into the Oval Office and has run his own show ever since.
His many critics would say Trump has been making it up as he goes along.
To be honest, when he descended that gilded escalator in Trump Tower in June 2015 to announce he was running for president, I welcomed the prospect of some light relief in what was shaping up to be an all-too-predictable campaign.
The Republican field was mediocre at best. And who cared anyway, because Hillary Clinton was shaping up as a formidable opponent (should she win the Democratic nomination).
The feeling at the time was Trump's announcement was nothing more than a big publicity stunt for a man who thrived in front of the cameras.
The tone of his campaign, and his presidency, was struck at that media conference when he accused Mexico of exporting drugs, criminals and rapists to the United States.
No comment, no attack, was too offensive, it seemed.
He joked about shooting someone on Fifth Avenue and not losing voters, and was caught on tape boasting about sexual assault.
But nothing would stop Trump's populist march on the White House.
One of his opponents for the Republican nomination, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, described the reality TV star perfectly in a candidates' debate in late 2015.
The Macquarie Dictionary defines chaos as a situation without order or organisation, and this pretty much sums up the past four years.
The trouble began immediately
The shambles began within hours of Trump taking the oath of office in January 2017, when, instead of getting down to governing, the newly sworn-in president went on the warpath over the media "misrepresenting" the size of his inauguration crowd (fact check: it didn't).
From there it was a presidency by whim, with policy often made on the run via Trump's (up until recently) vociferous Twitter feed.
When he wasn't tweeting, he was creating endless controversy by going on the fly at media conferences and other public appearances.
Whether it was threatening to unleash "fire and fury" on North Korea over its nuclear program, undermining US intelligence agencies while standing alongside Russia's President Vladimir Putin, or simply refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election, Trump all too often appeared prepared to put his own interests ahead of America's.
And all too often prepared to appeal to the country's darker side.
No more so than with his incendiary response to the violent scenes at a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Counter-protestor Heather Heyer was killed when one of the rally participants drove into her group.
In comments even some of his loyal supporters found hard to stomach, Trump said there were "very fine people on both sides" of the clashes.
Assigning moral equivalence to violent racists and those trying to call them out was one of the lowest points of his presidency, and helped lay the groundwork for the scenes of January 6 this year, when Trump supporters, egged on by their leader, stormed the US Capitol.
Yet the biggest failure of Trump's leadership is likely to be his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
From the start, Trump wanted to wish the virus away. Indeed, he claimed it would disappear "like a miracle".
As the infection and death tolls mounted, and state health authorities were crying out for federal help, Trump kept insisting everything was under control.
He even suggested to his health experts they investigate whether injecting bleach into the body could kill the virus.
Trump ridiculed people for wearing masks, and made a great play of taking his own mask off when he arrived back at the White House after his hospitalisation with the disease.
The results of this inaction and ignorance are stark.
About 24 million Americans have been infected with COVID-19 and 400,000 have died from it.
What is his legacy?
Trump is leaving the White House a vastly diminished figure.
Sure, there have been achievements.
Before the pandemic put a wrecking ball through it, the US economy was growing.
The jobless rate had hit a 50-year low.
To the delight of his base, Trump appointed three conservative judges to the US Supreme Court.
In foreign policy, Trump reversed years of US timidity when launching missile strikes on Syria in response to Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons on his own people.
He opened a dialogue with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (even though the dictator ended up playing the US President like a cheap violin), and brokered peace deals between Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
But, at the same time, Trump was hostile to some of America's key allies, and his withdrawal from the Paris climate change agreement set back international efforts to slow global warming.
Back home, Trump sowed further division in an already deeply polarised country.
While George Bush Snr may have wished for a "kinder, gentler nation", Trump leaves behind a harsher, meaner one.
In four years, the 45th US President has shaken global security and undermined the foundations of America's democracy.
In a final act of gracelessness, Trump won't be attending Joe Biden's inauguration this week, the first departing president not to do so since 1869.
As someone who loves his TV, particularly TV that rates well, Trump would undoubtedly remember the final blockbuster episode of M*A*S*H, which also happens to end with a departure in a chopper.
There would be no shortage of people in America and around the world thinking of the title of that last show as Trump boards Marine One for the last time.
"Goodbye, farewell and amen."
No comments:
Post a Comment