As Donald Trump’s presidency began its second year, the American Political Science Association’s Presidents and Executive Politics section ranked each of the nation’s chief executives from best to worst. The scholars agreed at the time that the then-Republican incumbent was on track to be the worst of all time.
They were onto something.
As Trump prepared to exit the White House in January 2021, NYU historian Tim Naftali explained in a piece for The Atlantic that Trump was unique in his horribleness: “[A]s a result of his subversion of national security, his reckless endangerment of every American in the pandemic, and his failed insurrection on January 6, one thing seems abundantly clear: Trump is the worst president in the 232-year history of the United States.”
As we discussed soon after, the assessment seemed rather obvious. What made Trump such an extraordinary failure was the scope and scale of his ignominy. He was corrupt. And ignorant. And overly eager to abuse his powers. And mendacious. And indifferent in the face of crises. And overtly hostile toward the rule of law. And eager to pit Americans against each other. And a genuine threat to the integrity of the republic.
Americans have had presidents who checked some of these boxes, but only Trump checked all of them. As Rachel noted on the show on the last day of the Republican’s first term, our “worst presidents in history” lists “need to be recalibrated to account for the new undisputed king of that category.”
Earlier this year, scholars participating in the Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey agreed: Trump wasn’t just bad, he was quite literally the worst.
I’m often reminded of the Time magazine cover that was published the week of President Joe Biden’s inauguration. It helped capture the chaos and shambolic destruction that Trump left for his successor to clean up.
Trump’s impact can be felt on this week’s cover too. Here, a scene created by Tim O’Brien of newly-elected President Joe Biden’s first day in the White House https://t.co/78ZoOeN0BR pic.twitter.com/BhDf7xB6JX
— TIME (@TIME) January 22, 2021
Biden did exactly that. And as Biden prepared to exit the White House, tens of millions of Americans thought it’d be sensible to give his predecessor a second bite at the apple, returning power to the failed president who’d created the messes in the first place.Time will tell whether the GOP president-elect fares any better in a second term, but it’s easy to predict that the worst president in American history will be even worse going forward.
Part of this assumption is rooted in the Republican Party’s success in politicizing the federal courts, coupled with GOP lawmakers’ eagerness to serve as pitiful rubber stamps for whatever the Trump White House wants.
There’s also the fact that the president-elect and members of his inner circle learned valuable tactical lessons from their first go-around, and they’re prepared to apply those lessons going forward.








