Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (1946-?) was the 45th[1] President of the United States of America, serving one 4-year term from January 20, 2017, to the same date in 2021 after defeating Hillary Clinton of the Democrats in the 2016 general election.
Trump's presidency was notable, not just for ending in an attempted insurrection, but for reneging on prior international commitments, upending longstanding diplomatic relationships, and engaging in brinkmanship with adversaries. Trump used social media such as Twitter to attack and embarrass critics, and adopted a harsh policy against immigration which separated parents from children at the border. There was also a concerted attempt by the president's administration to demonize and damage domestic federal agencies such as the EPA and the U.S. Geological Survey and those responsible for education, financial oversight, census-taking, and weather monitoring. Many of these measures were highly popular with his base of support, who regarded the U.S. government as bloated and as having failed them economically, in part by allowing rampant illegal immigration, and who liked the image Trump portrayed, via his "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) slogan, of a strong America as compared to the rest of the world.
Trump unsuccessfully ran for a second term in 2020, losing to the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, in the Nov. 2020 general election. Trump may have lost (at least in part) because of his failure to acknowledge and manage the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, during which he failed to take any substantive actions himself and then withheld expected federal funds to punish states for taking public safety measures of their own.
Trump vigorously contested the 2020 election results in a social media campaign called "Stop the Steal", though with no actual evidence (as determined by numerous lost lawsuits). Trump had to leave office when his term expired on January 20, 2021 after ending on a sour note with the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot, a violent assault by Trump supporters which Trump himself arguably incited and planned. The attack is widely regarded as an insurrection or attempted coup d'etat because it was intended to prevent the historically peaceful transfer of power between presidents. According to the "January 6th Report"[2] compiled by a committee dominated by Trump opponents[3] and later issued by Congress, the riot was the last of multiple futile attempts by Trump to get the 2020 election results overturned, as he also tried to intimidate various state and federal officials (including his own vice-president, Mike Pence) to take illegal actions designed to overthrow valid election results. So far, he has not been prosecuted on any of these allegations.
After the riot, as its thousands of participants began to be prosecuted, Trump's popularity waned drastically, although as of early 2023, he still commands a loud and potentially violent following.
Trump is the only president in U.S. history to have been impeached twice.
References
- ↑ Trump was the 45th president the normal American way of counting, which reckons Grover Cleveland twice as he served two non-consecutive terms.
- ↑ Final Report by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Dec. 22, 2022, 117th Congress Second Session, House Report 117-663
- ↑ After the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol building, six months went by while the 100-member U.S. Senate attempted to create an investigative commission that would have consisted of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. Only 54 (of 60 needed votes to prevent a filibuster) could be obtained. Thereafter, the house acted on its own to create a committee (not a commission) for an investigation. House Republican leaders first attempted to pack the committee with Republicans who were known "election deniers", but the Democratic leadership refused to appoint two of them, after which Republicans forbade any members from participating. Nevertheless, two long-standing, respected Republicans were invited and accepted, breaking party discipline. They are Liz Cheney (then representing Wyoming, who acted as vice-chair of the committee) and Adam Kinzinger (then representing Illinois). Both were later censored by their party and lost their subsequent election as a result of their participation in the commission. So while one can say the committee was numerically dominated by opponents of President Trump, it could have had as many as five Republicans (and seven Democrats), but that party clearly desired that there be no investigation at all, so it ended up as two Republicans and seven Democrats. During its investigation, the committee conducted public hearings over seven weeks that were widely watched on television and had an enormous impact on public opinion. Out of dozens of witnesses, only one Democrat was called upon to testify. See Wikipedia's article Wikipedia:United_States_House_Select_Committee_on_the_January_6_Attack for more details.