Is Trump the worst President in American history?
“Trump is the worst human being to be President of the United States, including those who owned slaves. He is actively destroying the American leadership in the world, as well as the peace and prosperity of which so many countries have benefitted thanks to its leadership.”
That is the view of David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W.Bush and a senior editor at The Atlantic, a leading American magazine founded in 1857 and based in Washington.
Frum said that Trump’s rule will lead to inflation, an economic slowdown and probably a recession. Since he took office on January 20, the U.S. dollars has lost four per cent against a basket of six equivalent currencies, and the blue-chip S&P 500 has tumbled almost four per cent. Such large and persistent falls in Wall Street stocks and the currency are unusual, with these types of episodes occurring only a handful of times over the past 25 years, according to research by investment bank Goldman Sachs.
They are a result of Trump’s sweeping tariff policies and uncertainty among companies and the public of the impact of his economic agenda.
“Major events are coming up and some could be spectacular,” said Frum. “The prices of daily necessities, like eggs, are already very high and could rise further still. We will enter in an economic slowdown.” The price of a dozen eggs in New York has reached US$17 a dozen.
“His will be a mandate full of conflict, marked by scandals and crises. He has cut financing for programmes against AIDS in developing countries to give more money to millionaires. He is cutting subsidies to army veterans and Medicaid and will soon attack social security. It will not be a long calm river for him,” he said.
Republicans Senators and Congressmen already face intense anger from their own supporters over cuts in jobs in the civil service and other measures which Trump has enacted. In-person town halls in Georgia, Wisconsin, North Carolina have turned so confrontational that the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives has advised members to hold virtual meetings instead.
In Ogden county, Utah, which Trump won by more than 20 per cent last November, Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) seemed to be “actively working to destroy our lives and the livelihood of our local economy”, said a lady employee of the Inland Revenue Service, where dozens of employees have been fired without reason or explanation.
Frum said that Trump’s foreign policy had been a disgrace. He compared Trump’s friendship with Russian President Vladimir with the agreement of Marechal Philippe Petain in 1940 with Adolf Hitler to set up a puppet government in France.
His treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a meeting in the White House on February 28 was “a shameful treason”, Frum said. Trump and JD Vance repeatedly criticised their visitor, at time drowning out his voice. It was the first time in U.S. history that a sitting president openly verbally attacked a visiting head of state.
“I hope the friends of the U.S. around the world understand that Trump represents only a part of America and certainly not all of America. Americans worthy of the name watched this scene with shame and horror,” Frum said.
He said that a victory for Ukraine in the war would tell Beijing that attacking Taiwan would be too dangerous. “But, if Russia won – worse still, through the corruption of the American leaders, then the message to China becomes: ‘it is not so dangerous. It would be enough to persuade Musk to persuade Trump not to intervene.’ Musk has an enormous Tesla factory in Shanghai.”
The best hope for controlling Trump lies in the mid-term elections due for November 2026. All the seats in the House of Representatives and one third of those in the Senate will be open for voting. “This is one of the great Achilles heels of Trump, because the elections are managed by the states, not the Federal government. Trump wishes to manipulate the mid-term elections, but it will be more difficult that in other countries,” he said.
He said that Trump had misled the American population into believing that they were the losers in the post-1945 globalisation. In fact, the opposite is the case. “The level of life in the United States is extraordinarily high. Americans are richer than the citizens of comparable democracies. They live in larger houses, with air conditioning, eat more meat and possess all kinds of electronic gadgets. The United States has built this world for itself. Americans do not have to learn another language, other people do.”
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