CU Historian: After One Year, Donald Trump Already Worst U.S. President Ever
"From Mueller to Stormy to ‘emoluments,’ Trump’s business is under siege"
Donald Trump during a 2016 campaign appearance in Denver. Photo by Brandon Marshall
Michael Roberts | January 18, 2018 | 6:13am
On January 19, 2017, the day before Donald Trump's inauguration, we listed the ten worst American presidents of all time .. http://www.westword.com/news/cu-profs-picks-for-the-10-worst-presidents-trumps-odds-of-joining-them-8595675 .. as chosen by members of the CU Boulder history department and interviewed Professor Thomas Zeiler, a key part of the group, about Trump's odds of joining this roster. A year later, we checked in again with Zeiler in an effort to gauge the Donald's progress in regard to this dubious potential achievement, and the prof says Trump has reached the peak in record time. According to Zeiler, Trump is already the lousiest chief executive ever elected in the U.S., and he sees no way for his status to rise during the remaining three years of his current term.
"He's so flawed, such a bad guy, that it's hopeless," Zeiler said.
For our previous post, 21 members of the CU Boulder history department took part in a survey resulting in a presidential bottom-ten list. Their picks for worst commanders-in-chief were:
1. Richard Nixon 2. George W. Bush 3. Andrew Johnson 4. James Polk 5. Millard Fillmore 6. Warren Harding 7. Chester Arthur 8. James Buchanan 10 (tie). Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren
At our request, Zeiler commented on each of the selections before analyzing Trump in comparison to his cellar-dwelling predecessors — and he saw America's newest leader as a mashup of two presidents cited by the CU Boulder contingent.
CU Boulder history professor Thomas Zeiler. TomZeiler.org
"Trump isn't a Republican like Richard Nixon was," he told us last year. "Nixon probably couldn't be elected as a Republican now; that was the liberal wing of the Republican Party. And Bush was more in line with the corporate Republicans, which had mainstream views about corporate trade, open borders and immigration. Let's face it: Bush wanted immigration because it's cheap labor. But that's much different from Trump, who has sort of retreated back to a much older style of the Republican Party that really sort of petered out in the 1940s: populist, nationalistic Republicans."
Like Andrew Jackson, however, "Trump isn't really prepared for office," Zeiler continued. "Jackson was also a guy who was sort of a populist who shot from the hip, a lot like Donald. And Harding is someone else he can be compared to. Harding was a guy who sort of picked and chose and had fun on his own while he let others run his administration, because he was incapable of doing it himself. So Trump could also turn out to be a combination of Jackson and Harding."
And today? In Zeiler's opinion, Trump has "confirmed many of our worries and is in many ways worse than we thought for several reasons. From day one, there were confused messages coming out of the White House, ranging from his utterances about the size of the inaugural audiences to the Muslim ban on immigration, which were incompetently done. That immediately gave rise to concerns that had plagued his campaign and carried over into his first year — that this was a president who doesn't really know how to govern and, in fact, doesn't care about learning how to govern."
Equally worrisome, Zeiler feels, are questions of the sort that appear in author Michael Wolff's book Fire and Fury .. https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Fury-Inside-Trump-White/dp/1250158060 .. about "whether Trump has the mentality or the psychological and emotional capacity to be president. Some people have even talked about dementia. Now, this isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened. Woodrow Wilson had a stroke in the latter part of his administration and really didn't govern at all; his wife did. Nixon was under great stress, as was Lyndon Johnson, and James Garfield didn't govern for months after he was shot. [An assassination attempt on Garfield took place on July 2, 1881 .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_James_A._Garfield ; he died on September 19.] But with Trump, it's happened at the very start of his term."
His poor early performances gave critics a chance to hit the ground running, Zeiler contended. "Usually, when you're president, you get a honeymoon period, regardless of how divided the country is. He lost the popular vote, but you still had a government controlled by one party — his party. And yet, he had his one-and-only legislative victory" — the signing of a tax-overhaul bill — "at the end of the first year, and it wasn't due to the president or any pull that he has. It passed because Republican leaders, and especially Mitch McConnell, knew the Republicans had to have this tax bill no matter what it looked like. The very existence of the Republican Party was at jeopardy, which is why all of the Republicans, including Jeff Flake, Susan Collins and John McCain, voted for it. And that had very little to do with President Trump, because he has so little heft and very little influence."
To Zeiler, the nadir thus far has been Trump's response to a death during racially charged demonstrations and protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, this past summer. "Nixon cultivated the 'silent majority,' which was Archie Bunker stuff. But to cede the moral high ground and say there were good people on both sides showed both latent racism and his inability to think before he speaks."
In addition, the ongoing investigation into possible Russian influence on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election has led some observers to suggest that assorted insiders, and perhaps the president himself, are guilty of treason — a charge that Zeiler said isn't unprecedented, but close.
Donald Trump wearing one of this familiar "Make America Great Again" hats in Denver. Photo by Brandon Marshall
"You have to go way back to the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists, with Thomas Jefferson being accused of being too pro-French and others supposedly being too pro-British," he theorized. "But that's not really comparable. America was a new country at the time, and dependent on trade. And Trump absolutely loves [Russian leader Vladimir] Putin. He describes himself as a tough guy, but whenever a real tough guy is around, he just melts."
At the same time, Zeiler isn't ready to predict that Trump will be formally charged with collusion. "He just doesn't have the attention span for that, and his son [Donald Trump, Jr.] just talks off the cuff. He didn't think he was doing anything wrong. So Trump could get in more trouble for obstruction of justice."
[Call it conspiracy, and that smells like the Nunberg defense which giving Trump's love for being the umm in-charge boss, hands-on (wherever) it seems implausible]
And then there's the matter of Trump's tone, which came into sharp relief for Zeiler while he was doing some research into another prominent Republican president — one who's not on CU Boulder's ignominious roll call.
"I was out at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library for a week in May," he recalled. "And the two of them, Reagan and Trump, essentially had a lot of the same dogma and doctrine. But Reagan smiled when he talked about it. He might have smiled as he did in a lot of the poor and the working class, but he smiled, and that's a real contrast. Americans, I think, want their president to set a tone and be positive overall — establish a moral, psychological, emotional feeling in the country, where they can advance issues and talk about progress. Even George W. Bush understood that. He had to deal with 9/11, and that helped him create domestic popular support around an unpopular president. But Trump is even more inarticulate than George W. Bush. I'm sure linguists go crazy when they hear these simple words, his limited vocabulary, the repetition, his use of adverbs and adjectives. It's so easy to tell when he goes off script."
Bottom line, Zeiler believes, "he's a sourpuss."
Of course, Trump is only a quarter of the way through the four years he's been tasked to serve, leaving a lot of time to get things done and change the opinions of all but his most devoted enemies. Nonetheless, Zeiler doubts such a turnaround is possible.
"I think he'll last out this term, and it will be disastrous," he said. "As a historian, it's always hard to judge something like this, because it's happened in such recent times. We're always thinking about that. But I think most historians would agree that he's the worst person we've ever had in this office."
"From Mueller to Stormy to ‘emoluments,’ Trump’s business is under siege "
In light of developments in 'the best' Trump's world since about this time in 2016 it felt useful to bring this article back.
Interviews with former employees point to detail-obsessed boss with little regard for diversity or low-level staff: ‘His identity is wrapped around being a winner’
Oliver Laughland in New York @oliverlaughland
Mon 14 Mar 2016 15.01 EDT Last modified on Fri 9 Feb 2018 14.15 EST
This article is over 2 years old
Randal Pinkett with Donald Trump: ‘If you challenge him, you begin to take Donald out of his comfort zone.’ Photograph: Bennett Raglin/WireImage
Randal Pinkett’s first day in the Trump Organization was one he would never forget. Summoned to the offices in Trump Tower, the billionaire’s garish midtown skyscraper, Pinkett entered the room as Trump thumbed through a stack of the day’s newspapers and magazines.
It was 2005, and having just won season four of The Apprentice, the only African American to do so in the show’s history, Pinkett expected Trump’s attention. But as the two spoke about his hard-won contract with the company, it was clear Trump really only cared about one thing: himself.
[...]
A consensus emerged of a businessman obsessed with minute detail, prone to micromanagement, who takes little interest in the diversity of his executives or the welfare of lower-level employees. Some said Trump lacks the temperament to deal with setbacks and becomes instantly impatient with those who do not support or agree with him, while remaining resolutely loyal to those who do. Others described their former boss as a workaholic with few true friends, a man sometimes awkward in company outside the workplace.
Provided with a list of detailed claims made by interviewees in this article, Trump told the Guardian in a statement that they were “allegations by disgruntled and disloyal former employees” that were “totally false”.
[Since 2016 how many other things has the president described as "totally false" when they were not at the time, and still are not today?]
[...]
[More evidence of Trump's fealty to micromanaging those things which are mostly about himself and his income.]
Another of Trump’s inner circle from this period, former executive vice president for real estate Louise Sunshine, argued it was this obsession with detail in construction that has driven one of Trump’s most controversial policy positions in 2016: the pledge to build a large wall across the US border with Mexico.
“I think building a wall is something he can really relate to. He’s built so many that I think he can really visualize it. I don’t think he thinks of it as a barrier; I think he thinks of it as some sort of construction,” Sunshine, a registered Democrat, said. She added that “since day one”, Trump’s first lesson to her had been “bad publicity is better than no publicity at all”.
The micromanagement has seemingly continued throughout his life. Justin Goldberg, a former project director who managed the renovation of a property on Wall Street in 1995, recalled how Trump would personally call the painting company to negotiate a deal downwards after it had already been signed, and would point to the smallest details throughout the renovation.
Aaron Sigmond, the former editorial director of the widely lampooned and now defunct Trump Magazine, recalled how Trump would personally select the front cover of every edition of the quarterly publication. Sigmond unabashedly referred to the magazine as “wealth porn” and was keen to point out that the first decision he made when he got the job in 2005 was to run a photo of Trump or a member of his family on every front page.
Trump would also return a magazine mock-up with scribbled suggestions on most pages – no longer in robin’s egg blue, but black sharpie marker.
[And yet many say he wouldn't have known at all about the Russian connections and communication with his team before and after 2016?]
[...]
[Roger Stone is in Mueller's sights now. How reliable are Stone's views about Trump himself? Stone..]
...rejects the observation that Trump micromanages: “I think that he is someone who will gather the finest minds, he will extract as much information as he can, he will ask hard questions and he’ll make decisions. It’s kind of the Eisenhower model. He doesn’t need to know the name of every sub-sect of Islamic rebels in the African continent.
[No extra links here required to support the fact that Trump has seldom gathered the finest minds about him. And on racism?]
Pinkett spent a year inside the organization tasked with overseeing a $100m renovation to Trump-branded casinos and hotels in Atlantic City. The job itself ran relatively smoothly, but one thing about the company always struck him: “I don’t think I ever sat in a room with another person of color,” he said.
Sprague, too, struggled to remember the names of any senior minority managers in the company during her tenure.
“We certainly had a wonderful man who ... was Indian,” she said. “We had secretaries who were black, [too].”
[...]
[On Trump's having a number of women as top managers]
Res, who was Trump’s executive vice-president for construction until 1991, acknowledged that he treated men and women equally in the boardroom. But she added: “I’ve come to the conclusion that he probably liked having women around him because he felt better than them in some way or another. Maybe innately he felt better – they were maybe less of a competition.”
[...]
[Back to Stone and his claim that Trump is not an elitist. Just a wealthy ordinary guy.]
“He’s a billionaire without being elite,” said Stone, recalling the 1988 Republican convention in New Orleans, where he claimed that he and Trump had decided against a black tie dinner with George H W Bush and chosen instead to seek out the best burgers in town. “See if you can commandeer a limo, and let’s go there instead,” Trump told Stone.
Others dismissed this characterisation as spin. Louise Sunshine recalled Trump’s move away from his father’s empire in Brooklyn and into Manhattan in the mid-70s. The two would drive around the lower end of the city in a limousine, picking out properties they wanted to acquire. Even then, Trump would discuss his dream of purchasing the Mar-a-lago beach resort in Florida. He eventually bought it in 1985, and turned it into a private members’ club with a $100,000 joining fee.
[...]
[An ordinary guy who cares sincerely those near the bottom rung of the wage range.]
Alma Zamarin, the only current Trump employee to talk to the Guardian, had the most forthright view of this characterisation. The 55-year-old earns $9.75 an hour with no benefits or health insurance, as a part time server in the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas. She has worked there for five years, hoping for a staff contract that has yet to materialise, and struggles to pay bills and feed her retired husband and two children. Her union estimates that Trump pays his hotel workers in Las Vegas, on average, $3.33 less per hour than the average wages on the Las Vegas strip.
“He doesn’t care about me,” Zamarin said. “I think he just cares about his business, how much money he’s making.”
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