Donald Trump’s actions during the transitional period will confirm his place among the worst presidents in U.S. history.
This transition is increasingly painful. Not only does President Trump appear completely disengaged in the face of a pandemic that kills thousands of Americans every day, but he seems determined to do as much damage as possible before he leaves.
It’s as if he saved the worst for the end. That will say a lot about his political heritage.
A long tradition
It is not yesterday that the outgoing American presidents are taking advantage of the transition to make one last mark for posterity.
Some wanted to settle scores, like John Adams, who spared no efforts to harm his rival, Thomas Jefferson, or Herbert Hoover, who hated Franklin Roosevelt and put enough sticks in his wheels to delay the recovery in his heart. of the Great Depression.
More recently, George W. Bush and Barack Obama took advantage of this period to take more positive actions, such as decrees to protect vast natural spaces or commutations of death sentences.
Irreversible actions
While the United States has been trending for a few decades towards a possible rejection of the death penalty, the Trump administration has stepped up the pace of federal executions in 2020. Ten executions have taken place this year, including three since the election. Never since 1889 has a president approved an execution during a transition. The first execution of a woman by the federal government since 1953 is scheduled a week before the handover. The Trump administration has not issued any sign of leniency. In the environment, some measures will be easy to reverse, such as Trump’s cartoonish decree on the flow of shower heads, but others will be irreversible. Trump has already reversed more than a century of progress by enacting hundreds of measures that have weakened the powers of the federal government — to protect natural spaces. During the transition, it continues.
In Arizona and Utah, in particular, mining permits have just been issued in national forests recognized as sacred territories by the indigenous peoples of the region.
And it’s not over
In foreign policy, Trump mocks the tradition of reserve for incumbent presidents. Whether it’s recognizing Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, fueling tension with Iran or minimizing a cyberattack so as not to offend the masters of the Kremlin, Trump’s fangs in his thighs. successor accumulate.
This is not to mention the minefield that he will leave behind in terms of democratic standards and values. He has managed to convince tens of millions of Americans, without supporting evidence, that their next president will be illegitimate, and he’s plotting with wacky advisers calling for martial law to overturn voters’ verdicts.
Sad spectacle that this transition which drags on and gets bogged down more and more in the shallows.