Copyright © 2015 Bert N. Langford (Images may be subject to copyright. Please send feedback)
Welcome to Our Generation USA!
This Page Covers
Presidential Elections in 2024, in which we have a choice between
Democracy vs. Dictatorship.
The 2024 Presidential Election is shaping up to be a contrast of the potential dictatorship of Donald Trump, vs. the opportunity of having a Female President for the first time in the history of our Democracy!
Your WebHost.
Your WebHost.
Trump’s Threat to Democracy Is Now Systemic (The Atlantic)
Each time GOP leaders have had the opportunity to move away from Trump, the party has sped past the off-ramp!
By Ronald Brownstein
The Atlantic
August 2, 2023
Pictured below: Trump exhorts his followers!
Each time GOP leaders have had the opportunity to move away from Trump, the party has sped past the off-ramp!
By Ronald Brownstein
The Atlantic
August 2, 2023
Pictured below: Trump exhorts his followers!
The long-awaited federal indictment of Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election may be necessary to contain the threat to American democracy that he has unleashed. But it’s unlikely to be sufficient.
The germ of election denialism that Trump injected into the American political system has spread so far throughout the Republican Party that it is virtually certain to survive whatever legal accountability the former president faces.
With polls showing that most Republican voters still believe the election was stolen from Trump, that the January 6 riot was legitimate protest, and that Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 results did not violate the law or threaten the constitutional system, the United States faces a stark and unprecedented situation.
For the first time in the nation’s modern history, the dominant faction in one of our two major parties has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to accept antidemocratic means to advance its interests.
The most telling measure of that dynamic inside the GOP is that Trump remains the party’s central figure. Each time GOP voters and leaders have had the opportunity to move away from him—whether in the shock immediately after January 6, or the widespread disappointment over the poor performance of his handpicked candidates during the 2022 election—the party has sped past the off-ramp.
Polls now show Trump leading in the 2024 GOP presidential race by one of the biggest margins ever recorded for a primary candidate in either party. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives has been exploring ways to expunge his two impeachments and/or block the investigations he faces.
Even the other candidates ostensibly running against him for the 2024 GOP nomination have almost uniformly condemned the indictments against him, rather than his underlying behavior. Prominent conservatives have argued that Trump cannot receive a fair trial in any Democratic-leaning jurisdiction.
All of these actions measure how much of the GOP is now willing to accept Trump’s repeated assaults on the basic structures of American democracy. While the key state-level Republicans rejected Trump’s direct demands to invalidate the results in their own states, most House Republicans voted to reject the election results and most Republican state attorneys general filed a lawsuit to decertify the outcome in the key swing states won by President Joe Biden.
In the election’s aftermath, the majority of Republican-controlled states, inspired by Trump’s baseless claims of endemic voter fraud, passed laws on a party-line basis making it more difficult to vote, or increasing partisan control over election administration.
Sean Wilentz, a Princeton historian who specializes in American politics, told me that U.S. history has no exact precedent for a party embracing a leader so openly hostile to the core pillars of democracy. Presidents have often been accused of violating the Constitution through their policy actions, he said, but there is not another example of a president moving as systematically to “manipulate the apparatus of government or elections in order to subvert the will of the people.”
The closest parallel to Trump’s actions, Wilentz said, may be the strategies of the slaveholding South in the decades before the Civil War. Those included violent attacks on abolitionists, suppression of antislavery publications, and the promulgation of extreme legal theories such as the denial of basic rights to Black people in the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision, all of which were designed to protect slavery against the emerging national majority dubious of it. That decades-long “antidemocratic thrust” from the South, Wilentz noted, “finally culminated in the greatest violation of the American Constitution in our history, which was secession.”
By contrast, Wilentz added, the GOP’s continued embrace of Trump amid the evidence of his misconduct contrasts sharply with the party’s refusal to defend Richard Nixon in the final stages of Watergate. “When Richard Nixon was about to be impeached, he didn’t storm the Capitol to get rid of Barry Goldwater,” Wilentz said, referring to the conservative Republican senator who warned Nixon that he would lose a Senate vote to remove him. “He resigned.”
All of this suggests that personal accountability for Trump is unlikely to erase the tolerance for antidemocratic actions that has spread in the GOP since his emergence. Yet many experts who study the health of democracy still believe that prosecuting him remains essential.
Kristy Parker, a counsel at Protect Democracy, a bipartisan group that focuses on threats to democratic institutions, says it is crucial to show the “silent majority” of Americans who support the constitutional system that no one is above the law.
“They need to see that the Department of Justice prosecutors are willing to take the risk of indicting Trump,” Parker told me. “They need to see the election workers ensuring that people get their vote counted. They need to see the police officers standing up to the rioters. They need to see people within the system working.”
Michael Waldman, the president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, told me that he has been ambivalent about indicting former presidents, because of the risk of precipitating a retaliatory spiral between the parties. “It is a line that we as a country have never crossed,” Waldman said shortly after the Trump indictment was disclosed last night. “One could imagine how it could be abused and become one more shattered norm.”
Waldman said that failing to indict Trump would have been far more dangerous, because such a decision would have suggested that there is no effective way to hold presidents accountable for misbehavior. Neither of Trump’s two impeachments really damaged his position in the party, Waldman noted, in part because virtually all GOP elected officials defended his behavior.
But the multiple criminal indictments facing Trump, he said, show that “the criminal-justice system still is producing tangible legal consequences” that future presidents cannot brush off as easily as an impeachment.
Waldman said the trials of hundreds of January 6 rioters already demonstrate that prosecution can have some deterrent effect. Unruly crowds of supporters, Waldman noted, did not descend on courthouses in Manhattan or Florida after Trump’s earlier indictments, despite his signals that he’d like to see that happen.
“The fact that this stuff is not just a bad idea but illegal and you can go to jail for it really makes a big difference,” Waldman said.
John Dean, the White House counsel whose Senate testimony helped doom Nixon during Watergate, also considers prosecution of Trump to be “essential,” he told me. President Gerald Ford’s decision to pardon Nixon and preempt a trial, Dean said, was “a historical disaster,” because it emboldened presidents to believe they would never face criminal charges for their actions.
Allowing Trump to avoid consequences, Dean believes, would send an even more dangerous signal than Ford did with Nixon. “Trump’s corruption is so much more fundamental to the system than Nixon’s,” Dean said. “Nixon, he abused power, he had his enemies list, he wanted to make government work for the benefit of Republicans and not Democrats. But he wasn’t going after the foundations of government and the system like Trump.”
Peter Wehner: The indictment of Donald Trump—and his enablers
Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election required the cooperation of many other GOP officials and conservative activists and lawyers. Now a growing number of them face consequences of their own, including disbarment proceedings, ongoing state and local investigations, and the potential of further federal charges from Special Counsel Jack Smith against the six unnamed co-conspirators listed in the Trump indictment.
“I’m not sure how much additional prosecutions will deter Trump—unfortunately, he’s all-in on winning as a way to stay out of prison at this point,” says the Dartmouth College political scientist Brendan Nyhan, a co-founder of Bright Line Watch, a collaborative of political scientists studying threats to U.S. democracy.
“But Republican operatives and activists may hesitate as the evidence mounts that participating in an attempted coup puts you in legal jeopardy. That’s important, because Trump can’t carry out his plots by himself.”
Some analysts have worried that the trials could strengthen Trump if die-hard supporters of his on a jury refuse to convict him regardless of the evidence. But Parker told me that cannot be allowed to dissuade prosecutors from bringing cases when there’s evidence that Trump violated the law.
The problem, she said, is analogous to the challenges she faced as a Department of Justice civil-rights attorney prosecuting excessive-force cases against police officers who were likely more popular in the community than the victims they abused: “You can’t just give in and allow, effectively, a bully to force his way out of accountability, because then you’ve crushed the ideal that no one is above the law.”
Yet although all these possible sanctions create legal reasons for the GOP to resist another Trump-led attack on democracy, the party’s political incentives point in the opposite direction.
A recent national poll released by the Bright Line Watch project found that the majority of Republican voters accepted all of Trump’s key arguments about 2020 and the multiplying legal challenges accumulating against him. In that survey, only small minorities of Republicans said that he had committed crimes in any of the cases he’s facing.
Most Republicans said Trump was singled out for prosecution for behavior that would not have prompted charges against other people. Six in 10 Republicans described the January 6 riot as “legitimate protest.” And although the share of Republicans who said that Biden was elected through fraud had declined somewhat from its peak of about three-fourths, nearly two-thirds of them still denied the legitimacy of his victory.
Quinta Jurecic: The triumph of the January 6 Committee
These attitudes provide an ominous backdrop to Trump’s hints that if he wins the nomination but loses the general election, he’s likely to challenge the results again. Trump might not attempt another mass physical attack on the Capitol in 2025, but such sentiments could allow him to enlist Republicans again for a more targeted legal effort to overthrow the results in a few key states or in Congress, Nyhan told me.
The widespread Republican rejection of the idea that Trump violated any laws in his actions after 2020 offers reason to doubt that the party would object any more strenuously if he launched another campaign to delegitimize the results in 2024.
Nyhan said he can imagine future circumstances in which Democrats at some point challenge the legitimacy of a presidential race, such as the election coming down to a Republican-controlled state that has restricted voting rights. But he said the more immediate danger is that Republicans won’t accept the results of any presidential race they lose.
Traditionally, presidential nominees from each party, including Al Gore and John McCain, have made statements in which “the losing side specifically affirms the legitimacy of the winner,” Nyhan said. But for the GOP next year, he added, “we can no longer take that for granted whether or not Trump is the nominee, and that’s really worrisome.”
Trump may constitute a unique threat to America’s democratic traditions. But he has always connected his claims of pervasive electoral fraud to the widespread anxiety among white, Christian conservatives that they are losing control of the country to a racially diverse, secular, and LGBTQ-friendly Democratic coalition centered in the nation’s largest cities.
As Trump put it during one 2020 rally before a predominantly white, rural audience in Georgia: “This is our country. And you know this, and you see it, but they are trying to take it from us through rigging, fraud, deception, and deceit.”
Whether Trump is convicted for trying to overturn the 2020 election or not, voters who accept that argument will remain the most powerful force in the GOP coalition. And they will continue to demand leaders who will fight the changes that they believe threaten their position in American society.
Those other Republican leaders may not attempt to overturn an election as brazenly as Trump did with the conduct Smith catalogs in his indictment. But, as Wilentz told me, for the foreseeable future, they are likely to pursue other means “toward the same end: that majoritarian democracy cannot be tolerated under any circumstances if the outcome is not what you wanted it to be.”
Ronald Brownstein is a senior editor at The Atlantic and a senior political analyst for CNN.
The germ of election denialism that Trump injected into the American political system has spread so far throughout the Republican Party that it is virtually certain to survive whatever legal accountability the former president faces.
With polls showing that most Republican voters still believe the election was stolen from Trump, that the January 6 riot was legitimate protest, and that Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 results did not violate the law or threaten the constitutional system, the United States faces a stark and unprecedented situation.
For the first time in the nation’s modern history, the dominant faction in one of our two major parties has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to accept antidemocratic means to advance its interests.
The most telling measure of that dynamic inside the GOP is that Trump remains the party’s central figure. Each time GOP voters and leaders have had the opportunity to move away from him—whether in the shock immediately after January 6, or the widespread disappointment over the poor performance of his handpicked candidates during the 2022 election—the party has sped past the off-ramp.
Polls now show Trump leading in the 2024 GOP presidential race by one of the biggest margins ever recorded for a primary candidate in either party. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives has been exploring ways to expunge his two impeachments and/or block the investigations he faces.
Even the other candidates ostensibly running against him for the 2024 GOP nomination have almost uniformly condemned the indictments against him, rather than his underlying behavior. Prominent conservatives have argued that Trump cannot receive a fair trial in any Democratic-leaning jurisdiction.
All of these actions measure how much of the GOP is now willing to accept Trump’s repeated assaults on the basic structures of American democracy. While the key state-level Republicans rejected Trump’s direct demands to invalidate the results in their own states, most House Republicans voted to reject the election results and most Republican state attorneys general filed a lawsuit to decertify the outcome in the key swing states won by President Joe Biden.
In the election’s aftermath, the majority of Republican-controlled states, inspired by Trump’s baseless claims of endemic voter fraud, passed laws on a party-line basis making it more difficult to vote, or increasing partisan control over election administration.
Sean Wilentz, a Princeton historian who specializes in American politics, told me that U.S. history has no exact precedent for a party embracing a leader so openly hostile to the core pillars of democracy. Presidents have often been accused of violating the Constitution through their policy actions, he said, but there is not another example of a president moving as systematically to “manipulate the apparatus of government or elections in order to subvert the will of the people.”
The closest parallel to Trump’s actions, Wilentz said, may be the strategies of the slaveholding South in the decades before the Civil War. Those included violent attacks on abolitionists, suppression of antislavery publications, and the promulgation of extreme legal theories such as the denial of basic rights to Black people in the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision, all of which were designed to protect slavery against the emerging national majority dubious of it. That decades-long “antidemocratic thrust” from the South, Wilentz noted, “finally culminated in the greatest violation of the American Constitution in our history, which was secession.”
By contrast, Wilentz added, the GOP’s continued embrace of Trump amid the evidence of his misconduct contrasts sharply with the party’s refusal to defend Richard Nixon in the final stages of Watergate. “When Richard Nixon was about to be impeached, he didn’t storm the Capitol to get rid of Barry Goldwater,” Wilentz said, referring to the conservative Republican senator who warned Nixon that he would lose a Senate vote to remove him. “He resigned.”
All of this suggests that personal accountability for Trump is unlikely to erase the tolerance for antidemocratic actions that has spread in the GOP since his emergence. Yet many experts who study the health of democracy still believe that prosecuting him remains essential.
Kristy Parker, a counsel at Protect Democracy, a bipartisan group that focuses on threats to democratic institutions, says it is crucial to show the “silent majority” of Americans who support the constitutional system that no one is above the law.
“They need to see that the Department of Justice prosecutors are willing to take the risk of indicting Trump,” Parker told me. “They need to see the election workers ensuring that people get their vote counted. They need to see the police officers standing up to the rioters. They need to see people within the system working.”
Michael Waldman, the president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, told me that he has been ambivalent about indicting former presidents, because of the risk of precipitating a retaliatory spiral between the parties. “It is a line that we as a country have never crossed,” Waldman said shortly after the Trump indictment was disclosed last night. “One could imagine how it could be abused and become one more shattered norm.”
Waldman said that failing to indict Trump would have been far more dangerous, because such a decision would have suggested that there is no effective way to hold presidents accountable for misbehavior. Neither of Trump’s two impeachments really damaged his position in the party, Waldman noted, in part because virtually all GOP elected officials defended his behavior.
But the multiple criminal indictments facing Trump, he said, show that “the criminal-justice system still is producing tangible legal consequences” that future presidents cannot brush off as easily as an impeachment.
Waldman said the trials of hundreds of January 6 rioters already demonstrate that prosecution can have some deterrent effect. Unruly crowds of supporters, Waldman noted, did not descend on courthouses in Manhattan or Florida after Trump’s earlier indictments, despite his signals that he’d like to see that happen.
“The fact that this stuff is not just a bad idea but illegal and you can go to jail for it really makes a big difference,” Waldman said.
John Dean, the White House counsel whose Senate testimony helped doom Nixon during Watergate, also considers prosecution of Trump to be “essential,” he told me. President Gerald Ford’s decision to pardon Nixon and preempt a trial, Dean said, was “a historical disaster,” because it emboldened presidents to believe they would never face criminal charges for their actions.
Allowing Trump to avoid consequences, Dean believes, would send an even more dangerous signal than Ford did with Nixon. “Trump’s corruption is so much more fundamental to the system than Nixon’s,” Dean said. “Nixon, he abused power, he had his enemies list, he wanted to make government work for the benefit of Republicans and not Democrats. But he wasn’t going after the foundations of government and the system like Trump.”
Peter Wehner: The indictment of Donald Trump—and his enablers
Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election required the cooperation of many other GOP officials and conservative activists and lawyers. Now a growing number of them face consequences of their own, including disbarment proceedings, ongoing state and local investigations, and the potential of further federal charges from Special Counsel Jack Smith against the six unnamed co-conspirators listed in the Trump indictment.
“I’m not sure how much additional prosecutions will deter Trump—unfortunately, he’s all-in on winning as a way to stay out of prison at this point,” says the Dartmouth College political scientist Brendan Nyhan, a co-founder of Bright Line Watch, a collaborative of political scientists studying threats to U.S. democracy.
“But Republican operatives and activists may hesitate as the evidence mounts that participating in an attempted coup puts you in legal jeopardy. That’s important, because Trump can’t carry out his plots by himself.”
Some analysts have worried that the trials could strengthen Trump if die-hard supporters of his on a jury refuse to convict him regardless of the evidence. But Parker told me that cannot be allowed to dissuade prosecutors from bringing cases when there’s evidence that Trump violated the law.
The problem, she said, is analogous to the challenges she faced as a Department of Justice civil-rights attorney prosecuting excessive-force cases against police officers who were likely more popular in the community than the victims they abused: “You can’t just give in and allow, effectively, a bully to force his way out of accountability, because then you’ve crushed the ideal that no one is above the law.”
Yet although all these possible sanctions create legal reasons for the GOP to resist another Trump-led attack on democracy, the party’s political incentives point in the opposite direction.
A recent national poll released by the Bright Line Watch project found that the majority of Republican voters accepted all of Trump’s key arguments about 2020 and the multiplying legal challenges accumulating against him. In that survey, only small minorities of Republicans said that he had committed crimes in any of the cases he’s facing.
Most Republicans said Trump was singled out for prosecution for behavior that would not have prompted charges against other people. Six in 10 Republicans described the January 6 riot as “legitimate protest.” And although the share of Republicans who said that Biden was elected through fraud had declined somewhat from its peak of about three-fourths, nearly two-thirds of them still denied the legitimacy of his victory.
Quinta Jurecic: The triumph of the January 6 Committee
These attitudes provide an ominous backdrop to Trump’s hints that if he wins the nomination but loses the general election, he’s likely to challenge the results again. Trump might not attempt another mass physical attack on the Capitol in 2025, but such sentiments could allow him to enlist Republicans again for a more targeted legal effort to overthrow the results in a few key states or in Congress, Nyhan told me.
The widespread Republican rejection of the idea that Trump violated any laws in his actions after 2020 offers reason to doubt that the party would object any more strenuously if he launched another campaign to delegitimize the results in 2024.
Nyhan said he can imagine future circumstances in which Democrats at some point challenge the legitimacy of a presidential race, such as the election coming down to a Republican-controlled state that has restricted voting rights. But he said the more immediate danger is that Republicans won’t accept the results of any presidential race they lose.
Traditionally, presidential nominees from each party, including Al Gore and John McCain, have made statements in which “the losing side specifically affirms the legitimacy of the winner,” Nyhan said. But for the GOP next year, he added, “we can no longer take that for granted whether or not Trump is the nominee, and that’s really worrisome.”
Trump may constitute a unique threat to America’s democratic traditions. But he has always connected his claims of pervasive electoral fraud to the widespread anxiety among white, Christian conservatives that they are losing control of the country to a racially diverse, secular, and LGBTQ-friendly Democratic coalition centered in the nation’s largest cities.
As Trump put it during one 2020 rally before a predominantly white, rural audience in Georgia: “This is our country. And you know this, and you see it, but they are trying to take it from us through rigging, fraud, deception, and deceit.”
Whether Trump is convicted for trying to overturn the 2020 election or not, voters who accept that argument will remain the most powerful force in the GOP coalition. And they will continue to demand leaders who will fight the changes that they believe threaten their position in American society.
Those other Republican leaders may not attempt to overturn an election as brazenly as Trump did with the conduct Smith catalogs in his indictment. But, as Wilentz told me, for the foreseeable future, they are likely to pursue other means “toward the same end: that majoritarian democracy cannot be tolerated under any circumstances if the outcome is not what you wanted it to be.”
Ronald Brownstein is a senior editor at The Atlantic and a senior political analyst for CNN.
Presidency of Donald Trump (2017-2021)Pictured below: Donald Trump being sworn in as President on January 20, 2017
Presidency of Donald Trump: served 2017-2021
For a chronological guide, see Timeline of the Donald Trump presidency.
Donald Trump's tenure as the 45th president of the United States began with his inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Trump, a Republican from New York City, took office following his Electoral College victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, in which he lost the popular vote to Clinton by nearly three million votes.
Upon his inauguration, he became the first president in American history without prior public office or military background.
Trump made an unprecedented number of false or misleading statements during his campaign and presidency.
His presidency ended with defeat in the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden after one term in office.
Trump was unsuccessful in his efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act but took measures to hinder its functioning and rescinded the individual mandate. Trump sought substantial spending cuts to major welfare programs, including Medicare and Medicaid.
He signed the Great American Outdoors Act, reversed numerous environmental regulations, and withdrew from the Paris Agreement on climate change.
He signed the First Step Act on job training and early release of some federal prisoners, while also appointing Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
In economic policy, he partially repealed the Dodd–Frank Act and signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
He enacted tariffs, triggering retaliatory tariffs from China, Canada, Mexico, and the European Union. He withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations and signed the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement, a successor agreement to NAFTA.
The federal deficit increased under Trump due to spending increases and tax cuts.
He implemented a controversial family separation policy for migrants apprehended at the United States–Mexico border. Trump's demand for the federal funding of a border wall resulted in the longest US government shutdown in history.
He deployed federal law enforcement forces in response to the racial unrest in 2020. Trump's "America First" foreign policy was characterized by unilateral actions, disregarding traditional allies.
The administration also:
Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation (2017–2019) concluded that Russia interfered to favor Trump's candidacy and that while the prevailing evidence "did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government", possible obstructions of justice occurred during the course of that investigation.
Trump attempted to pressure Ukraine to announce investigations into his political rival Joe Biden, triggering his first impeachment by the House of Representatives on December 18, 2019, but he was acquitted by the Senate on February 5, 2020.
Trump reacted slowly to the COVID-19 pandemic, ignored or contradicted many recommendations from health officials in his messaging, and promoted misinformation about unproven treatments and the availability of testing.
Following his loss in the 2020 presidential election to Biden, Trump refused to concede and initiated an extensive campaign to overturn the results, making false claims of widespread electoral fraud.
On January 6, 2021, during a rally at the Ellipse, Trump urged his supporters to "fight like hell" and march to the Capitol, where the electoral votes were being counted by Congress in order to formalize Biden's victory. A mob of Trump supporters stormed the capitol, suspending the count and causing Vice President Mike Pence and other members of Congress to be evacuated.
On January 13, the House voted to impeach Trump an unprecedented second time for "incitement of insurrection", but he was later acquitted by the Senate again on February 13, after he had already left office.
Trump had historically low approval ratings, and scholars and historians rank his presidency as one of the worst in American history.
Historical evaluations and public opinion:
Main articles: See also: United States presidential approval rating
In the sixth Siena College Research Institute's presidential rankings, conducted after Trump had been in office for one year, Trump was ranked as the third-worst president. C-SPAN's 2021 President Historians Survey ranked Trump as the fourth-worst president overall and the worst in the leadership characteristics of Moral Authority and Administrative Skills.
Trump's best rated leadership characteristic was Public Persuasion, where he ranked 32nd out of the 44 individuals who were previously president.
At the time of the 2016 election, polls by Gallup found Trump had a favorable rating around 35% and an unfavorable rating around 60%, while Clinton held a favorable rating of 40% and an unfavorable rating of 57%. 2016 was the first election cycle in modern presidential polling in which both major-party candidates were viewed so unfavorably.
By January 20, 2017, Inauguration Day, Trump's approval rating average was 42%, the lowest rating average for an incoming president in the history of modern polling; during his term it was an "incredibly stable (and also historically low)" 36% to 40%.
Trump was the only president to never reach a 50% approval rating in the Gallup poll dating to 1938.
Since the beginning of the presidency of Donald Trump, ratings of how well U.S. democracy is functioning sharply plunged. According to the 2018 Varieties of Democracy Annual Democracy Report, there has been "a significant democratic backsliding in the United States [since the Inauguration of Donald Trump] ... attributable to weakening constraints on the executive."
Independent assessments by Freedom House and Bright Line Watch found a similar significant decline in overall democratic functioning.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the Presidency of Donald J. Trump:
For a chronological guide, see Timeline of the Donald Trump presidency.
Donald Trump's tenure as the 45th president of the United States began with his inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Trump, a Republican from New York City, took office following his Electoral College victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, in which he lost the popular vote to Clinton by nearly three million votes.
Upon his inauguration, he became the first president in American history without prior public office or military background.
Trump made an unprecedented number of false or misleading statements during his campaign and presidency.
His presidency ended with defeat in the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden after one term in office.
Trump was unsuccessful in his efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act but took measures to hinder its functioning and rescinded the individual mandate. Trump sought substantial spending cuts to major welfare programs, including Medicare and Medicaid.
He signed the Great American Outdoors Act, reversed numerous environmental regulations, and withdrew from the Paris Agreement on climate change.
He signed the First Step Act on job training and early release of some federal prisoners, while also appointing Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
In economic policy, he partially repealed the Dodd–Frank Act and signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
He enacted tariffs, triggering retaliatory tariffs from China, Canada, Mexico, and the European Union. He withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations and signed the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement, a successor agreement to NAFTA.
The federal deficit increased under Trump due to spending increases and tax cuts.
He implemented a controversial family separation policy for migrants apprehended at the United States–Mexico border. Trump's demand for the federal funding of a border wall resulted in the longest US government shutdown in history.
He deployed federal law enforcement forces in response to the racial unrest in 2020. Trump's "America First" foreign policy was characterized by unilateral actions, disregarding traditional allies.
The administration also:
- implemented a major arms sale to Saudi Arabia;
- denied citizens from several Muslim-majority countries entry into the United States;
- recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel;
- and brokered the Abraham Accords, a series of normalization agreements between Israel and various Arab states.
- His administration withdrew United States troops from northern Syria, allowing Turkey to occupy the area.
- His administration also made a conditional deal with the Taliban to withdraw United States troops from Afghanistan in 2021.
- Trump met North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un three times.
- Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear agreement and later escalated tensions in the Persian Gulf by ordering the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani.
Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation (2017–2019) concluded that Russia interfered to favor Trump's candidacy and that while the prevailing evidence "did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government", possible obstructions of justice occurred during the course of that investigation.
Trump attempted to pressure Ukraine to announce investigations into his political rival Joe Biden, triggering his first impeachment by the House of Representatives on December 18, 2019, but he was acquitted by the Senate on February 5, 2020.
Trump reacted slowly to the COVID-19 pandemic, ignored or contradicted many recommendations from health officials in his messaging, and promoted misinformation about unproven treatments and the availability of testing.
Following his loss in the 2020 presidential election to Biden, Trump refused to concede and initiated an extensive campaign to overturn the results, making false claims of widespread electoral fraud.
On January 6, 2021, during a rally at the Ellipse, Trump urged his supporters to "fight like hell" and march to the Capitol, where the electoral votes were being counted by Congress in order to formalize Biden's victory. A mob of Trump supporters stormed the capitol, suspending the count and causing Vice President Mike Pence and other members of Congress to be evacuated.
On January 13, the House voted to impeach Trump an unprecedented second time for "incitement of insurrection", but he was later acquitted by the Senate again on February 13, after he had already left office.
Trump had historically low approval ratings, and scholars and historians rank his presidency as one of the worst in American history.
Historical evaluations and public opinion:
Main articles: See also: United States presidential approval rating
In the sixth Siena College Research Institute's presidential rankings, conducted after Trump had been in office for one year, Trump was ranked as the third-worst president. C-SPAN's 2021 President Historians Survey ranked Trump as the fourth-worst president overall and the worst in the leadership characteristics of Moral Authority and Administrative Skills.
Trump's best rated leadership characteristic was Public Persuasion, where he ranked 32nd out of the 44 individuals who were previously president.
At the time of the 2016 election, polls by Gallup found Trump had a favorable rating around 35% and an unfavorable rating around 60%, while Clinton held a favorable rating of 40% and an unfavorable rating of 57%. 2016 was the first election cycle in modern presidential polling in which both major-party candidates were viewed so unfavorably.
By January 20, 2017, Inauguration Day, Trump's approval rating average was 42%, the lowest rating average for an incoming president in the history of modern polling; during his term it was an "incredibly stable (and also historically low)" 36% to 40%.
Trump was the only president to never reach a 50% approval rating in the Gallup poll dating to 1938.
Since the beginning of the presidency of Donald Trump, ratings of how well U.S. democracy is functioning sharply plunged. According to the 2018 Varieties of Democracy Annual Democracy Report, there has been "a significant democratic backsliding in the United States [since the Inauguration of Donald Trump] ... attributable to weakening constraints on the executive."
Independent assessments by Freedom House and Bright Line Watch found a similar significant decline in overall democratic functioning.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the Presidency of Donald J. Trump:
- Election and inauguration
- Administration
- Judicial appointments
- Leadership style
- Domestic affairs
- Foreign affairs
- Russia and related investigations
- Ethics
- Elections during the Trump presidency
- See also:
- Bibliography of Donald Trump
- Efforts to impeach Donald Trump
- List of United States presidential vetoes § Donald Trump
- Make America Great Again
- Political positions of Donald Trump
- First 100 days of Donald Trump's presidency
- List of federal political scandals in the United States (21st century)
- Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia
- Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
- Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections (July 2016–election day)
Project 2025: the End of American Democracy?
- YouTube Video: 'Expertise-driven civil service government would be gone': Right-wing Project 2025 agenda revealed
- YouTube Video: Project 2025: Staffing the Next Conservative Administration
- YouTube Video: PROJECT 2025: They have a plan to make Trump dictator
Project 2025 (Wikipedia)
Project 2025 is a far-right plan to purge and reshape the U.S. Federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 United States presidential election.
Established in 2022, the project seeks to recruit thousands to come to Washington, D.C. to replace existing employees to restructure the federal government in the service of Trumpism, the personal ideology of Donald Trump. [see previous topic re: Trumpism]
The plan would perform a rapid takeover of the entire U.S. federal government under a maximalist version of the unitary executive theory – a theory proposing the president of the United States has absolute power of the executive branch – upon inauguration. The development of the plan is led by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative U.S. think tank.
The plan includes widespread changes across the entire government. With regards to climate policy, Project 2025 specifically plans to undo the Inflation Reduction Act, shut down the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office, and increase the extraction and use of fossil fuels, among other measures.
Overview
Presidential powers:
Project 2025 seeks to place the entire U.S. federal government under direct presidential control, eliminating the independence of the Department of Justice, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission and other agencies.
The plan bases its presidential agenda on a maximalist version of the unitary executive theory, arguing that Article Two of the United States Constitution vests executive power solely to the president.
The concept of personal presidential power is central to the thinking of Donald Trump, the current front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, who falsely stated in 2019 that Article Two of the United States Constitution granted him the "right to do whatever as president".
A similar remark was echoed in 2018 when he claimed he could fire special counsel Robert Mueller.
Personnel:
Project 2025 establishes a personnel database shaped by the ideology of Donald Trump. Throughout his presidency, Trump has rooted out individuals who he considers disloyal regardless of their ideological conviction, such as former attorney general William Barr, calling them "snakes" and "traitors" in his post-presidency.
In the final year of Trump's presidency, White House Presidential Personnel Office employees James Bacon and John McEntee developed a questionnaire to test potential government employees on their commitment to Trumpism; Bacon and McEntee joined the project in May 2023.
Project 2025 is aligned with Trump's plans to fire more government employees than allocated to the president using Schedule F, a job classification established by Trump in an executive order in July 2020. Although the classification was rescinded by Joe Biden in January 2021, Trump intends to restore it.
The Heritage Foundation plans on having 20,000 personnel in its database by the end of 2024. Former Trump administration official Russell Vought and Project 2025 advisor stated that the project would be "a wrecking ball for the administrative state".
Climate policy:
Project 2025 does not provide strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change; Heritage Foundation energy and climate director Diana Furchtgott-Roth has suggested Americans should use more natural gas, a cleaner burning fossil fuel.
Project 2025's blueprint includes repealing Inflation Reduction Act—a landmark law that offers US$370 billion to clean technology, shuttering the Loan Programs Office at the Department of Energy, eliminating climate change from the National Security Council agenda, and encouraging allied nations to use fossil fuels.
The blueprint supports Arctic drilling and declaring that the federal government has an "obligation to develop vast oil and gas and coal resources". Notably, Project 2025 would reverse a 2009 finding from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that determined that carbon dioxide emissions are harmful to human health, thereby preventing the federal government from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
The climate section of the report was written by several authors, including Mandy Gunasekara, the former chief of staff of the EPA who considers herself principal to the United States's withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Agreement.
The role of the Department of Energy was drafted by Bernard McNamee, who has advised several fossil fuel companies. Four of the top authors of the report have publicly doubted the extent of humanity's role in causing climate change.
History:
Background and formation:
Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts established Project 2025 in 2022 to provide the 2024 Republican Party presidential nominee with a personnel and ideology framework after civil servants refused to support Trump during his attempt to:
Initial report:
In April 2023, the Heritage Foundation published a 920-page blueprint written by hundreds of conservatives, most prominently former Trump administration officials.
Reactions:
Numerous commentators see Project 2025 as a path to the ending of American democracy, which would replace it with an undemocratic authoritarian regime, possibly led by Trump as dictator.
Chauncey DeVega of Salon.com and Spencer Ackerman in The Nation have characterized Project 2025 as a plan to install Trump as a dictator, warning that Trump could prosecute and imprison enemies or overthrow American democracy altogether.
The Atlantic's Tom Nichols considered the project a threat to democracy but expressed hope that it might still be defeated.
David Corn, writing in Mother Jones, described it as "an authoritarian danger that threatens American democracy", which if undefeated "would place the nation on a path to autocracy."
Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, the author of Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity, criticized Project 2025 in an MSNBC article for appealing to Christian nationalism. In particular, Graves-Fitzsimmons critiques Roger Severino's chapter on the Department of Health and Human Services and his opposition to the Respect for Marriage Act, a landmark law that repealed the Defense of Marriage Act and codified the federal definition of marriage to recognize same-sex and interracial marriage.
Project 2025 has been criticized by LGBTQ+ writers and journalists for its removal of protections for LGBTQ+ people and declarations to outlaw pornography by claiming it as an "omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children".
Brynn Tannehill, for Dame magazine, argued that the 902-page document "The Mandate for Leadership" in part "makes eradicating LGBTQ people from public life its top priority", while citing passages from the playbook linking pornography to "transgender ideology", arguing that it related to other anti-transgender attacks in 2023.
In September 2023, Ari Drennen, LGBTQ program director for media watchdog group Media Matters for America, tweeted out the passage and similarly argued that "[t]hey’ve put it quite vividly – declare trans content porn, imprison those who make it, put teachers who discuss it on the sex offender registry, and force companies that host it to close."
Republican climate advocates have disagreed with Project 2025's climate policy. Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy president Sarah Hunt considered supporting the Inflation Reduction Act crucial, and Utah representative John Curtis stated it was vital that Republicans "engage in supporting good energy and climate policy".
American Conservation Coalition founder Benji Backer noted growing consensus for human-induced climate change among younger Republicans and called the project wrongheaded.
See also: ___________________________________________________________________________
(Opinion by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism)
[Note that the following document cites the organizations and objectives of the many anti-democratic organizations who want to replace democracy with a likely Trump Dictatorship! You will learn below the many organizations and individuals who are striving to create, potentionally, a Tolitarian Regime:]
Project 2025: A Blueprint for Authoritarianism
Authoritarian regimes generally abolish or restrict civil liberties, concentrate political power, and impede and weaken free elections that allow for alternations of power.
Authoritarian states might nominally contain democratic institutions such as political parties, legislatures, and elections, which are managed in such a way as to entrench authoritarian rule, for example gerrymandering and a restriction of social services, including education.
Authoritarianism’s opposite is liberal democracy, which the bipartisan Freedom House, the oldest American institution defending global democracy, defines as encompassing much more than elections and majority rule.
Liberal democracies are typified by governance based on the consent of the governed, accountable institutions, adherence to rule of law and respect for human rights. They have independent courts, an independent press, and a thriving civil society. Liberal democracies are open to changes in power, “with rival candidates or parties competing fairly to govern for the good of the public as a whole, not just themselves or those who voted for them.”
The path to authoritarianism usually first involves democratic backsliding, propelled by political figures (e.g., Donald Trump) and parties with authoritarian instincts who employ specific tactics. These factors are evident in Project 2025, which explicitly advocates politicizing independent institutions by replacing the federal bureaucracy with conservative activists and removing independence for many agencies.
It advocates for gutting what it calls the “Deep State,” a conspiracy theory shared by the Project’s authors that blames civil servants for a coordinated effort to undermine a conservative agenda.
Project 2025 claims to already be recruiting and training those who would replace career civil servants, with Project Director Paul Dans saying, “We want conservative warriors.”
Trump and many of his supporters have bought into the idea that this Deep State undermined his presidency, particularly regarding his relationship with Russia, and by sabotaging his policies. For example, the Project claims that “bureaucrats at the Department of Education inject racist, anti-American, ahistorical propaganda into America’s classrooms” and “bureaucrats at the State Department infuse U.S. foreign aid programs with woke extremism about ‘intersectionality’ and abortion.”
There is no evidence for these claims.
Perhaps most ominous, Project 2025 targets the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI.
The Project states about the next president that “he will need to decide expeditiously how to handle any major ongoing litigation or other pending legal matters that might present a challenge to his agenda” rather than allowing the DOJ and FBI to act independently to ensure the rule of law.
A very real fear with Project 2025’s recommendations for the president to take control of investigations and prosecutions is that a president will abuse that power to target political rivals and those who disagree with their policies. Since Watergate, presidents of both parties have worked to ensure the independence of prosecutions from political influence.
There are several elements of the project that spread disinformation about medical issues including COVID, abortion, sexual and reproductive health rights, sex education, and other issues, including DEI programs, climate change, civil rights, and marginalized communities, especially the LGBTQ+ community.
The entire project is devoted to aggrandizing executive power by centralizing authority in the presidency, and a key aspect of democratic backsliding (see below) is viewing opposition elements as attempting to destroy the “real” community, an essential aspect to quashing dissent.
Project 2025 paints progressives and liberals as outside acceptable politics, and not just ideological opponents, but inherently anti-American and “replacing American values.”
Targeting vulnerable communities is a core tenet of Project 2025. Certain populations, in particular the LGBTQ+ community, are treated as deviants with ill intent rather than humans and Americans, and do not appear to exist within the far right’s framework of those deserving of fulsome human rights and protection from discrimination.
Perhaps even more frightening, the left, the LGBTQ+ population, and the “woke,” are described as subversive elements aimed at destroying the country and its “real values.” The attack on the LGBTQ+ population is particularly ominous as recent research by UCLA’s Williams Institute has found a correlation between democratic backsliding and diminution in the rights of LGBTQ+ communities.
LGBTQ+ people are the canaries in the authoritarian coal mine.
Protect Democracy points to two other factors as key to growing authoritarianism: stoking violence and corrupting elections. Trump was notorious for stoking violence against political opponents, those who upheld Biden’s 2020 election win, and election workers.
And during his campaign rallies where supporters violently attacked people, he verbally attacked immigrants and other communities, and even suggested he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and get away with it. Trump’s words and his authoritarian ways have made the U.S. a more dangerous place based on an October 2023 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute.
Nearly one in four Americans now believe political violence is justified to “save” the U.S., a higher number than just two years ago. The numbers grow even higher among Americans who believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, to nearly one in every two people; among Americans who like Trump, to 41 percent; among Americans who believe in the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, to 41 percent; and among Americans who believe the core tenet of white Christian nationalism, that God intended America to be a new promised land for European Christians, to 39 percent.
This has real world implications. A Reuters investigation published in August 2023 showed that political violence began rising in 2016, in tandem with Trump’s leadership.
Research from the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center (NCITE) published that same month found that threats against public officials are growing.
And, of course, there was the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, which was encouraged by Trump, and combined stoking mob violence with corrupting elections to prevent certification of the 2020 presidential results.
NCITE found that the second most targeted group for political violence were elected officials and those who run or manage elections, who have been abandoning their positions in droves since 2020 due to threats fromTrump supporters and the election denial movement that grew in the wake of Trump’s constant barrage of lies about the outcome of the 2020 election. This has profoundly harmed America’s election system.
Trump has been identified as a key factor in American democratic backsliding.
The Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance found in 2021 that the U.S. “fell victim to authoritarian tendencies itself, and was knocked down a significant number of steps on the democratic scale.” The Institute pointed to Trump and called his baseless questioning of the legitimacy of the 2020 election results a “historic turning point” that “undermined fundamental trust in the electoral process” and culminated in the Capitol insurrection.
America’s V-Dem democracy index score shows a peak in 2015 and a sharp decline after 2016. In 2018, the U.S. was downgraded to a “flawed democracy” by the Economist Intelligence Unit in its annual Democracy Index report and by Freedom House.
The Brookings Institute in 2023 pointed to two factors in American democratic decline: election manipulation and executive overreach. It also pointed to a decline in non-governmental institutions critical to a healthy public sphere, including an independent media, a thriving education system, and an engaged civil society, as symptoms of democratic backsliding.
Project 2025 would further advance democratic backsliding in the U.S.
It would politicize key institutions such as the Department of Justice and strip civil rights protections from multiple communities, but particularly the LGBTQ+ community. The Project especially demonizes the transgender community, equating “transgenderism” and “transgender ideology” with “pornography.”
Immigrants are demonized with false claims of inherent criminality, turning them into a national security threat that must be dealt with harshly. And anti-Black racism is evident in the Project’s sweeping denunciation of “the noxious tenets” of Critical Race Theory (only taught at the college level and beyond) which it falsely claims is “advocating for more racial discrimination” rather than acknowledging America’s history of racism.
Authoritarian states often frame themselves as standing against a mortal threat. Project 2025 appears to describe a two-fold threat. Internationally, it is China, describing it as “the defining threat to U.S. interests in the 21st century.” Domestically, it is the left, immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, and those advocating for racial and social justice. They too are treated as enemies of the state.
Typical to democratic backsliding, the Project attacks the media and voting. It proposes ending government funding for nonpartisan media such as NPR and PBS, which they describe as “compelling the conservative half of the country to pay for the suppression of its own views” and argues for aggressive investigation of leaks to the media.
It describes “mainstream media” as an “anti-U.S. chorus” that is “denigrating the American story.” It would make voting more difficult, and proposes more aggressive prosecution of so-called voter fraud, for instance moving DOJ investigations from its Civil Rights Division to the Criminal Division because, “Otherwise, voter registration fraud and unlawful ballot correction will remain federal election offenses that are never appropriately investigated and prosecuted.”
It also proposes a full-scale review of DOJ’s election guidance to states on various forms of voting and is adamantly against any efforts the DOJ has engaged in to protect elections, condemning DOJ’s suits against multiple states to enhance election integrity.
Many of the principals involved in Project 2025 are also key players in another effort that is aimed at restricting civil rights and gutting the federal government, the Convention of the States, (COS) whose president Mark Meckler is co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots.
Among the senior supporters to the Convention of States is ALEC, Michael Farris, former CEO of the rabidly anti-LGBTQ+ Alliance Defending Freedom, and former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Also supporting are far-right extremists Ben Shapiro and Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk.
The Convention of the States (COS), like Project 2025, has not received the attention it deserves. The plan is to alter the Constitution through amendments using Article V, which empowers states to call for a constitutional convention.
The article reads, “on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments.” It should be noted that almost no rules apply to an Article V convention and the consequences could be dire for our democracy and our civil and human rights.
So far, 28 states, six shy of the required 34, have called for a constitutional convention aimed at sharply reducing federal powers through the Convention of States campaign or other convention campaigns. COS has passed its resolution in 19 states and has had its legislation introduced in enough states to achieve the convention should they all pass it.
On its site, the COS wants to limit the powers of the federal government, achieve “fiscal responsibility,” and impose term limits. In their simulated conventions, they agreed to seek to restrict the federal government’s discretionary spending authority, land ownership rights, and ability to regulate interstate commerce.
It would also remove from the federal government the power to enforce any federal law or regulation with which the majority of state legislatures disagree. Unbelievably radical, this would allow a simple majority of states to band together to rescind any act of Congress, the president, or a federal agency. Furthermore, it gives state legislatures exclusive power to nullify federal laws and regulations, making it clear that “state executive and judicial branches shall have no authority or involvement in this process.”
COS also adopted a proposal to restrict the Commerce Clause, which is the basis for most federal environmental, labor, consumer, and civil rights protections, and nullify all existing laws and regulations in conflict with COS’ reading of the Constitution.
Make no mistake, democracies can and do succumb to illiberalism, sometimes rather quickly. There is a pattern to democratic backsliding that has played out in formerly democratic countries like Hungary, where civil liberties have been curtailed, marginalized communities have had their rights stripped, media is co-opted by the regime, and elections are not free and fair due to various tactics, including keeping opposition parties from publicizing their proposed policies.
This is the path Hungary has taken under the rule of Victor Orbán. Starting with attacks on the LGBTQ+ community and migrants, the Orbán regime progressively undermined independent institutions installing its partisans in the Constitutional Court, the National Media Authority, the Competition Authority, the State Audit Office, and the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Independent media was gobbled up by Orban allies, academics attacked, and the ability of opposition parties to fairly run in elections stymied. It also redefined “real” Hungarians as Christians.
In 2022, the European Commission decided to hold back millions in E.U. funds until Hungary meets conditions related to judicial independence, academic freedom, LGBTQ+ rights and the asylum system. That same year, the European Parliament issued a statement that Hungary could no longer be considered “a full democracy,” but is rather an “electoral autocracy.”
The EU money was still on hold as of November 2023. Here in the U.S., the far right applauds Orbán, who has spoken at far-right extremist events like CPAC repeatedly and hosted far-right Americans including Trump and Tucker Carlson in Budapest. Project 2025 would set the U.S. on the Hungarian path if implemented.
The Role of Christian Nationalism:
Project 2025 is very clearly on a path to Christian Nationalism as well as authoritarianism. It rejects the constitutional separation of Church and State, rather privileging religious beliefs over civil laws. Religious freedom is referenced throughout the plan and is seen to trump all other civil rights which should be subsumed to an individual’s religious rights.
The message that America must remain Christian, that Christianity should enjoy a privileged place in society, and that the government must take steps to ensure this is clear in every section of the plan, as is the idea that American identity cannot be separated from Christianity.
As a result, Project 2025 favors a government mandated by biblical principles, which excludes certain communities, particularly the LGBTQ+ community, from civil rights protections.
To accomplish this, the Project relies heavily on interpretations of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) which states “Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.” It has been described by the Supreme Court as a “kind of super statute, displacing the normal operation of other federal laws [that] might supersede Title VII’s commands in appropriate cases.”
RFRA, passed in 1993 with almost unanimous approval from the House and Senate, was originally intended to protect religious exercise but has over the years been used to erode civil rights and deny healthcare under the guise of religious freedom, as in the case of Burwell v Hobby Lobby, where the Supreme Court ruled that employers could deny certain healthcare services if it went against their religious beliefs.
In Bostock v Clayton Country, the Court ruled that discrimination based on sex includes protection for sexual orientation and transgender status which the Project demands be very narrowly interpreted to only include hiring and firing and that all materials in federal agencies that would interpret Bostock more liberally be withdrawn.
This plan is for the next conservative president, but the Project’s sponsors have been working to achieve this vision for years and will continue to do so, regardless of who wins in 2024.
Official supporters of Project 2025, specifically the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), have had much success with recent Supreme Court rulings on abortion and a company’s right to refuse service based on religious principles.
Little could have been as fortuitous for this movement as the election of Representative Mike Johnson (R-La.), a former employee of the anti-LGBTQ+ ADF, to U.S. House Speaker, second in line to the presidency. He is an election denier who claims his worldview can be ascertained from the Bible, including its denial of evolution and a belief that the Earth is about 6,000 years old, despite all science to the contrary.
Former ADF head, Michael Farris, has said that Johnson is the highest-ranking biblically-trained conservative Christian that he and his fellow evangelical Christians have ever seen and that Johnson will usher in the most conservative House of Representatives.
The Project’s Christian Nationalist goals are inherent in its dehumanizing language about LGBTQ+ people, putting them in the same sentence as pornography and pedophilia, rabid rejection of “wokeness,” its promotion of the “traditional family” writing that, “Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society,” its certainty that gender identity is binary and that being LGBTQ+ is an ideology rather than a natural state.
It goes on to say that work on the Sabbath should be paid at time and a half, and that the government should protect the “letter and spirit of religious freedom and conscience-protection law,” and employers should be able to abide by their religious beliefs regarding marriage, the LGBTQ+ community, women’s healthcare, race, and any other religiously held conviction regardless of anti-discrimination laws.
The Project wants a “general statement of policy specifying that it (the government) will not enforce any rules against sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination by healthcare providers who receive federal funds in the Affordable Healthcare Act, and indeed, the DOJ should aggressively defend a provider’s right to discriminate in court challenges.”
Many of the Project’s recommendations are based on the false idea that the “Left” is determined to rescind religious protections saying, “Today the Left is threatening the tax-exempt status of churches and charities that reject woke progressivism. They will soon turn to Christian schools and clubs with the same totalitarian intent.”
And about education, it would upend the accreditation requirements for schools and universities by removing rules the Project sees as biased against religious schools or doctrine, but still allow Title IV funds to be available to these institutions. It also wants an executive order to remove what it calls the “list of shame,” the list of schools that have applied for religious exemptions to Title IX, from the Department of Education website.
The Project demands that faith-based adoption and foster care institutions be able to deny a child a home if the home doesn’t meet with their religious tenets.
While not all aspects of the desire to infuse far-right interpretations of Christianity are apparent in the wording of Project 2025, they are abundantly clear in the missions and activities of many of the advisory board and the Project leader, Heritage Foundation.
Examples include The American Conservative advocating for Christian conversion therapy counseling claiming that a law protecting young people from harmful conversion therapy infringes upon their free speech, the California Family Council whose mission and vision are:
Gutting The Civil Service:
One of the Project’s key efforts is to replace as many civil service employees as possible with conservative partisans, and materials indicate that they are already identifying and training those people.
The Project portrays the federal bureaucracy as an enemy and part of a “woke” Deep State, working in secret to undermine efforts to install conservative principles in the U.S.
For Project 2025’s collective thinking, electoral results favoring the right are systematically undermined by this nefarious cabal. This is particularly the case, the Project alleges, because career staff are often hired due to “membership in certain ideologically aligned groups or based on illegal considerations such as race, religion, or sex,” as opposed to merit and aptitude.
The plan isn’t just to stack the civil service with those who support the far-right agenda; much of Project 2025 is dedicated to eviscerating departments and agencies, essentially gutting the federal government, and investing nearly unfettered power over the executive branch, including the Department of Justice and FBI, in the presidency.
The plan is to assemble “thousands of properly vetted and trained personnel from across the country who will be ready on January 20, 2025, to begin dismantling our unaccountable fourth branch of government, the administrative state.”
The end goal is to “gut the federal bureaucracy” and “fight the Deep State,” the latter being a reference to popular right-wing conspiracies that there is a clandestine network of members of the federal government, particularly in the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), working to thwart the conservative movement’s goals (versions of this conspiracy theory have existed for decades).
Trump popularized this idea, alleging that the federal staffers were literally working to destroy him, and it is a central aspect of other conspiracies such as QAnon, which Trump openly embraced. Trump’s conspiracist talk has had an effect; more than one in three Americans have come to believe the deep state really was undermining Trump.
Mandate for Leadership:
The Conservative Promise, where the project’s plans are laid out in detail, explains how to gut the civil service. It features sections on “how to fire supposedly ‘un-fireable’ federal bureaucrats; how to shutter ‘wasteful and corrupt bureaus and offices’; how to muzzle woke propaganda at every level of government; how to restore the American people’s constitutional authority over the Administrative State; and how to save untold taxpayer dollars in the process.”
It proposes that any employee that has been involved in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts and did not object “on constitutional or moral grounds” should be subject to “per se grounds for termination of employment.”
The Project lays out what it calls the “the specific deficiencies of the federal bureaucracy,” meaning its size, levels of organization, inefficiency, expense, and lack of responsiveness to political appointees.
It claims that this Deep State is far too influenced by “the progressive ideology that unelected experts can and should be trusted to promote the general welfare in just about every area of social life.” Thus an essential reordering is required to conform with the Project’s far-right principles.
The kinds of people Project 2025 is looking to install in the civil service becomes clear in the project’s personnel questionnaire. The application is prefaced, “With the right conservative policy recommendations and properly vetted and trained personnel to implement them, we will take back our government.” For the most part, the survey is filled with leading questions that would clearly screen in candidates who are far right, anti-LGBTQ+, and against international institutions.
Some of the questions applicants are asked to agree or disagree with include: “The federal government should recognize only two unchanging sexes, male and female, as a matter of policy,” “The U.N. should have authority over the citizens or public policies of sovereign nations,”
“The President should be able to advance his/her agenda through the bureaucracy without hindrance from unelected federal officials,” “The police in America are systemically racist,” and “The permanent institutions of family and religion are foundational to American freedom and the common good.”
Project 2025 is already training, though an academy, “aspiring appointees with the insight, background knowledge, and expertise in governance to immediately begin rolling back destructive policy and advancing conservative ideas in the federal government.” They will be armed with knowledge for “recognizing and addressing the dangers of the administrative state.”
Ending Racial Equity Efforts:
A particular target of Project 2025 are efforts to improve racial equity, especially through diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. The Project views these efforts as hostile attacks, as “affirmative discrimination,” alleging that DEI efforts “have become the vehicles for this unlawful discrimination, and all departments and agencies have created ‘equity’ plans to carry out these invidious schemes.”
Delving further, the Project views DEI efforts as part of a “managerialist left-wing race and gender ideology, [where] every aspect of labor policy became a vehicle with which to advance race, sex, and other classifications and discriminate against conservative and religious viewpoints on these subjects and others, including pro-life views.”
In the upside down world of Project 2025, efforts to improve equity are actually a form of “racist policymaking” that must be “forcefully opposed and reversed.” Project 2025 generally sees ending DEI and equity programs as a way to stop “woke revolutionaries…who believe America is–and always has been–‘systematically racist’ and not worth celebrating.”
They also frame these attacks as a way to return to “American ideals, American families, and American culture—all things in which, thankfully, most Americans still believe.”
There are multiple calls to undermine the “DEI agenda” by dismissing or barring any “implementers and grantees that engage in ideological agitation on behalf of the DEI agenda.”
The Project would end efforts to improve racial equity, which it says the Biden administration “has pushed…in every area of our national life, including in employment, and has condoned the use of racial classifications and racial preferences under the guise of DEI and critical race theory, which categorizes individuals as oppressors and victims based on race.”
The Project calls for an end to “Racial Classifications and Critical Race Theory (CRT) Trainings,” and advocates for an executive order that would ban CRT training, a new law barring the use of taxpayer dollars to fund CRT trainings, and the elimination of all Equal Employment Opportunity data collection, which is used to assess the diversity of the workforce.
The Project advocates that the next Administration “should take affirmative steps to expose and eradicate the practice of critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) throughout the Treasury Department,” and all other departments. The plan further wants the Department of Education to end “anti-American ahistorical propaganda into America’s classrooms.”
And for those who might persist in DEI efforts, it calls for termination of their employment.
Eviscerating LGBTQ+ Rights and Equality:
Under the banner of “Restoring the Family,” Project 2025 aims to gut protections for the LGBTQ+ community, which is negatively contrasted with the “traditional American family” and whose civil rights are seen as opposed to the Project’s religious tenets. The Project would privilege “family authority, formation, and cohesion as their top priority and even use government power, including the tax code” to favor traditional families.
The project says, “Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society. Unfortunately, family policies and programs under President Biden’s HHS are fraught with agenda items focusing on ‘LGBTQ+ equity,’ subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage.
These policies should be repealed and replaced by policies that support the formation of stable, married, nuclear families.” The Project claims falsely that only heterosexual, two-parent families are safe for children, and that “All other family forms involve higher levels of instability (the average length of same-sex marriages is half that of heterosexual marriages); financial stress or poverty; and poor behavioral, psychological, or educational outcomes.”
(Their data on the length of marriages is false).
The plan calls on the next president to “make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors.” To do so, it advocates:
And it calls for the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) “antidiscrimination policy statements” to “never conflate sex with gender identity or sexual orientation.”
It demands changes to Title VII, calling for a restriction of Bostock’s [Bostock v. Clayton County] “application of sex discrimination protections to sexual orientation and transgender status in the context of hiring and firing” and to rescind “regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics.”
Sex discrimination should be restricted to a “biological binary meaning.” Further, it calls on the HHS secretary to “proudly state that men and women are biological realities that are crucial to the advancement of life sciences and medical care and that married men and women are the ideal, natural family structure because all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them.”
The Project dehumanizes the transgender community by making unfounded, hyperbolic claims that
At one point, the Project attacks the Department of Justice (DOJ) for undermin[ing] girls’ sports and caving on the issue to “satisfy transgender extremists.” The Project also likens gender-affirming healthcare to child abuse (this position is rejected by the medical establishment).
It calls on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to reissue a stronger transgender national coverage determination, which would restrict medical care for the community.
In pursuit of “promoting life and strengthening the family,” the Project would abolish the Gender Policy Council, which “would eliminate:
Claiming the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has long “been at the forefront in pushing junk gender science,” a conservative HHS secretary should immediately put “an end to the department’s foray into woke transgender activism.”
Instead, NIH should “fund studies into the short-term and long-term negative effects of cross-sex interventions, including ‘affirmation,’ puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries, and the likelihood of desistence [sic] if young people are given counseling that does not include medical or social interventions.”
An emphasis must also be put on efforts “to affirm the role fathers play in the lives of their children” and “must teach fathers based on a biological and sociological understanding of what it means to be a father–not a gender neutral parent.”
Finally, the Project calls for the Department of State to abandon pro-LGBTQ+ initiatives in Africa, where punishing laws against the community are being proposed or have been enacted, such as Uganda’s recent passage of a law that criminalizes same-sex conduct, including potentially the death penalty for those convicted of “aggravated homosexuality.”
Restricting Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights:
It is in the realm of women’s health that the Christian nationalist views of Project 2025’s creators come to full fruition.
It should not be surprising that such a far-right effort would unequivocally want to ban all abortions and restrict people’s bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health and rights.
The project reads, “The next conservative President should work with Congress to enact the most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support while deploying existing federal powers to protect innocent life and vigorously complying with statutory bans on the federal funding of abortion.”
But it goes farther than that, calling for a ban on “abortion pills” and tasks the Department of Justice (DOJ) to criminally prosecute providers and distributors of such medications.
It claims the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has “failed to abide by its legal obligations to protect the health, safety, and welfare of girls and women. It:
It would end Medicaid funding of Planned Parenthood health services, remove abortion from healthcare plans, and transform the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) into, “the Department of Life by explicitly rejecting the notion that abortion is health care.”
HHS must “pursue a robust agenda to protect the fundamental right to life, protect conscience rights, and uphold bodily integrity rooted in biological realities, not ideology.” It contends that “abortion [is]… not healthcare,” and no federal agency should treat it as such.
In addition, it calls for new legislation, the Protecting Life and Taxpayers Act, to “defund abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood.”
It would treat sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies, “with a focus on strengthening marriage and sexual risk avoidance,” rather than medically advised treatments.
And it calls on federal agencies to produce politicized “research” that backs the Project’s beliefs about the negative health effects of abortion (The American Psychological Association reports that scientific research from around the world shows having an abortion is not linked to mental health issues but restricting access to the procedure is).
The Project would force all Americans, in contrast with the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe that left abortion policy to the states, to abide by the wishes of those Americans for whom abortion “violates the conscience and religious freedom rights.”
The project would ban “abortion travel funding” for all Americans, and overturn Biden’s executive order that allows the HHS Secretary to “use his authority under Section 1115 to waive certain provisions of the law in order to use taxpayer funds to achieve the Administration’s goal of helping women to travel out of state to obtain abortions.”
It claims that the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (DOJ OLC) issued a politicized legal opinion declaring Biden’s order is not in conflict with the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding for abortion services but does not restrict states from doing so.
It calls on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to eliminate projects that “do not respect human life and conscience rights and that undermine family formation.”
The CDC should back studies “into the risks and complications of abortion and ensure that it corrects and does not promote misinformation regarding the comparative health and psychological benefits of childbirth versus the health and psychological risk of intentionally taking a human life through abortion.”
It also tasks the CDC with collecting data from states used for “abortion tourism,” and data on medical outcomes related to abortion. And the Office of Refugee Resettlement is accused of “transporting [pregnant] minors across state lines from pro-life states to abortion-friendly states” apparently “to be victimized by the abortion industry.”
Finally, the project actually attacks contraception in many different ways, pushing for example to eliminate the morning after pill, and suggests instead that, “fertility awareness–based methods of family planning [the rhythm method, which is much less effective than birth control] are part of women’s preventive services under the ACA [Affordable Care Act].”
In sum, the Project would restrict as much as is possible any access to services it views as related to abortion, even contraception if necessary, even in those states that have elected to keep the procedure legal.
Hardline Immigration Policies:
One of the pillars of Project 2025 is “Defend Our Borders,” and it demonizes immigrants as a crime-ridden plague. The Project writes, “Thousands of illegal aliens are allowed to bond out of immigration detention only to disappear into the interior of the United States where many commit crimes.”
It proposes incredibly harsh immigration policies, including tent cities and restricting asylum for those fleeing gang violence and domestic violence. It would dismantle the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and place all immigration-related activities across the administration in one agency.
Eliminating DHS wouldn’t just address its perceived immigration failures, but also would eliminate the problem of DHS being affected by “the Left’s wokeness and weaponization against Americans whom the Left perceives as its political opponents.” While not spelled out, this is likely a repudiation of DHS’s work against far-right domestic terrorists, largely white supremacists and antigovernment militias, whom the FBI and most federal agencies have determined are the top threat for domestic terrorism in the U.S.
The call to shutter the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, which the Project describes as having been “weaponized for domestic political purposes” supports that conjecture, as that is where monitoring of far-right domestic extremist threats lives in DHS.
Project 2025 wants to restrict asylum, end “chain migration,” and authorize state and local law enforcement to participate in immigration and border security. They characterize the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as “help[ing] migrants criminally enter our country with impunity.”
The plan would expand U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention, create a “single nationwide detention standard,” and draw local police forces into the immigration system, which weakens trust between law enforcement and communities.
The project advocates for “the flexibility to use large numbers of temporary facilities such as tents” to house migrants and the restriction of T visas, given to the victims of human trafficking, and U visas, meant to help crime victims suffering from mental or physical abuse, asserting that, “Victimization should not be a basis for an immigration benefit.” Asylum would become harder, and sanctuary cities banned.
Additional agencies, including the Department of Justice (DOJ), would be made to assist DHS in enforcing immigration policies and shutting down “sanctuary” jurisdictions.
The Project would also reorder the bureaucratic design of certain immigration departments, moving the Office of Refugee Resettlement from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to DHS and the Executive Office for Immigration Review from DOJ to DHS, in addition to consolidating departments related to immigration in DHS into one entity.
The project alleges that “HHS and ORR (Office of Refugee Resettlement) have forgotten their original refugee-resettlement mission and instead have provided a panoply of free programs that incentivize people to come to the U.S. illegally.”
The Project also proposes to use the military in border protection operations, meaning it would militarize the border, and to assist in expanding the border wall.
Ending Climate Change Efforts and Restricting Environment Policies:
Project 2025 would end programs to address climate change, which it calls “climate fanaticism,” and many other environmental protection efforts.
It describes the Biden administration as following a “radical climate policy” and is particularly angered with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) declaring itself a “climate agency.”
It describes the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a “‘coercive’ agency, full of embedded activists.” In the world of Project 2025, environmental protections actually hurt the “aged, poor, and vulnerable” and environmentalism has become a “pseudo-religion meant to baptize liberals’ ruthless pursuit of absolute power in the holy water of environmental virtue.
At its very heart, environmental extremism is decidedly anti-human.” The Project even recommends ending such things as efficiency standards for appliances. It views the Biden administration as “Mischaracterizing the state of our environment generally and the actual harms reasonably attributable to climate change specifically is a favored tool that the Left uses to scare the American public into accepting their ineffective, liberty-crushing regulations, diminished private property rights, and exorbitant costs.”
This hysterical language is perhaps not surprising as Project supporters include many climate change deniers and others suspicious of efforts to advance clean energy policies and protect the environment.
Clean energy policies are a particular bugaboo. The government should stop any policy making that gets in the way of “private-sector energy innovation” and the EPA must stop “strangle[ing] domestic energy production.”
Initiatives like the Climate Hub Office would be shuttered and any international climate change agreements, such as the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change would be abandoned.
The Department of Energy (DOE) should end the “unprovoked war on fossil fuels, restore America’s energy independence, oppose eyesore windmills built at taxpayer expense, and respect the right of Americans to buy and drive cars of their own choosing, rather than trying to force them into electric vehicles and eventually out of the driver’s seat altogether in favor of self-driving robots.”
A reform of the Department of the Interior would remove protections for endangered species, open up many areas to oil, gas, and coal development, and abandon protections for federally-owned lands.
The Project also advises repeatedly that there be no government role in promoting “environmental, social, and governance (ESG) objectives,” objectives many corporations and investors adopt to help them effectively manage their impact on the environment and society.
The Project is particularly concerned about USAID’s efforts to address climate change. It advocates:
Ending “Woke” -- Military Policies:
Project 2025 presents the Pentagon as one of the most “woke” parts of the federal government, a “deeply troubled institution” that has allegedly abandoned its warfighting mission for Marxism.
Project 2025 claims that the Pentagon is teaching “white privilege” and has “emphasized leftist politics over military readiness,” and needs to “Eliminate Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs and abolish newly established diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff.”
The Heritage Foundation, principle driver of the Project, describes cultural Marxism as, “[American Marxists] cloak their goals under the pretense of social justice, they now seek to dismantle the foundations of the American republic by rewriting history; reintroducing racism; creating privileged classes; and determining what can be said in public discourse, the military, and houses of worship.
Unless Marxist thought is defeated again, today’s cultural Marxists will achieve what the Soviet Union never could: the subjugation of the United States to a totalitarian, soul-destroying ideology.“
The Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory was originally developed by white supremacists and antisemites, but has increasingly been accepted by the far right. Additionally, it calls for audits of “the course offerings at military academies to remove Marxist indoctrination.”
(Many of these provisions are already included in the proposed and controversial U.S. House version of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, which annually provides funding for our military and national security. An NDAA has not passed as of early November 2023.)
The Project further asserts that Obama appointees rule the roost in the officers corps thus corrupting the organization and pushing this Marxist agenda, and a fundamental transformation is needed to “prioritize the core roles and responsibilities of the military over social engineering and non-defense related matters, including:
It demands that the next president “end the Left’s social experimentation with the military, restore warfighting as its sole mission, and set defeating the threat of the Chinese Communist Party as its highest priority.”
It is particularly troubling that the Project attacks “manufactured extremism.” Both active duty soldiers and veterans have been key actors in white supremacist and antigovernment domestic terrorism in the United States and in events like the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.
Conservatives have already hampered the efforts to confront extremism that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin began after January 6, and the 2024 National Defence Authorization Act has been stripped of initiatives to counter extremism, which Republican elected officials have alleged defame the Armed Forces and hurt recruitment. Abandoning the effort against extremists in the military is certain to make Americans less safe.
The Project would also reverse policies that allow transgender people to serve in the Armed Forces. It would expel “those with gender dysphoria,” likely referring to transgender individuals, and reverse “policies that allow transgender individuals to serve in the military.”
It claims that “gender dysphoria” is incompatible with military service, and that “the use of public monies for transgender surgeries or to facilitate abortion for service members should be ended.” It also obsesses over the idea that mask-mandates and mandatory vaccines have somehow weakened the Armed Forces, even though the requirement to be vaccinated against Covid has been dropped.
“Reforming” Public Education:
A big part of Project 2025 is changing the nature of America’s public education system to remove elements from the curriculum that are seen as too “woke” and supposedly “inject racist, anti-American, ahistorical propaganda into America’s classrooms.”
The Project characterizes public schools as poisoning and indoctrinating children with leftist ideologies and undermining parents’ role in their children’s education, and advocates for private schooling (often religious) paid for by public monies. It would close the Department of Education (DOE), which it calls a “one-stop shop for the woke education cartel,” and return all responsibility for education to the states.
The Project wants to reform public school curriculum to remove “noxious tenets of ‘critical race theory’ and gender ideology,’” which it claims “poison” our children. It sees public schools as responsive to “leftists advocates intent on indoctrination,” rather than parents.
The plan would also radically alter public schooling by instituting universal school choice and subsidizing private school attendance, including for religious schools.
It views the Department of Education (DOE) as “not particularly concerned with children’s education.” DOE is viewed as “an example of federal intrusion into a traditionally state and local realm,” which should be shuttered.
If that can’t be accomplished, the secretary of education “should insist that the department serve parents and American ideals, not advocates whose message is that children can choose their own sex, that America is ‘systemically racist,’ that math itself is racist, and that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ideal of a colorblind society should be rejected in favor of reinstating a color-conscious society.”
The Project writes, “enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory” and ensuring that Title IX is enforced using “biological sex recognized at birth.”
It attacks Critical Race theory (CRT) as a particular danger, arguing that in its “applied” dimension, supporters “believe that racism (in this case, treating individuals differently based on race) is appropriate—necessary, even—making the theory more than merely an analytical tool to describe race in public and private life.”
It undermines “America’s Founding ideals of freedom and opportunity” and when used in schools leads to “mandatory affinity groups, teacher training programs in which educators are required to confess their privilege, or school assignments in which students must defend the false idea that America is systemically racist,” all supposedly “disrupting the values that hold communities together such as equality under the law and colorblindness.”
In addition to CRT, “radical gender ideology” must be shown to have a “devastating effect on school-aged children today—especially young girls.” Names and pronouns must be based on birth certificates and no education employee or contractor should be “forced” to use a pronoun that doesn’t match the person’s biological sex, as that would be against their religious or moral convictions.
Restricting Human Rights and Exiting International Bodies:
Project 2025 takes great issue with current human rights frameworks and would withdraw from the United Nations and other international bodies. It claims that international organizations are “used to promote radical social policies as if they were human rights priorities,” and that the next administration “must promote a strict text-based interpretation of treaty obligations that does not consider human rights treaties as ‘living instruments.’”
It wants to return to the Trump administration’s focus on forging consensus “among like-minded countries in support of human life, women’s health, support of the family as the basic unit of human society, and defense of national sovereignty,” as conceptualized in the Geneva Consensus Declaration on Women’s Health and Protection of the Family, which was spearheaded by Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The Geneva Consensus is not a U.N. document and has no international legal standing, but rather was forged between primarily authoritarian states that seek to undermine sexual and reproductive health and rights, in particular access to safe abortion services, worldwide, and restrict the rights of the LGBTQ+ community.
Amnesty International USA said the signatories were “willingly endangering people’s health and lives” and others accused the signatories of being motivated by a desire to undermine established international institutions and undermine women’s rights.
The text’s language affirming the family as “the natural and fundamental group unit of society” has clear meaning for countries that restrict LGBTQ+ rights, many of whom signed on to the declaration including Egypt, Hungary and Uganda.
For the Project, the Geneva Consensus should guide all U.S. foreign policy engagements, and the government “should not and cannot promote or fund abortion in international programs or multilateral organizations.”
A large section of the Project targets the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as no longer supporting “pro-life” and “family-friendly policies” and undermining the Project’s view of “religious freedom.” The agency would be completely overhauled to abandon its current “divisive political and cultural agenda that promotes abortion, climate extremism, gender radicalism, and interventions against perceived systemic racism.”
The agency needs to be “deradicalized,” cancel all DEI efforts, eliminate the Chief Diversity Officer position and “issue a directive to cease promotion of the DEI agenda, including the bullying LGBTQ+ agenda.”
It intends to rename USAID offices related to gender equality and women’s empowerment, and to appoint to the position of Senior Gender Coordinator an “unapologetically pro-life,” renaming the post as “Senior Coordinator of the Office of Women, Children, and Families;” and eliminate the “more than 180 gender advisors and points of contact…embedded in Missions and Operating should remove:
This effort will end “the promotion of gender radicalism” which allegedly causes resentment by tying lifesaving assistance to “rejecting the aid recipient’s own firmly held fundamental values regarding sexuality, and produces unnecessary consternation and confusion among and even outright bias against men.”
USAID must stop U.S. foreign aid from “supporting the global abortion industry.”
Other international organizations the Project suggests the U.S. resign from include the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Profiles of Project 2025 Organizational Supporters:
The far-right think tank Heritage Foundation is coordinating many elements of Project 2025 and hosting the website and materials, including the 900-page Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, which describes in depth their plans for reforming the next presidential administration. The project is led by Heritage’s Director Paul Dans and Associate Director Spencer Chretien, both former Trump administration officials.
To advise on, and push the Project 2025 agenda, Heritage has assembled a coalition of more than 80 (and growing) far-right groups involved in everything:
In recent years, the Heritage Foundation has moved further and further to the right, leaving its Reaganite history behind during the Trump years for more radical politics. At least 66 current employees and alumni served in Trump’s administration.
An example of this increasing extremism is Heritage’s attack on the Black Lives Matter movement, with senior fellow Mike Gonzalez releasing in 2021 BLM: The New Making of a Marxist Revolution.
A press release for the book asserts that BLM leaders are “avowed Marxists who say they want to dismantle our way of life…they seized upon the video showing George Floyd‘s suffering as a pretext to unleash a nationwide insurgency.”
In 2021, Heritage pushed Republican-controlled states to ban or restrict critical race theory, something not taught in public schools, and sought to persuade congressional Republicans to put anti-critical race theory provisions into legislation such as the annual defense spending bill.
The proposed 2023 defense spending bill included these provisions, along with a reduction of LGBTQ+ rights and women’s healthcare. A final bill has not been passed as of November 2023.
Heritage has fiercely opposed transgender rights, including hosting several anti-trans events, developing and supporting model legislation against transgender rights, and made claims about transgender youth healthcare and suicide rates contradicted by numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies.
Heritage is also a climate denier.
Heritage has also promoted false claims of electoral fraud. Hans von Spakovsky, who heads its Election Law Reform Initiative, has long spread alarmism about voter fraud, for which there is little to no evidence, among conservatives. His work, which claims voting fraud is rampant, has been discredited. In 2021, Heritage Action ran television ads in Arizona to promote the false claim that “Democrats…want to register illegal aliens” to vote.
The American Center for Law and Justice Action (ACLJA):
ACLJA is the c4 arm of the American Center for Law and Justice, an anti-LGBTQ+ group run by longtime Trump attorney Jay Sekulow that was originally founded by Pat Robertson, one of the founders of America’s Christian Right. The ACLJ promotes conservative Christian laws in Africa, including support in Uganda for criminalizing homosexuality. It is also anti-Muslim.
In November 2010, the ACLJ asked that the Department of Justice investigate the Congressional Muslim Staffer Association’s weekly prayer session on Capitol Hill, alleging that the organization demonstrated “a pattern of inviting Islamic extremists with ties to terrorism to participate in these events.” ACLJ also attempted to stop the construction of an Islamic cultural center near the former site of the World Trade Center, by appealing to New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF):
ADF has long worked to restrict LGBTQ+ rights both domestically and abroad through ADF International. Launched in 1994 by 35 Christian Right leaders, ADF has worked for decades to undermine the rights of women and the LGBTQ+ community.
It has pushed to eliminate access to contraception and abortion, advocated for the criminalization of sexual acts among consenting LGBTQ+ adults in the U.S. and abroad, pushed conspiracies about a “homosexual agenda” destroying societies, falsely argued that LGBTQ+ people are more likely to be pedophiles, worked to deny rights to transgender people, developed model legislation to allow the denial of goods and services to LGBTQ+ people under the guise of “religious freedom,” and lobbied for the appointment of judges to uphold its agenda.
ADF is listed as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Its former CEO, Michael P. Farris, a Trump ally, was instrumental in crafting an effort to overturn the American 2020 presidential election. ADF has been unusually successful in its legal efforts, bringing cases to the Supreme Court that have overturned LGBTQ+ rights and abortion protections.
ADF is currently awaiting a Supreme Court decision on its appeal of a federal court ruling upholding state level bans on conversion therapy for minors. ADF represented a Tennessee Christian adoption agency that refused services to a Jewish couple, sparking outrage from the faith community, who in a letter wrote:
A 2014 post on its website read, “Alliance Defending Freedom seeks to recover the robust Christendomic theology of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries,” indicating it would like to go back to medieval times.
American Family Association (AFA):
The AFA’s stated vision “is to be a leading organization in biblical worldview training for cultural transformation” and among its core values is the belief that “true morality flows from biblical principles and directs people to the manner in which God intends them to live.”
AFA has advocated strongly against LGBTQ+ rights, same-sex marriage, and allowing members of the LGBTQ+ community to serve in the Armed Forces. The group frequently equates homosexuality with pedophilia and argues that there’s a “homosexual agenda” afoot that is set to bring about the downfall of American (and ultimately, Western) civilization.
In one October 2004 article, the AFA Journal suggested that gay influences are leading to a “grotesque culture” that will include “quick encounters in the middle school boys’ restroom.”
Its principals over the years have made many disparaging remarks about the LGBTQ+ community, such as Bryan Fischer’s 2010 comment that, “Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews.”
They are also rabidly anti-Muslim with AFA leader Tim Wildmon writing in 2012 that “[Islam] is, in fact, a religion of war, violence, intolerance, and physical persecution of non-Muslims,” having also advocated against Muslim immigration to the US. The AFA is listed as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
America First Legal (AFL):
AFL was founded in 2020 by former Trump advisor Stephen Miller, who crafted many of the administration’s punishing anti-immigrant policies, including child separations from their immigrant parents.
Miller has a long track record of interacting with white nationalists, and spreading their views. AFL’s tagline is “fighting the lawless left” and it has brought dozens of federal lawsuits challenging efforts to remedy racial disparities, support LGBTQ+ students, and to expand early voting.
The American Conservative (TAC):
Co-founded in 2002 by Pat Buchanan, author of rabidly anti-immigrant screeds rooted in white nationalism, TAC features articles that are associated with the very far-right paleoconservative movement.
In October 2023, TAC published a piece defending “conversion therapy,” the dangerous and discredited practice of trying to change LGBTQ+ people’s sexual orientation. It has also published rabidly anti-trans pieces. Historically, the magazine has been hardline on immigration and isolationist, and was touting the America First agenda long before Trump did.
Some of TAC’s writers are or have been fellows at the pro-Victor Orbán Danube Institute, funded by the Hungarian government, which the European Parliament has declared is no longer a democracy. The president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, spoke at TAC’s October 2023 Annual Gala.
The American Principles Project (APP):
An anti-LGBTQ+ organization, APP has funded political campaign ads that reflect the organization’s opposition to civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ people. The group opposed same-sex marriage and is particularly focused on anti-transgender legislation.
In 2017, APP ran anti-transgender robocalls in a district where the democratic candidate was a transgender woman. In 2021, APP’s head Terry Schilling co-authored a USA TODAY Op-Ed criticizing the proposed Equality Act, that would expand civil rights protections for the LGBTQ+ community, arguing that transgender women should not compete in women’s sports.
APP wants to eliminate transgender health care completely for both children and adults. APP was also active in the campaign against teaching critical race theory in schools. They also advocate for the use of a gold standard instead of paper currency, a position mostly held by antigovernment extremists.
Center for Family and Human Rights (CFAM):
CFAM is led by Austin Ruse, who has railed against abortion and voiced support for laws criminalizing homosexuality.
Ruse supported Russia’s anti-gay propaganda law (which criminalizes free speech with regard to LGBTQ issues) and called the law a noble quest for “human rights,” signing a joint statement in support of it. CFAM is listed as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The group has had its share of scandals. In 2015, Monsignor Anthony Frontiero resigned from the organization’s board of directors in protest when Ruse commented, “The hard-left human-hating people that run modern universities should be taken out and shot.” He was speaking about a female student at Duke University who works as an actress in the pornography industry.
Ruse blamed Duke’s women’s studies department, claiming that the student “learned this” there. Ruse said this was a figure of speech and issued a formal apology. CFAM has consultative status at the U.N. Ruse and CFAM have been lobbying against sexual and reproductive health rights, abortion, and equality for LGBTQ+ people at the UN and abroad for years.
In 2012, Ruse and CFAM even helped block a UN treaty protecting the rights of people with disabilities because, the groups claimed, it was “pro-abortion.”
Center for Immigration Studies (CIS):
CIS was founded by historian Otis L. Graham and eugenicist and white nationalist John Tanton in 1985 as a spin-off of the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform. Reports published by CIS have been disputed by scholars on immigration, fact-checkers and news outlets, and immigration-research organizations.
The organization had significant influence within the Trump administration, and its proposed policies were the inspiration for the Muslim immigration ban. CIS has repeatedly published white nationalist and antisemitic writers, employed an analyst known to promote racist pseudoscience, and published reports that hyped the criminality of immigrants.
CIS is listed as an anti-immigrant hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Its principals have often made bigoted statements about Muslims and immigrants. In 2014, CIS Executive Director Mark Krikorian said on a radio show, “We have to have security against both the dishwasher and the terrorist because you can’t distinguish between the two with regards to immigration control.”
In 2010, he wrote, “My guess is that Haiti’s so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough.”
In 2015, he decried the EU’s immigration policies, saying they would lead to a scenario like that portrayed in the horrifically racist novel, The Camp of the Saints, where immigrants are depicted engaging in a murderous, violent spree across France. The novel, extremely popular among white nationalists, was published in the U.S. by CIS founder John Tanton.
The Claremont Institute (TCI):
In recent years, TCI has had on staff one of the key election deniers advising Trump in 2020. Institute Senior Fellow John Eastman aided Trump in his failed attempts to overturn the election results and has now been criminally indicted in Georgia for his efforts.
The Institute caused controversy by granting a fellowship in 2019 to Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec. In 2020, Slate described TCI as “a racist fever swamp with deep connections to the conspiratorial alt-right,” citing Posobiec’s fellowship and the publication of a 2020 essay by Eastman that questioned Kamala Harris’ eligibility for the vice presidency.
In 2022, their publication The American Mind featured an editorial by Raw Egg Nationalist, an author affiliated with the neo-Nazi publishing house Antelope Hill. In 2021, Claremont Senior Fellow Glenn Ellmers wrote an essay in The American Mind arguing that the United States had been destroyed by internal enemies and that a “counter-revolution” was necessary to defeat the majority of the people who “can no longer be considered fellow citizens.”
According to Ellmers, “Most people living in the United States today—certainly more than half—are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term.”
Concerned Women for America (CWA):
Founded in 1979, CWA was launched by conservative Christian activist and author Beverly LaHaye as a counter to the National Organization for Women and the Equal Rights Amendment. It is anti-feminist, Christian nationalist, a defender of traditional gender roles, and tightly tied to attacks on the LGBTQ+ community coming from the far right, featuring articles against drag shows and Pride events on its website.
The group claimed in October 2023 to have 500,000 members and more than 400 chapters. LaHaye was married to the late minister Tim LaHaye, author of the bestselling Left Behind fiction series adapted from the Book of Revelations and depicting the end times. She was also a co-founder of the highly influential far-right and secretive Council for National Policy, of which CWA’s current CEO Penny Nance is a member. Nance states in her bio that she served on Trump’s Life Advisory Council.
According to her biography, LaHaye founded CWA, to “promote Biblical values for women and families, first through prayer, then education and finally, by influencing our elected leaders and society.”
The group moved from San Diego to Washington, D.C. in 1987, giving it greater access to the federal government. Most of its focus has been on outlawing abortion, promoting traditional families, condemning pornography, working to remove sex education from schools, rallying against same-sex marriage, arguing for religious exemptions, national sovereignty, and against secular education. It has several state-level chapters.
Over the years, CWA has employed anti-LGBTQ+ activists, including Peter LaBarbera, head of the Southern Poverty Law Center-designated, anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Americans for Truth about Homosexuality and a reporter and editor for the conspiracy site WorldNetDaily; Robert Knight, one of the drafters of the federal Defense of Marriage Act; and Matt Barber, formerly with the anti-LGBTQ+ group Liberty Counsel and then the owner of the virulently anti-LGBTQ+ website barbwire.com, which is no longer active.
LaHaye herself was rabidly homophobic, having published a booklet in 1991, The Hidden Homosexual Agenda, which warned that accepting LGBTQ+ equality would bring an end to Judeo-Christian values and destroy the family. She defamed LGBTQ+ people as having a “compulsive desire for sexual fulfillment without lasting commitment” and also claimed that they “recruit children.”
A former senior fellow at CWA’s Beverly LaHaye Institute, Janice Shaw Crouse, claimed that LGBTQ+ people are prone to domestic violence, spreading disease, and that their relationships don’t last long. CWA opposed the Violence Against Women Act, claiming that it “creates new protections for homosexuals.”
In order to receive federal grants, CWA said in 2012, “domestic violence organizations have to agree to embrace the homosexual agenda,” a conspiracy theory manufactured by the Christian Right in which they argue that LGBTQ+ people are going to destroy the family and society.
CWA has also claimed that hate crimes are fabricated to undermine efforts supportive of hate crimes legislation, which CWA opposes. As of November 2023, CWA is running a pledge for presidential and down-ballot candidates to sign affirming that they will deny the rights and existence of transgender people.
Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI):
Deep in the election denial movement, CPI is chaired by former South Carolina U.S. Senator Jim DeMint and has on its staff former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who was indicted in Georgia on charges of attempting to subvert the 2020 election results.
In advance of the 2022 midterms, the network published materials and hosted summits across the country with the aim of coordinating a nationwide effort to staff election offices, recruit poll watchers and poll workers, and build teams of local citizens to challenge voter rolls, question postal workers, be “ever-present” in local election offices, and inundate election officials with document requests.
The effort is an extraordinary investment in sustaining and bolstering the false narrative that Trump lost the 2020 election because of widespread voter fraud. CPI’s key “election integrity” staffer is Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who played a central role in Trump’s legal strategy to overturn the 2020 election.
Mitchell participated in Trump’s infamous January 2, 2021, phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, where Trump attempted to coerce Raffensperger to “find” the extra 11,780 votes Trump needed to win the state.
Mitchell filed a lawsuit to block a subpoena calling for her to testify in front of the House Select Committee probing the January 6 insurrection, as she was in contact with Trump that day. When reports of her role on Trump’s call with Raffensperger surfaced in 2021, Mitchell resigned from her two-decade long career with the law firm Foley & Lardner and joined CPI two months later.
Family Research Council (FRC):
Originally a part of the Christian Right powerhouse Focus on the Family, FRC, which is technically a church, has lobbied against abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, divorce, and many LGBTQ+ rights, including anti-discrimination laws, civil unions, same-sex marriage and adoption. FRC is listed as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The group has been condemned by professional organizations including the American Sociological Association for peddling “anti-gay pseudoscience” to falsely conflate homosexuality and pedophilia, and to falsely assert that the children of same-sex parents suffer from more mental health problems than those in traditional homes.
FRC holds that “homosexual conduct is harmful to the persons who engage in it and to society at large, and can never be affirmed” and that it is “by definition unnatural, and as such is associated with negative physical and psychological health effects.” Contrary to all medical science, FRC also contends that “there is no convincing evidence that a homosexual identity is ever something genetic or inborn.”
In 2010, FRC spent $25,000 to lobby Congress against approving a resolution denouncing Uganda’s plan to execute those engaged in same-sex relations, “Res.1064 Ugandan Resolution Pro-homosexual promotion.” FRC claimed that they had not intended to kill the resolution, but rather to change it and “remove sweeping and inaccurate assertions that homosexual conduct is internationally recognized as a fundamental human right.”
At the time Uganda was considering what came to be known as the “Kill the Gays” bill, which would have imposed either the death penalty or life imprisonment for sexual relations between persons of the same sex (Uganda passed such a bill in 2022). FRC has published many anti-transgender statements, and in 2022 said that leftists are “openly avowing pedophilia as the next ‘sexual minority’ (aka sexual perversion) to achieve legitimacy.”
In 2001, FRC’s head Tony Perkins, standing in front of a confederate flag, gave a speech to the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist group that advocates against miscegenation and whose website once referred to black people as “a retrograde species of humanity.”
The Heartland Institute (THI):
A leading voice in the climate denial movement, THI once put up billboards in Chicago featuring a photo of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, whose mail bombs killed three people and injured 23 others, asking the question, “I still believe in global warming, do you?” They withdrew the billboards a day later but did not apologize for the campaign, which was also to feature Charles Manson, Fidel Castro, and Osama Bin Laden asking the same question.
It has also been involved in efforts to deny the health effects of smoking, to repeal mandates on renewable energy, and to privatize education.
Moms for Liberty (MFL):
Founded in 2021, MFL was listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as an antigovernment group in 2023. According to the SPLC, MFL “use their multiple social media platforms to target teachers and school officials, advocate for the abolition of the Department of Education, advance conspiracy propaganda, and spread hateful imagery and rhetoric against the LGBTQ community.”
The group’s activism first centered on campaigning against pandemic measures in schools, including mask and vaccine mandates. In its short existence, MFL has also advocated against school curricula that mention LGBTQ+ rights, race and ethnicity, critical race theory, and discrimination.
They have also called for banning certain books on these topics from school curricula and libraries and have disrupted school boards as part of their advocacy. The group has ties to other extremists including the white supremacist Proud Boys and the rabidly anti-LGBTQ+ group, Gays Against Groomers.
Tea Party Patriots (TPP):
An election denial organization, TPP was heavily involved in the “Stop the Steal” movement that advocated Trump had the election stolen from him, and TPP leaders were outspoken after the 2020 election, claiming without evidence that there had been widespread fraud and that the election results should be overturned in favor of Trump.
TPP got its start in 2009, as Tea Parties were popping up nationwide, organizing against the Affordable Care Act and other aspects of Obama’s presidency. It received considerable help from FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy group once funded by the Koch brothers.
After 2020, it took up issues around election infrastructure, recruiting poll workers, promoting propaganda like the film “2,000 Mules” that alleges the 2020 election was rigged, and supporting so-called “election integrity” efforts. Tea Party Patriots were among about a dozen groups that included Stop the Steal and Turning Point Action listed on the website of the “March to Save America,” the pro-Trump rally that took place before the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.
In a statement, co-founder Jenny Beth Martin said her group did not fund the rally and denounced the violence that followed it. TPP has engaged in medical disinformation as well, hosting and funding an “America’s Frontline Doctors” event promoting use, contrary to all legitimate medical advice, of the drug hydroxychloroquine as a cure for COVID.
Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF):
TPPF says its mission is to “promote liberty, opportunity, and free enterprise in Texas and beyond.” TPPF pushes stronger border measures and has co-produced a documentary called “Cartel Country” that blames the Biden administration for the border crisis. TPPF advocates putting parents in charge of their children’s education, generally rails against public education, rejects pandemic health measures, is against transgender healthcare for young people, and rejects carbon taxes.
In 2021, the organization put out a now-deleted tweet with an image labeled, “How to Identify Critical Race Theory in the Classroom.” Among the things identified were terms like “anti-racism,” programs that promote “equity, diversity, and inclusion,” movements like “Black lives matter;” and facts in American history including “colonialism” and “colonizer.” TPPF fellow, fellow Carol Swain, wrote a fawning book about white nationalists and claims Islam is dangerous.
In 2021, Swain at a TPPF event, spoke of how Critical Race Theory “threatens” the nation. “[CRT] has Marxist roots,” she said. “It’s un-American. It’s using the grievances and sufferings of people to advance an agenda that has very little to do about them…I believe that the ultimate goal is to destroy America.”
Since Trump started spouting election lies, TPPF has become involved in the issue, and it lists securing the “integrity of election results” as one of its prime issues. In January 2021, Texas Congressman Michael McCaul and TPPF announced the formation of the Election Protection Project, which they claim is “an effort to bolster ballot integrity in the Lone Star State and nationwide.”
The project aims “to ensure proper identification is provided for in-person and mail-voting, strengthening vote-by-mail security, encouraging a better path of communication between state and county officials and ensuring maintenance of voter rolls.”
During the effort’s launch, TPPF’s Vice President of National Initiatives, Chuck DeVore, said, “How can we ensure that we minimize the number of people on the lists who are either deceased or who moved out of state? How can we ensure that the people on the list should be on the list — in other words — that they’re citizens and that they’re eligible to vote?”
Turning Point USA (TPUSA):
Led by Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA has been described as the “MAGA youth wing” of the conservative movement. Kirk perennially stokes racial resentments and uses divisiveness to build his youth movement. There have been repeated associations with white nationalist and antisemitic actors, and TPUSA college chapters have been called out for their blatant racism.
Typical was Kirk’s calling George Floyd a “scumbag” after his murder at the hands of police ignited racial justice rallies across the country in 2020. Kirk once vowed to never politicize his religion, but he now says the church should accept its rightful role as counselor to and moral authority of the government.
Parroting the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, Kirk also said “Biden intentionally let Afghanistan fall because he wants a couple hundred thousand more Ilhan Omars to come into America to change the body politic permanently.” Kirk has toured college campuses raging at schools that teach about racism.
According to CNN, TPA paid Kimberly Guilfoyle $60,000 to introduce her fiancé, Donald Trump, Jr., in a speech lasting less than three minutes at the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C.
In July 2021, Turning Point Action hosted a “Rally to Save our Elections” in Phoenix where Trump spoke for almost two hours, repeating his false allegations of voter fraud. Arizona’s fake slate of electors included Tyler Bowyer, COO of Turning Point USA. Turning Point Action (TPA), the c4 arm of the group, has a sordid history in terms of its online activism.
In September 2020, it was reported that TPA had paid young people in Arizona, some of them minors, to post Turning Point content on their social media accounts without disclosing their affiliation with Turning Point, and that Turning Point had given them specific instructions on how to make minor alterations to the content to prevent detection that it came from the same source.
The posts cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process and made light of the pandemic.
[End of Project 2025: A Blueprint for Authritarianism]
Project 2025 is a far-right plan to purge and reshape the U.S. Federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 United States presidential election.
Established in 2022, the project seeks to recruit thousands to come to Washington, D.C. to replace existing employees to restructure the federal government in the service of Trumpism, the personal ideology of Donald Trump. [see previous topic re: Trumpism]
The plan would perform a rapid takeover of the entire U.S. federal government under a maximalist version of the unitary executive theory – a theory proposing the president of the United States has absolute power of the executive branch – upon inauguration. The development of the plan is led by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative U.S. think tank.
The plan includes widespread changes across the entire government. With regards to climate policy, Project 2025 specifically plans to undo the Inflation Reduction Act, shut down the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office, and increase the extraction and use of fossil fuels, among other measures.
Overview
Presidential powers:
Project 2025 seeks to place the entire U.S. federal government under direct presidential control, eliminating the independence of the Department of Justice, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission and other agencies.
The plan bases its presidential agenda on a maximalist version of the unitary executive theory, arguing that Article Two of the United States Constitution vests executive power solely to the president.
The concept of personal presidential power is central to the thinking of Donald Trump, the current front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, who falsely stated in 2019 that Article Two of the United States Constitution granted him the "right to do whatever as president".
A similar remark was echoed in 2018 when he claimed he could fire special counsel Robert Mueller.
Personnel:
Project 2025 establishes a personnel database shaped by the ideology of Donald Trump. Throughout his presidency, Trump has rooted out individuals who he considers disloyal regardless of their ideological conviction, such as former attorney general William Barr, calling them "snakes" and "traitors" in his post-presidency.
In the final year of Trump's presidency, White House Presidential Personnel Office employees James Bacon and John McEntee developed a questionnaire to test potential government employees on their commitment to Trumpism; Bacon and McEntee joined the project in May 2023.
Project 2025 is aligned with Trump's plans to fire more government employees than allocated to the president using Schedule F, a job classification established by Trump in an executive order in July 2020. Although the classification was rescinded by Joe Biden in January 2021, Trump intends to restore it.
The Heritage Foundation plans on having 20,000 personnel in its database by the end of 2024. Former Trump administration official Russell Vought and Project 2025 advisor stated that the project would be "a wrecking ball for the administrative state".
Climate policy:
Project 2025 does not provide strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change; Heritage Foundation energy and climate director Diana Furchtgott-Roth has suggested Americans should use more natural gas, a cleaner burning fossil fuel.
Project 2025's blueprint includes repealing Inflation Reduction Act—a landmark law that offers US$370 billion to clean technology, shuttering the Loan Programs Office at the Department of Energy, eliminating climate change from the National Security Council agenda, and encouraging allied nations to use fossil fuels.
The blueprint supports Arctic drilling and declaring that the federal government has an "obligation to develop vast oil and gas and coal resources". Notably, Project 2025 would reverse a 2009 finding from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that determined that carbon dioxide emissions are harmful to human health, thereby preventing the federal government from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
The climate section of the report was written by several authors, including Mandy Gunasekara, the former chief of staff of the EPA who considers herself principal to the United States's withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Agreement.
The role of the Department of Energy was drafted by Bernard McNamee, who has advised several fossil fuel companies. Four of the top authors of the report have publicly doubted the extent of humanity's role in causing climate change.
History:
Background and formation:
Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts established Project 2025 in 2022 to provide the 2024 Republican Party presidential nominee with a personnel and ideology framework after civil servants refused to support Trump during his attempt to:
- institute a Muslim travel ban,
- install a new attorney general to assist him in attempting to overturn the 2020 election,
- and calling for lethal force against George Floyd protestors.
Initial report:
In April 2023, the Heritage Foundation published a 920-page blueprint written by hundreds of conservatives, most prominently former Trump administration officials.
Reactions:
Numerous commentators see Project 2025 as a path to the ending of American democracy, which would replace it with an undemocratic authoritarian regime, possibly led by Trump as dictator.
Chauncey DeVega of Salon.com and Spencer Ackerman in The Nation have characterized Project 2025 as a plan to install Trump as a dictator, warning that Trump could prosecute and imprison enemies or overthrow American democracy altogether.
The Atlantic's Tom Nichols considered the project a threat to democracy but expressed hope that it might still be defeated.
David Corn, writing in Mother Jones, described it as "an authoritarian danger that threatens American democracy", which if undefeated "would place the nation on a path to autocracy."
Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, the author of Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity, criticized Project 2025 in an MSNBC article for appealing to Christian nationalism. In particular, Graves-Fitzsimmons critiques Roger Severino's chapter on the Department of Health and Human Services and his opposition to the Respect for Marriage Act, a landmark law that repealed the Defense of Marriage Act and codified the federal definition of marriage to recognize same-sex and interracial marriage.
Project 2025 has been criticized by LGBTQ+ writers and journalists for its removal of protections for LGBTQ+ people and declarations to outlaw pornography by claiming it as an "omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children".
Brynn Tannehill, for Dame magazine, argued that the 902-page document "The Mandate for Leadership" in part "makes eradicating LGBTQ people from public life its top priority", while citing passages from the playbook linking pornography to "transgender ideology", arguing that it related to other anti-transgender attacks in 2023.
In September 2023, Ari Drennen, LGBTQ program director for media watchdog group Media Matters for America, tweeted out the passage and similarly argued that "[t]hey’ve put it quite vividly – declare trans content porn, imprison those who make it, put teachers who discuss it on the sex offender registry, and force companies that host it to close."
Republican climate advocates have disagreed with Project 2025's climate policy. Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy president Sarah Hunt considered supporting the Inflation Reduction Act crucial, and Utah representative John Curtis stated it was vital that Republicans "engage in supporting good energy and climate policy".
American Conservation Coalition founder Benji Backer noted growing consensus for human-induced climate change among younger Republicans and called the project wrongheaded.
See also: ___________________________________________________________________________
(Opinion by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism)
[Note that the following document cites the organizations and objectives of the many anti-democratic organizations who want to replace democracy with a likely Trump Dictatorship! You will learn below the many organizations and individuals who are striving to create, potentionally, a Tolitarian Regime:]
Project 2025: A Blueprint for Authoritarianism
Authoritarian regimes generally abolish or restrict civil liberties, concentrate political power, and impede and weaken free elections that allow for alternations of power.
Authoritarian states might nominally contain democratic institutions such as political parties, legislatures, and elections, which are managed in such a way as to entrench authoritarian rule, for example gerrymandering and a restriction of social services, including education.
Authoritarianism’s opposite is liberal democracy, which the bipartisan Freedom House, the oldest American institution defending global democracy, defines as encompassing much more than elections and majority rule.
Liberal democracies are typified by governance based on the consent of the governed, accountable institutions, adherence to rule of law and respect for human rights. They have independent courts, an independent press, and a thriving civil society. Liberal democracies are open to changes in power, “with rival candidates or parties competing fairly to govern for the good of the public as a whole, not just themselves or those who voted for them.”
The path to authoritarianism usually first involves democratic backsliding, propelled by political figures (e.g., Donald Trump) and parties with authoritarian instincts who employ specific tactics. These factors are evident in Project 2025, which explicitly advocates politicizing independent institutions by replacing the federal bureaucracy with conservative activists and removing independence for many agencies.
It advocates for gutting what it calls the “Deep State,” a conspiracy theory shared by the Project’s authors that blames civil servants for a coordinated effort to undermine a conservative agenda.
Project 2025 claims to already be recruiting and training those who would replace career civil servants, with Project Director Paul Dans saying, “We want conservative warriors.”
Trump and many of his supporters have bought into the idea that this Deep State undermined his presidency, particularly regarding his relationship with Russia, and by sabotaging his policies. For example, the Project claims that “bureaucrats at the Department of Education inject racist, anti-American, ahistorical propaganda into America’s classrooms” and “bureaucrats at the State Department infuse U.S. foreign aid programs with woke extremism about ‘intersectionality’ and abortion.”
There is no evidence for these claims.
Perhaps most ominous, Project 2025 targets the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI.
The Project states about the next president that “he will need to decide expeditiously how to handle any major ongoing litigation or other pending legal matters that might present a challenge to his agenda” rather than allowing the DOJ and FBI to act independently to ensure the rule of law.
A very real fear with Project 2025’s recommendations for the president to take control of investigations and prosecutions is that a president will abuse that power to target political rivals and those who disagree with their policies. Since Watergate, presidents of both parties have worked to ensure the independence of prosecutions from political influence.
There are several elements of the project that spread disinformation about medical issues including COVID, abortion, sexual and reproductive health rights, sex education, and other issues, including DEI programs, climate change, civil rights, and marginalized communities, especially the LGBTQ+ community.
The entire project is devoted to aggrandizing executive power by centralizing authority in the presidency, and a key aspect of democratic backsliding (see below) is viewing opposition elements as attempting to destroy the “real” community, an essential aspect to quashing dissent.
Project 2025 paints progressives and liberals as outside acceptable politics, and not just ideological opponents, but inherently anti-American and “replacing American values.”
Targeting vulnerable communities is a core tenet of Project 2025. Certain populations, in particular the LGBTQ+ community, are treated as deviants with ill intent rather than humans and Americans, and do not appear to exist within the far right’s framework of those deserving of fulsome human rights and protection from discrimination.
Perhaps even more frightening, the left, the LGBTQ+ population, and the “woke,” are described as subversive elements aimed at destroying the country and its “real values.” The attack on the LGBTQ+ population is particularly ominous as recent research by UCLA’s Williams Institute has found a correlation between democratic backsliding and diminution in the rights of LGBTQ+ communities.
LGBTQ+ people are the canaries in the authoritarian coal mine.
Protect Democracy points to two other factors as key to growing authoritarianism: stoking violence and corrupting elections. Trump was notorious for stoking violence against political opponents, those who upheld Biden’s 2020 election win, and election workers.
And during his campaign rallies where supporters violently attacked people, he verbally attacked immigrants and other communities, and even suggested he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and get away with it. Trump’s words and his authoritarian ways have made the U.S. a more dangerous place based on an October 2023 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute.
Nearly one in four Americans now believe political violence is justified to “save” the U.S., a higher number than just two years ago. The numbers grow even higher among Americans who believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, to nearly one in every two people; among Americans who like Trump, to 41 percent; among Americans who believe in the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, to 41 percent; and among Americans who believe the core tenet of white Christian nationalism, that God intended America to be a new promised land for European Christians, to 39 percent.
This has real world implications. A Reuters investigation published in August 2023 showed that political violence began rising in 2016, in tandem with Trump’s leadership.
Research from the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center (NCITE) published that same month found that threats against public officials are growing.
And, of course, there was the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, which was encouraged by Trump, and combined stoking mob violence with corrupting elections to prevent certification of the 2020 presidential results.
NCITE found that the second most targeted group for political violence were elected officials and those who run or manage elections, who have been abandoning their positions in droves since 2020 due to threats fromTrump supporters and the election denial movement that grew in the wake of Trump’s constant barrage of lies about the outcome of the 2020 election. This has profoundly harmed America’s election system.
Trump has been identified as a key factor in American democratic backsliding.
The Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance found in 2021 that the U.S. “fell victim to authoritarian tendencies itself, and was knocked down a significant number of steps on the democratic scale.” The Institute pointed to Trump and called his baseless questioning of the legitimacy of the 2020 election results a “historic turning point” that “undermined fundamental trust in the electoral process” and culminated in the Capitol insurrection.
America’s V-Dem democracy index score shows a peak in 2015 and a sharp decline after 2016. In 2018, the U.S. was downgraded to a “flawed democracy” by the Economist Intelligence Unit in its annual Democracy Index report and by Freedom House.
The Brookings Institute in 2023 pointed to two factors in American democratic decline: election manipulation and executive overreach. It also pointed to a decline in non-governmental institutions critical to a healthy public sphere, including an independent media, a thriving education system, and an engaged civil society, as symptoms of democratic backsliding.
Project 2025 would further advance democratic backsliding in the U.S.
It would politicize key institutions such as the Department of Justice and strip civil rights protections from multiple communities, but particularly the LGBTQ+ community. The Project especially demonizes the transgender community, equating “transgenderism” and “transgender ideology” with “pornography.”
Immigrants are demonized with false claims of inherent criminality, turning them into a national security threat that must be dealt with harshly. And anti-Black racism is evident in the Project’s sweeping denunciation of “the noxious tenets” of Critical Race Theory (only taught at the college level and beyond) which it falsely claims is “advocating for more racial discrimination” rather than acknowledging America’s history of racism.
Authoritarian states often frame themselves as standing against a mortal threat. Project 2025 appears to describe a two-fold threat. Internationally, it is China, describing it as “the defining threat to U.S. interests in the 21st century.” Domestically, it is the left, immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, and those advocating for racial and social justice. They too are treated as enemies of the state.
Typical to democratic backsliding, the Project attacks the media and voting. It proposes ending government funding for nonpartisan media such as NPR and PBS, which they describe as “compelling the conservative half of the country to pay for the suppression of its own views” and argues for aggressive investigation of leaks to the media.
It describes “mainstream media” as an “anti-U.S. chorus” that is “denigrating the American story.” It would make voting more difficult, and proposes more aggressive prosecution of so-called voter fraud, for instance moving DOJ investigations from its Civil Rights Division to the Criminal Division because, “Otherwise, voter registration fraud and unlawful ballot correction will remain federal election offenses that are never appropriately investigated and prosecuted.”
It also proposes a full-scale review of DOJ’s election guidance to states on various forms of voting and is adamantly against any efforts the DOJ has engaged in to protect elections, condemning DOJ’s suits against multiple states to enhance election integrity.
Many of the principals involved in Project 2025 are also key players in another effort that is aimed at restricting civil rights and gutting the federal government, the Convention of the States, (COS) whose president Mark Meckler is co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots.
Among the senior supporters to the Convention of States is ALEC, Michael Farris, former CEO of the rabidly anti-LGBTQ+ Alliance Defending Freedom, and former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Also supporting are far-right extremists Ben Shapiro and Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk.
The Convention of the States (COS), like Project 2025, has not received the attention it deserves. The plan is to alter the Constitution through amendments using Article V, which empowers states to call for a constitutional convention.
The article reads, “on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments.” It should be noted that almost no rules apply to an Article V convention and the consequences could be dire for our democracy and our civil and human rights.
So far, 28 states, six shy of the required 34, have called for a constitutional convention aimed at sharply reducing federal powers through the Convention of States campaign or other convention campaigns. COS has passed its resolution in 19 states and has had its legislation introduced in enough states to achieve the convention should they all pass it.
On its site, the COS wants to limit the powers of the federal government, achieve “fiscal responsibility,” and impose term limits. In their simulated conventions, they agreed to seek to restrict the federal government’s discretionary spending authority, land ownership rights, and ability to regulate interstate commerce.
It would also remove from the federal government the power to enforce any federal law or regulation with which the majority of state legislatures disagree. Unbelievably radical, this would allow a simple majority of states to band together to rescind any act of Congress, the president, or a federal agency. Furthermore, it gives state legislatures exclusive power to nullify federal laws and regulations, making it clear that “state executive and judicial branches shall have no authority or involvement in this process.”
COS also adopted a proposal to restrict the Commerce Clause, which is the basis for most federal environmental, labor, consumer, and civil rights protections, and nullify all existing laws and regulations in conflict with COS’ reading of the Constitution.
Make no mistake, democracies can and do succumb to illiberalism, sometimes rather quickly. There is a pattern to democratic backsliding that has played out in formerly democratic countries like Hungary, where civil liberties have been curtailed, marginalized communities have had their rights stripped, media is co-opted by the regime, and elections are not free and fair due to various tactics, including keeping opposition parties from publicizing their proposed policies.
This is the path Hungary has taken under the rule of Victor Orbán. Starting with attacks on the LGBTQ+ community and migrants, the Orbán regime progressively undermined independent institutions installing its partisans in the Constitutional Court, the National Media Authority, the Competition Authority, the State Audit Office, and the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Independent media was gobbled up by Orban allies, academics attacked, and the ability of opposition parties to fairly run in elections stymied. It also redefined “real” Hungarians as Christians.
In 2022, the European Commission decided to hold back millions in E.U. funds until Hungary meets conditions related to judicial independence, academic freedom, LGBTQ+ rights and the asylum system. That same year, the European Parliament issued a statement that Hungary could no longer be considered “a full democracy,” but is rather an “electoral autocracy.”
The EU money was still on hold as of November 2023. Here in the U.S., the far right applauds Orbán, who has spoken at far-right extremist events like CPAC repeatedly and hosted far-right Americans including Trump and Tucker Carlson in Budapest. Project 2025 would set the U.S. on the Hungarian path if implemented.
The Role of Christian Nationalism:
Project 2025 is very clearly on a path to Christian Nationalism as well as authoritarianism. It rejects the constitutional separation of Church and State, rather privileging religious beliefs over civil laws. Religious freedom is referenced throughout the plan and is seen to trump all other civil rights which should be subsumed to an individual’s religious rights.
The message that America must remain Christian, that Christianity should enjoy a privileged place in society, and that the government must take steps to ensure this is clear in every section of the plan, as is the idea that American identity cannot be separated from Christianity.
As a result, Project 2025 favors a government mandated by biblical principles, which excludes certain communities, particularly the LGBTQ+ community, from civil rights protections.
To accomplish this, the Project relies heavily on interpretations of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) which states “Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.” It has been described by the Supreme Court as a “kind of super statute, displacing the normal operation of other federal laws [that] might supersede Title VII’s commands in appropriate cases.”
RFRA, passed in 1993 with almost unanimous approval from the House and Senate, was originally intended to protect religious exercise but has over the years been used to erode civil rights and deny healthcare under the guise of religious freedom, as in the case of Burwell v Hobby Lobby, where the Supreme Court ruled that employers could deny certain healthcare services if it went against their religious beliefs.
In Bostock v Clayton Country, the Court ruled that discrimination based on sex includes protection for sexual orientation and transgender status which the Project demands be very narrowly interpreted to only include hiring and firing and that all materials in federal agencies that would interpret Bostock more liberally be withdrawn.
This plan is for the next conservative president, but the Project’s sponsors have been working to achieve this vision for years and will continue to do so, regardless of who wins in 2024.
Official supporters of Project 2025, specifically the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), have had much success with recent Supreme Court rulings on abortion and a company’s right to refuse service based on religious principles.
Little could have been as fortuitous for this movement as the election of Representative Mike Johnson (R-La.), a former employee of the anti-LGBTQ+ ADF, to U.S. House Speaker, second in line to the presidency. He is an election denier who claims his worldview can be ascertained from the Bible, including its denial of evolution and a belief that the Earth is about 6,000 years old, despite all science to the contrary.
Former ADF head, Michael Farris, has said that Johnson is the highest-ranking biblically-trained conservative Christian that he and his fellow evangelical Christians have ever seen and that Johnson will usher in the most conservative House of Representatives.
The Project’s Christian Nationalist goals are inherent in its dehumanizing language about LGBTQ+ people, putting them in the same sentence as pornography and pedophilia, rabid rejection of “wokeness,” its promotion of the “traditional family” writing that, “Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society,” its certainty that gender identity is binary and that being LGBTQ+ is an ideology rather than a natural state.
It goes on to say that work on the Sabbath should be paid at time and a half, and that the government should protect the “letter and spirit of religious freedom and conscience-protection law,” and employers should be able to abide by their religious beliefs regarding marriage, the LGBTQ+ community, women’s healthcare, race, and any other religiously held conviction regardless of anti-discrimination laws.
The Project wants a “general statement of policy specifying that it (the government) will not enforce any rules against sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination by healthcare providers who receive federal funds in the Affordable Healthcare Act, and indeed, the DOJ should aggressively defend a provider’s right to discriminate in court challenges.”
Many of the Project’s recommendations are based on the false idea that the “Left” is determined to rescind religious protections saying, “Today the Left is threatening the tax-exempt status of churches and charities that reject woke progressivism. They will soon turn to Christian schools and clubs with the same totalitarian intent.”
And about education, it would upend the accreditation requirements for schools and universities by removing rules the Project sees as biased against religious schools or doctrine, but still allow Title IV funds to be available to these institutions. It also wants an executive order to remove what it calls the “list of shame,” the list of schools that have applied for religious exemptions to Title IX, from the Department of Education website.
The Project demands that faith-based adoption and foster care institutions be able to deny a child a home if the home doesn’t meet with their religious tenets.
While not all aspects of the desire to infuse far-right interpretations of Christianity are apparent in the wording of Project 2025, they are abundantly clear in the missions and activities of many of the advisory board and the Project leader, Heritage Foundation.
Examples include The American Conservative advocating for Christian conversion therapy counseling claiming that a law protecting young people from harmful conversion therapy infringes upon their free speech, the California Family Council whose mission and vision are:
- “Advancing God’s Design for Life, Family, & Liberty through California’s Church, Capitol, & Culture”
- and “God’s people living as principled citizens of both heaven and earth: Biblically Faithful, Civically Responsible, Culturally Impactful”,
- and the Eagle Forum which seeks “to define and defend more effectively the Judeo-Christian worldview of the U.S. Constitution and legal system in today’s Culture War”
- and refers to supporting LGBTQ+ rights as a religion in itself.
Gutting The Civil Service:
One of the Project’s key efforts is to replace as many civil service employees as possible with conservative partisans, and materials indicate that they are already identifying and training those people.
The Project portrays the federal bureaucracy as an enemy and part of a “woke” Deep State, working in secret to undermine efforts to install conservative principles in the U.S.
For Project 2025’s collective thinking, electoral results favoring the right are systematically undermined by this nefarious cabal. This is particularly the case, the Project alleges, because career staff are often hired due to “membership in certain ideologically aligned groups or based on illegal considerations such as race, religion, or sex,” as opposed to merit and aptitude.
The plan isn’t just to stack the civil service with those who support the far-right agenda; much of Project 2025 is dedicated to eviscerating departments and agencies, essentially gutting the federal government, and investing nearly unfettered power over the executive branch, including the Department of Justice and FBI, in the presidency.
The plan is to assemble “thousands of properly vetted and trained personnel from across the country who will be ready on January 20, 2025, to begin dismantling our unaccountable fourth branch of government, the administrative state.”
The end goal is to “gut the federal bureaucracy” and “fight the Deep State,” the latter being a reference to popular right-wing conspiracies that there is a clandestine network of members of the federal government, particularly in the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), working to thwart the conservative movement’s goals (versions of this conspiracy theory have existed for decades).
Trump popularized this idea, alleging that the federal staffers were literally working to destroy him, and it is a central aspect of other conspiracies such as QAnon, which Trump openly embraced. Trump’s conspiracist talk has had an effect; more than one in three Americans have come to believe the deep state really was undermining Trump.
Mandate for Leadership:
The Conservative Promise, where the project’s plans are laid out in detail, explains how to gut the civil service. It features sections on “how to fire supposedly ‘un-fireable’ federal bureaucrats; how to shutter ‘wasteful and corrupt bureaus and offices’; how to muzzle woke propaganda at every level of government; how to restore the American people’s constitutional authority over the Administrative State; and how to save untold taxpayer dollars in the process.”
It proposes that any employee that has been involved in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts and did not object “on constitutional or moral grounds” should be subject to “per se grounds for termination of employment.”
The Project lays out what it calls the “the specific deficiencies of the federal bureaucracy,” meaning its size, levels of organization, inefficiency, expense, and lack of responsiveness to political appointees.
It claims that this Deep State is far too influenced by “the progressive ideology that unelected experts can and should be trusted to promote the general welfare in just about every area of social life.” Thus an essential reordering is required to conform with the Project’s far-right principles.
The kinds of people Project 2025 is looking to install in the civil service becomes clear in the project’s personnel questionnaire. The application is prefaced, “With the right conservative policy recommendations and properly vetted and trained personnel to implement them, we will take back our government.” For the most part, the survey is filled with leading questions that would clearly screen in candidates who are far right, anti-LGBTQ+, and against international institutions.
Some of the questions applicants are asked to agree or disagree with include: “The federal government should recognize only two unchanging sexes, male and female, as a matter of policy,” “The U.N. should have authority over the citizens or public policies of sovereign nations,”
“The President should be able to advance his/her agenda through the bureaucracy without hindrance from unelected federal officials,” “The police in America are systemically racist,” and “The permanent institutions of family and religion are foundational to American freedom and the common good.”
Project 2025 is already training, though an academy, “aspiring appointees with the insight, background knowledge, and expertise in governance to immediately begin rolling back destructive policy and advancing conservative ideas in the federal government.” They will be armed with knowledge for “recognizing and addressing the dangers of the administrative state.”
Ending Racial Equity Efforts:
A particular target of Project 2025 are efforts to improve racial equity, especially through diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. The Project views these efforts as hostile attacks, as “affirmative discrimination,” alleging that DEI efforts “have become the vehicles for this unlawful discrimination, and all departments and agencies have created ‘equity’ plans to carry out these invidious schemes.”
Delving further, the Project views DEI efforts as part of a “managerialist left-wing race and gender ideology, [where] every aspect of labor policy became a vehicle with which to advance race, sex, and other classifications and discriminate against conservative and religious viewpoints on these subjects and others, including pro-life views.”
In the upside down world of Project 2025, efforts to improve equity are actually a form of “racist policymaking” that must be “forcefully opposed and reversed.” Project 2025 generally sees ending DEI and equity programs as a way to stop “woke revolutionaries…who believe America is–and always has been–‘systematically racist’ and not worth celebrating.”
They also frame these attacks as a way to return to “American ideals, American families, and American culture—all things in which, thankfully, most Americans still believe.”
There are multiple calls to undermine the “DEI agenda” by dismissing or barring any “implementers and grantees that engage in ideological agitation on behalf of the DEI agenda.”
The Project would end efforts to improve racial equity, which it says the Biden administration “has pushed…in every area of our national life, including in employment, and has condoned the use of racial classifications and racial preferences under the guise of DEI and critical race theory, which categorizes individuals as oppressors and victims based on race.”
The Project calls for an end to “Racial Classifications and Critical Race Theory (CRT) Trainings,” and advocates for an executive order that would ban CRT training, a new law barring the use of taxpayer dollars to fund CRT trainings, and the elimination of all Equal Employment Opportunity data collection, which is used to assess the diversity of the workforce.
The Project advocates that the next Administration “should take affirmative steps to expose and eradicate the practice of critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) throughout the Treasury Department,” and all other departments. The plan further wants the Department of Education to end “anti-American ahistorical propaganda into America’s classrooms.”
And for those who might persist in DEI efforts, it calls for termination of their employment.
Eviscerating LGBTQ+ Rights and Equality:
Under the banner of “Restoring the Family,” Project 2025 aims to gut protections for the LGBTQ+ community, which is negatively contrasted with the “traditional American family” and whose civil rights are seen as opposed to the Project’s religious tenets. The Project would privilege “family authority, formation, and cohesion as their top priority and even use government power, including the tax code” to favor traditional families.
The project says, “Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society. Unfortunately, family policies and programs under President Biden’s HHS are fraught with agenda items focusing on ‘LGBTQ+ equity,’ subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage.
These policies should be repealed and replaced by policies that support the formation of stable, married, nuclear families.” The Project claims falsely that only heterosexual, two-parent families are safe for children, and that “All other family forms involve higher levels of instability (the average length of same-sex marriages is half that of heterosexual marriages); financial stress or poverty; and poor behavioral, psychological, or educational outcomes.”
(Their data on the length of marriages is false).
The plan calls on the next president to “make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors.” To do so, it advocates:
- “deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (‘SOGI’),
- diversity,
- equity,
- and inclusion (‘DEI’),
- gender,
- gender equality,
- gender equity,
- gender awareness,
- gender-sensitive,
- abortion,
- reproductive health,
- reproductive rights,
- and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”
And it calls for the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) “antidiscrimination policy statements” to “never conflate sex with gender identity or sexual orientation.”
It demands changes to Title VII, calling for a restriction of Bostock’s [Bostock v. Clayton County] “application of sex discrimination protections to sexual orientation and transgender status in the context of hiring and firing” and to rescind “regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics.”
Sex discrimination should be restricted to a “biological binary meaning.” Further, it calls on the HHS secretary to “proudly state that men and women are biological realities that are crucial to the advancement of life sciences and medical care and that married men and women are the ideal, natural family structure because all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them.”
The Project dehumanizes the transgender community by making unfounded, hyperbolic claims that
- “children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries,”
- repeatedly linking transgender people to pornography, writing,
- “Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children,
- for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare.”
At one point, the Project attacks the Department of Justice (DOJ) for undermin[ing] girls’ sports and caving on the issue to “satisfy transgender extremists.” The Project also likens gender-affirming healthcare to child abuse (this position is rejected by the medical establishment).
It calls on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to reissue a stronger transgender national coverage determination, which would restrict medical care for the community.
In pursuit of “promoting life and strengthening the family,” the Project would abolish the Gender Policy Council, which “would eliminate:
- central promotion of abortion (‘health services’);
- comprehensive sexuality education (‘education’);
- and the new woke gender ideology,
- which has as a principal tenet ‘gender affirming care’
- and ‘sex-change’ surgeries on minors.”
Claiming the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has long “been at the forefront in pushing junk gender science,” a conservative HHS secretary should immediately put “an end to the department’s foray into woke transgender activism.”
Instead, NIH should “fund studies into the short-term and long-term negative effects of cross-sex interventions, including ‘affirmation,’ puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries, and the likelihood of desistence [sic] if young people are given counseling that does not include medical or social interventions.”
An emphasis must also be put on efforts “to affirm the role fathers play in the lives of their children” and “must teach fathers based on a biological and sociological understanding of what it means to be a father–not a gender neutral parent.”
Finally, the Project calls for the Department of State to abandon pro-LGBTQ+ initiatives in Africa, where punishing laws against the community are being proposed or have been enacted, such as Uganda’s recent passage of a law that criminalizes same-sex conduct, including potentially the death penalty for those convicted of “aggravated homosexuality.”
Restricting Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights:
It is in the realm of women’s health that the Christian nationalist views of Project 2025’s creators come to full fruition.
It should not be surprising that such a far-right effort would unequivocally want to ban all abortions and restrict people’s bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health and rights.
The project reads, “The next conservative President should work with Congress to enact the most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support while deploying existing federal powers to protect innocent life and vigorously complying with statutory bans on the federal funding of abortion.”
But it goes farther than that, calling for a ban on “abortion pills” and tasks the Department of Justice (DOJ) to criminally prosecute providers and distributors of such medications.
It claims the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has “failed to abide by its legal obligations to protect the health, safety, and welfare of girls and women. It:
- never studied the safety of the drugs under the labeled conditions of use,
- ignored the potential impacts of the hormone-blocking regimen on the developing bodies of adolescent girls,
- disregarded the substantial evidence that chemical abortion drugs cause more complications than surgical abortions,
- and eliminated necessary safeguards for pregnant girls and women who undergo this dangerous drug regimen.”
It would end Medicaid funding of Planned Parenthood health services, remove abortion from healthcare plans, and transform the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) into, “the Department of Life by explicitly rejecting the notion that abortion is health care.”
HHS must “pursue a robust agenda to protect the fundamental right to life, protect conscience rights, and uphold bodily integrity rooted in biological realities, not ideology.” It contends that “abortion [is]… not healthcare,” and no federal agency should treat it as such.
In addition, it calls for new legislation, the Protecting Life and Taxpayers Act, to “defund abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood.”
It would treat sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies, “with a focus on strengthening marriage and sexual risk avoidance,” rather than medically advised treatments.
And it calls on federal agencies to produce politicized “research” that backs the Project’s beliefs about the negative health effects of abortion (The American Psychological Association reports that scientific research from around the world shows having an abortion is not linked to mental health issues but restricting access to the procedure is).
The Project would force all Americans, in contrast with the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe that left abortion policy to the states, to abide by the wishes of those Americans for whom abortion “violates the conscience and religious freedom rights.”
The project would ban “abortion travel funding” for all Americans, and overturn Biden’s executive order that allows the HHS Secretary to “use his authority under Section 1115 to waive certain provisions of the law in order to use taxpayer funds to achieve the Administration’s goal of helping women to travel out of state to obtain abortions.”
It claims that the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (DOJ OLC) issued a politicized legal opinion declaring Biden’s order is not in conflict with the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding for abortion services but does not restrict states from doing so.
It calls on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to eliminate projects that “do not respect human life and conscience rights and that undermine family formation.”
The CDC should back studies “into the risks and complications of abortion and ensure that it corrects and does not promote misinformation regarding the comparative health and psychological benefits of childbirth versus the health and psychological risk of intentionally taking a human life through abortion.”
It also tasks the CDC with collecting data from states used for “abortion tourism,” and data on medical outcomes related to abortion. And the Office of Refugee Resettlement is accused of “transporting [pregnant] minors across state lines from pro-life states to abortion-friendly states” apparently “to be victimized by the abortion industry.”
Finally, the project actually attacks contraception in many different ways, pushing for example to eliminate the morning after pill, and suggests instead that, “fertility awareness–based methods of family planning [the rhythm method, which is much less effective than birth control] are part of women’s preventive services under the ACA [Affordable Care Act].”
In sum, the Project would restrict as much as is possible any access to services it views as related to abortion, even contraception if necessary, even in those states that have elected to keep the procedure legal.
Hardline Immigration Policies:
One of the pillars of Project 2025 is “Defend Our Borders,” and it demonizes immigrants as a crime-ridden plague. The Project writes, “Thousands of illegal aliens are allowed to bond out of immigration detention only to disappear into the interior of the United States where many commit crimes.”
It proposes incredibly harsh immigration policies, including tent cities and restricting asylum for those fleeing gang violence and domestic violence. It would dismantle the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and place all immigration-related activities across the administration in one agency.
Eliminating DHS wouldn’t just address its perceived immigration failures, but also would eliminate the problem of DHS being affected by “the Left’s wokeness and weaponization against Americans whom the Left perceives as its political opponents.” While not spelled out, this is likely a repudiation of DHS’s work against far-right domestic terrorists, largely white supremacists and antigovernment militias, whom the FBI and most federal agencies have determined are the top threat for domestic terrorism in the U.S.
The call to shutter the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, which the Project describes as having been “weaponized for domestic political purposes” supports that conjecture, as that is where monitoring of far-right domestic extremist threats lives in DHS.
Project 2025 wants to restrict asylum, end “chain migration,” and authorize state and local law enforcement to participate in immigration and border security. They characterize the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as “help[ing] migrants criminally enter our country with impunity.”
The plan would expand U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention, create a “single nationwide detention standard,” and draw local police forces into the immigration system, which weakens trust between law enforcement and communities.
The project advocates for “the flexibility to use large numbers of temporary facilities such as tents” to house migrants and the restriction of T visas, given to the victims of human trafficking, and U visas, meant to help crime victims suffering from mental or physical abuse, asserting that, “Victimization should not be a basis for an immigration benefit.” Asylum would become harder, and sanctuary cities banned.
Additional agencies, including the Department of Justice (DOJ), would be made to assist DHS in enforcing immigration policies and shutting down “sanctuary” jurisdictions.
The Project would also reorder the bureaucratic design of certain immigration departments, moving the Office of Refugee Resettlement from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to DHS and the Executive Office for Immigration Review from DOJ to DHS, in addition to consolidating departments related to immigration in DHS into one entity.
The project alleges that “HHS and ORR (Office of Refugee Resettlement) have forgotten their original refugee-resettlement mission and instead have provided a panoply of free programs that incentivize people to come to the U.S. illegally.”
The Project also proposes to use the military in border protection operations, meaning it would militarize the border, and to assist in expanding the border wall.
Ending Climate Change Efforts and Restricting Environment Policies:
Project 2025 would end programs to address climate change, which it calls “climate fanaticism,” and many other environmental protection efforts.
It describes the Biden administration as following a “radical climate policy” and is particularly angered with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) declaring itself a “climate agency.”
It describes the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a “‘coercive’ agency, full of embedded activists.” In the world of Project 2025, environmental protections actually hurt the “aged, poor, and vulnerable” and environmentalism has become a “pseudo-religion meant to baptize liberals’ ruthless pursuit of absolute power in the holy water of environmental virtue.
At its very heart, environmental extremism is decidedly anti-human.” The Project even recommends ending such things as efficiency standards for appliances. It views the Biden administration as “Mischaracterizing the state of our environment generally and the actual harms reasonably attributable to climate change specifically is a favored tool that the Left uses to scare the American public into accepting their ineffective, liberty-crushing regulations, diminished private property rights, and exorbitant costs.”
This hysterical language is perhaps not surprising as Project supporters include many climate change deniers and others suspicious of efforts to advance clean energy policies and protect the environment.
Clean energy policies are a particular bugaboo. The government should stop any policy making that gets in the way of “private-sector energy innovation” and the EPA must stop “strangle[ing] domestic energy production.”
Initiatives like the Climate Hub Office would be shuttered and any international climate change agreements, such as the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change would be abandoned.
The Department of Energy (DOE) should end the “unprovoked war on fossil fuels, restore America’s energy independence, oppose eyesore windmills built at taxpayer expense, and respect the right of Americans to buy and drive cars of their own choosing, rather than trying to force them into electric vehicles and eventually out of the driver’s seat altogether in favor of self-driving robots.”
A reform of the Department of the Interior would remove protections for endangered species, open up many areas to oil, gas, and coal development, and abandon protections for federally-owned lands.
The Project also advises repeatedly that there be no government role in promoting “environmental, social, and governance (ESG) objectives,” objectives many corporations and investors adopt to help them effectively manage their impact on the environment and society.
The Project is particularly concerned about USAID’s efforts to address climate change. It advocates:
- rescinding “all climate policies from its foreign aid programs (specifically USAID’s Climate Strategy 2022–2030);
- shut down the agency’s offices, programs, and directives designed to advance the Paris Climate Agreement;
- and narrowly limit funding to traditional climate mitigation efforts.”
- And USAID must “cease collaborating with and funding progressive foundations, corporations, international institutions, and NGOs that advocate on behalf of climate fanaticism.”
Ending “Woke” -- Military Policies:
Project 2025 presents the Pentagon as one of the most “woke” parts of the federal government, a “deeply troubled institution” that has allegedly abandoned its warfighting mission for Marxism.
Project 2025 claims that the Pentagon is teaching “white privilege” and has “emphasized leftist politics over military readiness,” and needs to “Eliminate Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs and abolish newly established diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff.”
The Heritage Foundation, principle driver of the Project, describes cultural Marxism as, “[American Marxists] cloak their goals under the pretense of social justice, they now seek to dismantle the foundations of the American republic by rewriting history; reintroducing racism; creating privileged classes; and determining what can be said in public discourse, the military, and houses of worship.
Unless Marxist thought is defeated again, today’s cultural Marxists will achieve what the Soviet Union never could: the subjugation of the United States to a totalitarian, soul-destroying ideology.“
The Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory was originally developed by white supremacists and antisemites, but has increasingly been accepted by the far right. Additionally, it calls for audits of “the course offerings at military academies to remove Marxist indoctrination.”
(Many of these provisions are already included in the proposed and controversial U.S. House version of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, which annually provides funding for our military and national security. An NDAA has not passed as of early November 2023.)
The Project further asserts that Obama appointees rule the roost in the officers corps thus corrupting the organization and pushing this Marxist agenda, and a fundamental transformation is needed to “prioritize the core roles and responsibilities of the military over social engineering and non-defense related matters, including:
- climate change,
- critical race theory,
- manufactured extremism,
- and other polarizing policies that weaken our armed forces and discourage our nation’s finest men and women from enlisting.”
It demands that the next president “end the Left’s social experimentation with the military, restore warfighting as its sole mission, and set defeating the threat of the Chinese Communist Party as its highest priority.”
It is particularly troubling that the Project attacks “manufactured extremism.” Both active duty soldiers and veterans have been key actors in white supremacist and antigovernment domestic terrorism in the United States and in events like the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.
Conservatives have already hampered the efforts to confront extremism that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin began after January 6, and the 2024 National Defence Authorization Act has been stripped of initiatives to counter extremism, which Republican elected officials have alleged defame the Armed Forces and hurt recruitment. Abandoning the effort against extremists in the military is certain to make Americans less safe.
The Project would also reverse policies that allow transgender people to serve in the Armed Forces. It would expel “those with gender dysphoria,” likely referring to transgender individuals, and reverse “policies that allow transgender individuals to serve in the military.”
It claims that “gender dysphoria” is incompatible with military service, and that “the use of public monies for transgender surgeries or to facilitate abortion for service members should be ended.” It also obsesses over the idea that mask-mandates and mandatory vaccines have somehow weakened the Armed Forces, even though the requirement to be vaccinated against Covid has been dropped.
“Reforming” Public Education:
A big part of Project 2025 is changing the nature of America’s public education system to remove elements from the curriculum that are seen as too “woke” and supposedly “inject racist, anti-American, ahistorical propaganda into America’s classrooms.”
The Project characterizes public schools as poisoning and indoctrinating children with leftist ideologies and undermining parents’ role in their children’s education, and advocates for private schooling (often religious) paid for by public monies. It would close the Department of Education (DOE), which it calls a “one-stop shop for the woke education cartel,” and return all responsibility for education to the states.
The Project wants to reform public school curriculum to remove “noxious tenets of ‘critical race theory’ and gender ideology,’” which it claims “poison” our children. It sees public schools as responsive to “leftists advocates intent on indoctrination,” rather than parents.
The plan would also radically alter public schooling by instituting universal school choice and subsidizing private school attendance, including for religious schools.
It views the Department of Education (DOE) as “not particularly concerned with children’s education.” DOE is viewed as “an example of federal intrusion into a traditionally state and local realm,” which should be shuttered.
If that can’t be accomplished, the secretary of education “should insist that the department serve parents and American ideals, not advocates whose message is that children can choose their own sex, that America is ‘systemically racist,’ that math itself is racist, and that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ideal of a colorblind society should be rejected in favor of reinstating a color-conscious society.”
The Project writes, “enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory” and ensuring that Title IX is enforced using “biological sex recognized at birth.”
It attacks Critical Race theory (CRT) as a particular danger, arguing that in its “applied” dimension, supporters “believe that racism (in this case, treating individuals differently based on race) is appropriate—necessary, even—making the theory more than merely an analytical tool to describe race in public and private life.”
It undermines “America’s Founding ideals of freedom and opportunity” and when used in schools leads to “mandatory affinity groups, teacher training programs in which educators are required to confess their privilege, or school assignments in which students must defend the false idea that America is systemically racist,” all supposedly “disrupting the values that hold communities together such as equality under the law and colorblindness.”
In addition to CRT, “radical gender ideology” must be shown to have a “devastating effect on school-aged children today—especially young girls.” Names and pronouns must be based on birth certificates and no education employee or contractor should be “forced” to use a pronoun that doesn’t match the person’s biological sex, as that would be against their religious or moral convictions.
Restricting Human Rights and Exiting International Bodies:
Project 2025 takes great issue with current human rights frameworks and would withdraw from the United Nations and other international bodies. It claims that international organizations are “used to promote radical social policies as if they were human rights priorities,” and that the next administration “must promote a strict text-based interpretation of treaty obligations that does not consider human rights treaties as ‘living instruments.’”
It wants to return to the Trump administration’s focus on forging consensus “among like-minded countries in support of human life, women’s health, support of the family as the basic unit of human society, and defense of national sovereignty,” as conceptualized in the Geneva Consensus Declaration on Women’s Health and Protection of the Family, which was spearheaded by Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The Geneva Consensus is not a U.N. document and has no international legal standing, but rather was forged between primarily authoritarian states that seek to undermine sexual and reproductive health and rights, in particular access to safe abortion services, worldwide, and restrict the rights of the LGBTQ+ community.
Amnesty International USA said the signatories were “willingly endangering people’s health and lives” and others accused the signatories of being motivated by a desire to undermine established international institutions and undermine women’s rights.
The text’s language affirming the family as “the natural and fundamental group unit of society” has clear meaning for countries that restrict LGBTQ+ rights, many of whom signed on to the declaration including Egypt, Hungary and Uganda.
For the Project, the Geneva Consensus should guide all U.S. foreign policy engagements, and the government “should not and cannot promote or fund abortion in international programs or multilateral organizations.”
A large section of the Project targets the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as no longer supporting “pro-life” and “family-friendly policies” and undermining the Project’s view of “religious freedom.” The agency would be completely overhauled to abandon its current “divisive political and cultural agenda that promotes abortion, climate extremism, gender radicalism, and interventions against perceived systemic racism.”
The agency needs to be “deradicalized,” cancel all DEI efforts, eliminate the Chief Diversity Officer position and “issue a directive to cease promotion of the DEI agenda, including the bullying LGBTQ+ agenda.”
It intends to rename USAID offices related to gender equality and women’s empowerment, and to appoint to the position of Senior Gender Coordinator an “unapologetically pro-life,” renaming the post as “Senior Coordinator of the Office of Women, Children, and Families;” and eliminate the “more than 180 gender advisors and points of contact…embedded in Missions and Operating should remove:
- all references,
- examples,
- definitions,
- photos,
- and language on USAID websites,
- in agency publications and policies,
- and in all agency contracts and grants that include the following terms:
- ‘gender,’
- ‘gender equality,’
- ‘gender equity,’
- ‘gender diverse individuals,’
- ‘gender aware,’
- ‘gender sensitive,’
- etc.”
- And also remove all references to:
- “‘abortion,’
- ‘reproductive health,’
- and ‘sexual and reproductive rights’
- and controversial sexual education materials.”
This effort will end “the promotion of gender radicalism” which allegedly causes resentment by tying lifesaving assistance to “rejecting the aid recipient’s own firmly held fundamental values regarding sexuality, and produces unnecessary consternation and confusion among and even outright bias against men.”
USAID must stop U.S. foreign aid from “supporting the global abortion industry.”
Other international organizations the Project suggests the U.S. resign from include the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Profiles of Project 2025 Organizational Supporters:
The far-right think tank Heritage Foundation is coordinating many elements of Project 2025 and hosting the website and materials, including the 900-page Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, which describes in depth their plans for reforming the next presidential administration. The project is led by Heritage’s Director Paul Dans and Associate Director Spencer Chretien, both former Trump administration officials.
To advise on, and push the Project 2025 agenda, Heritage has assembled a coalition of more than 80 (and growing) far-right groups involved in everything:
- from spreading hatred against:
- LGBTQ+ communities,
- immigrants,
- Muslims,
- and people of color
- to propagating medical disinformation,
- climate change denial,
- election denial,
- and rejecting women’s bodily autonomy.
In recent years, the Heritage Foundation has moved further and further to the right, leaving its Reaganite history behind during the Trump years for more radical politics. At least 66 current employees and alumni served in Trump’s administration.
An example of this increasing extremism is Heritage’s attack on the Black Lives Matter movement, with senior fellow Mike Gonzalez releasing in 2021 BLM: The New Making of a Marxist Revolution.
A press release for the book asserts that BLM leaders are “avowed Marxists who say they want to dismantle our way of life…they seized upon the video showing George Floyd‘s suffering as a pretext to unleash a nationwide insurgency.”
In 2021, Heritage pushed Republican-controlled states to ban or restrict critical race theory, something not taught in public schools, and sought to persuade congressional Republicans to put anti-critical race theory provisions into legislation such as the annual defense spending bill.
The proposed 2023 defense spending bill included these provisions, along with a reduction of LGBTQ+ rights and women’s healthcare. A final bill has not been passed as of November 2023.
Heritage has fiercely opposed transgender rights, including hosting several anti-trans events, developing and supporting model legislation against transgender rights, and made claims about transgender youth healthcare and suicide rates contradicted by numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies.
Heritage is also a climate denier.
Heritage has also promoted false claims of electoral fraud. Hans von Spakovsky, who heads its Election Law Reform Initiative, has long spread alarmism about voter fraud, for which there is little to no evidence, among conservatives. His work, which claims voting fraud is rampant, has been discredited. In 2021, Heritage Action ran television ads in Arizona to promote the false claim that “Democrats…want to register illegal aliens” to vote.
The American Center for Law and Justice Action (ACLJA):
ACLJA is the c4 arm of the American Center for Law and Justice, an anti-LGBTQ+ group run by longtime Trump attorney Jay Sekulow that was originally founded by Pat Robertson, one of the founders of America’s Christian Right. The ACLJ promotes conservative Christian laws in Africa, including support in Uganda for criminalizing homosexuality. It is also anti-Muslim.
In November 2010, the ACLJ asked that the Department of Justice investigate the Congressional Muslim Staffer Association’s weekly prayer session on Capitol Hill, alleging that the organization demonstrated “a pattern of inviting Islamic extremists with ties to terrorism to participate in these events.” ACLJ also attempted to stop the construction of an Islamic cultural center near the former site of the World Trade Center, by appealing to New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF):
ADF has long worked to restrict LGBTQ+ rights both domestically and abroad through ADF International. Launched in 1994 by 35 Christian Right leaders, ADF has worked for decades to undermine the rights of women and the LGBTQ+ community.
It has pushed to eliminate access to contraception and abortion, advocated for the criminalization of sexual acts among consenting LGBTQ+ adults in the U.S. and abroad, pushed conspiracies about a “homosexual agenda” destroying societies, falsely argued that LGBTQ+ people are more likely to be pedophiles, worked to deny rights to transgender people, developed model legislation to allow the denial of goods and services to LGBTQ+ people under the guise of “religious freedom,” and lobbied for the appointment of judges to uphold its agenda.
ADF is listed as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Its former CEO, Michael P. Farris, a Trump ally, was instrumental in crafting an effort to overturn the American 2020 presidential election. ADF has been unusually successful in its legal efforts, bringing cases to the Supreme Court that have overturned LGBTQ+ rights and abortion protections.
ADF is currently awaiting a Supreme Court decision on its appeal of a federal court ruling upholding state level bans on conversion therapy for minors. ADF represented a Tennessee Christian adoption agency that refused services to a Jewish couple, sparking outrage from the faith community, who in a letter wrote:
- “Alliance Defending Freedom is parading itself as a ‘Christian’ organization while coming into our local communities spreading messages of hate and division. They’ve gone so far as to deny a child two loving parents due to their Jewish faith. As faith leaders, we must speak in one voice condemning groups seeking to distort Holy Scriptures and to justify an agenda that brings harm to our communities and contradicts God’s commandments to love one another. This is a distortion and corruption of the Christian faith.”
A 2014 post on its website read, “Alliance Defending Freedom seeks to recover the robust Christendomic theology of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries,” indicating it would like to go back to medieval times.
American Family Association (AFA):
The AFA’s stated vision “is to be a leading organization in biblical worldview training for cultural transformation” and among its core values is the belief that “true morality flows from biblical principles and directs people to the manner in which God intends them to live.”
AFA has advocated strongly against LGBTQ+ rights, same-sex marriage, and allowing members of the LGBTQ+ community to serve in the Armed Forces. The group frequently equates homosexuality with pedophilia and argues that there’s a “homosexual agenda” afoot that is set to bring about the downfall of American (and ultimately, Western) civilization.
In one October 2004 article, the AFA Journal suggested that gay influences are leading to a “grotesque culture” that will include “quick encounters in the middle school boys’ restroom.”
Its principals over the years have made many disparaging remarks about the LGBTQ+ community, such as Bryan Fischer’s 2010 comment that, “Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews.”
They are also rabidly anti-Muslim with AFA leader Tim Wildmon writing in 2012 that “[Islam] is, in fact, a religion of war, violence, intolerance, and physical persecution of non-Muslims,” having also advocated against Muslim immigration to the US. The AFA is listed as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
America First Legal (AFL):
AFL was founded in 2020 by former Trump advisor Stephen Miller, who crafted many of the administration’s punishing anti-immigrant policies, including child separations from their immigrant parents.
Miller has a long track record of interacting with white nationalists, and spreading their views. AFL’s tagline is “fighting the lawless left” and it has brought dozens of federal lawsuits challenging efforts to remedy racial disparities, support LGBTQ+ students, and to expand early voting.
The American Conservative (TAC):
Co-founded in 2002 by Pat Buchanan, author of rabidly anti-immigrant screeds rooted in white nationalism, TAC features articles that are associated with the very far-right paleoconservative movement.
In October 2023, TAC published a piece defending “conversion therapy,” the dangerous and discredited practice of trying to change LGBTQ+ people’s sexual orientation. It has also published rabidly anti-trans pieces. Historically, the magazine has been hardline on immigration and isolationist, and was touting the America First agenda long before Trump did.
Some of TAC’s writers are or have been fellows at the pro-Victor Orbán Danube Institute, funded by the Hungarian government, which the European Parliament has declared is no longer a democracy. The president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, spoke at TAC’s October 2023 Annual Gala.
The American Principles Project (APP):
An anti-LGBTQ+ organization, APP has funded political campaign ads that reflect the organization’s opposition to civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ people. The group opposed same-sex marriage and is particularly focused on anti-transgender legislation.
In 2017, APP ran anti-transgender robocalls in a district where the democratic candidate was a transgender woman. In 2021, APP’s head Terry Schilling co-authored a USA TODAY Op-Ed criticizing the proposed Equality Act, that would expand civil rights protections for the LGBTQ+ community, arguing that transgender women should not compete in women’s sports.
APP wants to eliminate transgender health care completely for both children and adults. APP was also active in the campaign against teaching critical race theory in schools. They also advocate for the use of a gold standard instead of paper currency, a position mostly held by antigovernment extremists.
Center for Family and Human Rights (CFAM):
CFAM is led by Austin Ruse, who has railed against abortion and voiced support for laws criminalizing homosexuality.
Ruse supported Russia’s anti-gay propaganda law (which criminalizes free speech with regard to LGBTQ issues) and called the law a noble quest for “human rights,” signing a joint statement in support of it. CFAM is listed as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The group has had its share of scandals. In 2015, Monsignor Anthony Frontiero resigned from the organization’s board of directors in protest when Ruse commented, “The hard-left human-hating people that run modern universities should be taken out and shot.” He was speaking about a female student at Duke University who works as an actress in the pornography industry.
Ruse blamed Duke’s women’s studies department, claiming that the student “learned this” there. Ruse said this was a figure of speech and issued a formal apology. CFAM has consultative status at the U.N. Ruse and CFAM have been lobbying against sexual and reproductive health rights, abortion, and equality for LGBTQ+ people at the UN and abroad for years.
In 2012, Ruse and CFAM even helped block a UN treaty protecting the rights of people with disabilities because, the groups claimed, it was “pro-abortion.”
Center for Immigration Studies (CIS):
CIS was founded by historian Otis L. Graham and eugenicist and white nationalist John Tanton in 1985 as a spin-off of the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform. Reports published by CIS have been disputed by scholars on immigration, fact-checkers and news outlets, and immigration-research organizations.
The organization had significant influence within the Trump administration, and its proposed policies were the inspiration for the Muslim immigration ban. CIS has repeatedly published white nationalist and antisemitic writers, employed an analyst known to promote racist pseudoscience, and published reports that hyped the criminality of immigrants.
CIS is listed as an anti-immigrant hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Its principals have often made bigoted statements about Muslims and immigrants. In 2014, CIS Executive Director Mark Krikorian said on a radio show, “We have to have security against both the dishwasher and the terrorist because you can’t distinguish between the two with regards to immigration control.”
In 2010, he wrote, “My guess is that Haiti’s so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough.”
In 2015, he decried the EU’s immigration policies, saying they would lead to a scenario like that portrayed in the horrifically racist novel, The Camp of the Saints, where immigrants are depicted engaging in a murderous, violent spree across France. The novel, extremely popular among white nationalists, was published in the U.S. by CIS founder John Tanton.
The Claremont Institute (TCI):
In recent years, TCI has had on staff one of the key election deniers advising Trump in 2020. Institute Senior Fellow John Eastman aided Trump in his failed attempts to overturn the election results and has now been criminally indicted in Georgia for his efforts.
The Institute caused controversy by granting a fellowship in 2019 to Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec. In 2020, Slate described TCI as “a racist fever swamp with deep connections to the conspiratorial alt-right,” citing Posobiec’s fellowship and the publication of a 2020 essay by Eastman that questioned Kamala Harris’ eligibility for the vice presidency.
In 2022, their publication The American Mind featured an editorial by Raw Egg Nationalist, an author affiliated with the neo-Nazi publishing house Antelope Hill. In 2021, Claremont Senior Fellow Glenn Ellmers wrote an essay in The American Mind arguing that the United States had been destroyed by internal enemies and that a “counter-revolution” was necessary to defeat the majority of the people who “can no longer be considered fellow citizens.”
According to Ellmers, “Most people living in the United States today—certainly more than half—are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term.”
Concerned Women for America (CWA):
Founded in 1979, CWA was launched by conservative Christian activist and author Beverly LaHaye as a counter to the National Organization for Women and the Equal Rights Amendment. It is anti-feminist, Christian nationalist, a defender of traditional gender roles, and tightly tied to attacks on the LGBTQ+ community coming from the far right, featuring articles against drag shows and Pride events on its website.
The group claimed in October 2023 to have 500,000 members and more than 400 chapters. LaHaye was married to the late minister Tim LaHaye, author of the bestselling Left Behind fiction series adapted from the Book of Revelations and depicting the end times. She was also a co-founder of the highly influential far-right and secretive Council for National Policy, of which CWA’s current CEO Penny Nance is a member. Nance states in her bio that she served on Trump’s Life Advisory Council.
According to her biography, LaHaye founded CWA, to “promote Biblical values for women and families, first through prayer, then education and finally, by influencing our elected leaders and society.”
The group moved from San Diego to Washington, D.C. in 1987, giving it greater access to the federal government. Most of its focus has been on outlawing abortion, promoting traditional families, condemning pornography, working to remove sex education from schools, rallying against same-sex marriage, arguing for religious exemptions, national sovereignty, and against secular education. It has several state-level chapters.
Over the years, CWA has employed anti-LGBTQ+ activists, including Peter LaBarbera, head of the Southern Poverty Law Center-designated, anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Americans for Truth about Homosexuality and a reporter and editor for the conspiracy site WorldNetDaily; Robert Knight, one of the drafters of the federal Defense of Marriage Act; and Matt Barber, formerly with the anti-LGBTQ+ group Liberty Counsel and then the owner of the virulently anti-LGBTQ+ website barbwire.com, which is no longer active.
LaHaye herself was rabidly homophobic, having published a booklet in 1991, The Hidden Homosexual Agenda, which warned that accepting LGBTQ+ equality would bring an end to Judeo-Christian values and destroy the family. She defamed LGBTQ+ people as having a “compulsive desire for sexual fulfillment without lasting commitment” and also claimed that they “recruit children.”
A former senior fellow at CWA’s Beverly LaHaye Institute, Janice Shaw Crouse, claimed that LGBTQ+ people are prone to domestic violence, spreading disease, and that their relationships don’t last long. CWA opposed the Violence Against Women Act, claiming that it “creates new protections for homosexuals.”
In order to receive federal grants, CWA said in 2012, “domestic violence organizations have to agree to embrace the homosexual agenda,” a conspiracy theory manufactured by the Christian Right in which they argue that LGBTQ+ people are going to destroy the family and society.
CWA has also claimed that hate crimes are fabricated to undermine efforts supportive of hate crimes legislation, which CWA opposes. As of November 2023, CWA is running a pledge for presidential and down-ballot candidates to sign affirming that they will deny the rights and existence of transgender people.
Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI):
Deep in the election denial movement, CPI is chaired by former South Carolina U.S. Senator Jim DeMint and has on its staff former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who was indicted in Georgia on charges of attempting to subvert the 2020 election results.
In advance of the 2022 midterms, the network published materials and hosted summits across the country with the aim of coordinating a nationwide effort to staff election offices, recruit poll watchers and poll workers, and build teams of local citizens to challenge voter rolls, question postal workers, be “ever-present” in local election offices, and inundate election officials with document requests.
The effort is an extraordinary investment in sustaining and bolstering the false narrative that Trump lost the 2020 election because of widespread voter fraud. CPI’s key “election integrity” staffer is Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who played a central role in Trump’s legal strategy to overturn the 2020 election.
Mitchell participated in Trump’s infamous January 2, 2021, phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, where Trump attempted to coerce Raffensperger to “find” the extra 11,780 votes Trump needed to win the state.
Mitchell filed a lawsuit to block a subpoena calling for her to testify in front of the House Select Committee probing the January 6 insurrection, as she was in contact with Trump that day. When reports of her role on Trump’s call with Raffensperger surfaced in 2021, Mitchell resigned from her two-decade long career with the law firm Foley & Lardner and joined CPI two months later.
Family Research Council (FRC):
Originally a part of the Christian Right powerhouse Focus on the Family, FRC, which is technically a church, has lobbied against abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, divorce, and many LGBTQ+ rights, including anti-discrimination laws, civil unions, same-sex marriage and adoption. FRC is listed as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The group has been condemned by professional organizations including the American Sociological Association for peddling “anti-gay pseudoscience” to falsely conflate homosexuality and pedophilia, and to falsely assert that the children of same-sex parents suffer from more mental health problems than those in traditional homes.
FRC holds that “homosexual conduct is harmful to the persons who engage in it and to society at large, and can never be affirmed” and that it is “by definition unnatural, and as such is associated with negative physical and psychological health effects.” Contrary to all medical science, FRC also contends that “there is no convincing evidence that a homosexual identity is ever something genetic or inborn.”
In 2010, FRC spent $25,000 to lobby Congress against approving a resolution denouncing Uganda’s plan to execute those engaged in same-sex relations, “Res.1064 Ugandan Resolution Pro-homosexual promotion.” FRC claimed that they had not intended to kill the resolution, but rather to change it and “remove sweeping and inaccurate assertions that homosexual conduct is internationally recognized as a fundamental human right.”
At the time Uganda was considering what came to be known as the “Kill the Gays” bill, which would have imposed either the death penalty or life imprisonment for sexual relations between persons of the same sex (Uganda passed such a bill in 2022). FRC has published many anti-transgender statements, and in 2022 said that leftists are “openly avowing pedophilia as the next ‘sexual minority’ (aka sexual perversion) to achieve legitimacy.”
In 2001, FRC’s head Tony Perkins, standing in front of a confederate flag, gave a speech to the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist group that advocates against miscegenation and whose website once referred to black people as “a retrograde species of humanity.”
The Heartland Institute (THI):
A leading voice in the climate denial movement, THI once put up billboards in Chicago featuring a photo of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, whose mail bombs killed three people and injured 23 others, asking the question, “I still believe in global warming, do you?” They withdrew the billboards a day later but did not apologize for the campaign, which was also to feature Charles Manson, Fidel Castro, and Osama Bin Laden asking the same question.
It has also been involved in efforts to deny the health effects of smoking, to repeal mandates on renewable energy, and to privatize education.
Moms for Liberty (MFL):
Founded in 2021, MFL was listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as an antigovernment group in 2023. According to the SPLC, MFL “use their multiple social media platforms to target teachers and school officials, advocate for the abolition of the Department of Education, advance conspiracy propaganda, and spread hateful imagery and rhetoric against the LGBTQ community.”
The group’s activism first centered on campaigning against pandemic measures in schools, including mask and vaccine mandates. In its short existence, MFL has also advocated against school curricula that mention LGBTQ+ rights, race and ethnicity, critical race theory, and discrimination.
They have also called for banning certain books on these topics from school curricula and libraries and have disrupted school boards as part of their advocacy. The group has ties to other extremists including the white supremacist Proud Boys and the rabidly anti-LGBTQ+ group, Gays Against Groomers.
Tea Party Patriots (TPP):
An election denial organization, TPP was heavily involved in the “Stop the Steal” movement that advocated Trump had the election stolen from him, and TPP leaders were outspoken after the 2020 election, claiming without evidence that there had been widespread fraud and that the election results should be overturned in favor of Trump.
TPP got its start in 2009, as Tea Parties were popping up nationwide, organizing against the Affordable Care Act and other aspects of Obama’s presidency. It received considerable help from FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy group once funded by the Koch brothers.
After 2020, it took up issues around election infrastructure, recruiting poll workers, promoting propaganda like the film “2,000 Mules” that alleges the 2020 election was rigged, and supporting so-called “election integrity” efforts. Tea Party Patriots were among about a dozen groups that included Stop the Steal and Turning Point Action listed on the website of the “March to Save America,” the pro-Trump rally that took place before the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.
In a statement, co-founder Jenny Beth Martin said her group did not fund the rally and denounced the violence that followed it. TPP has engaged in medical disinformation as well, hosting and funding an “America’s Frontline Doctors” event promoting use, contrary to all legitimate medical advice, of the drug hydroxychloroquine as a cure for COVID.
Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF):
TPPF says its mission is to “promote liberty, opportunity, and free enterprise in Texas and beyond.” TPPF pushes stronger border measures and has co-produced a documentary called “Cartel Country” that blames the Biden administration for the border crisis. TPPF advocates putting parents in charge of their children’s education, generally rails against public education, rejects pandemic health measures, is against transgender healthcare for young people, and rejects carbon taxes.
In 2021, the organization put out a now-deleted tweet with an image labeled, “How to Identify Critical Race Theory in the Classroom.” Among the things identified were terms like “anti-racism,” programs that promote “equity, diversity, and inclusion,” movements like “Black lives matter;” and facts in American history including “colonialism” and “colonizer.” TPPF fellow, fellow Carol Swain, wrote a fawning book about white nationalists and claims Islam is dangerous.
In 2021, Swain at a TPPF event, spoke of how Critical Race Theory “threatens” the nation. “[CRT] has Marxist roots,” she said. “It’s un-American. It’s using the grievances and sufferings of people to advance an agenda that has very little to do about them…I believe that the ultimate goal is to destroy America.”
Since Trump started spouting election lies, TPPF has become involved in the issue, and it lists securing the “integrity of election results” as one of its prime issues. In January 2021, Texas Congressman Michael McCaul and TPPF announced the formation of the Election Protection Project, which they claim is “an effort to bolster ballot integrity in the Lone Star State and nationwide.”
The project aims “to ensure proper identification is provided for in-person and mail-voting, strengthening vote-by-mail security, encouraging a better path of communication between state and county officials and ensuring maintenance of voter rolls.”
During the effort’s launch, TPPF’s Vice President of National Initiatives, Chuck DeVore, said, “How can we ensure that we minimize the number of people on the lists who are either deceased or who moved out of state? How can we ensure that the people on the list should be on the list — in other words — that they’re citizens and that they’re eligible to vote?”
Turning Point USA (TPUSA):
Led by Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA has been described as the “MAGA youth wing” of the conservative movement. Kirk perennially stokes racial resentments and uses divisiveness to build his youth movement. There have been repeated associations with white nationalist and antisemitic actors, and TPUSA college chapters have been called out for their blatant racism.
Typical was Kirk’s calling George Floyd a “scumbag” after his murder at the hands of police ignited racial justice rallies across the country in 2020. Kirk once vowed to never politicize his religion, but he now says the church should accept its rightful role as counselor to and moral authority of the government.
Parroting the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, Kirk also said “Biden intentionally let Afghanistan fall because he wants a couple hundred thousand more Ilhan Omars to come into America to change the body politic permanently.” Kirk has toured college campuses raging at schools that teach about racism.
According to CNN, TPA paid Kimberly Guilfoyle $60,000 to introduce her fiancé, Donald Trump, Jr., in a speech lasting less than three minutes at the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C.
In July 2021, Turning Point Action hosted a “Rally to Save our Elections” in Phoenix where Trump spoke for almost two hours, repeating his false allegations of voter fraud. Arizona’s fake slate of electors included Tyler Bowyer, COO of Turning Point USA. Turning Point Action (TPA), the c4 arm of the group, has a sordid history in terms of its online activism.
In September 2020, it was reported that TPA had paid young people in Arizona, some of them minors, to post Turning Point content on their social media accounts without disclosing their affiliation with Turning Point, and that Turning Point had given them specific instructions on how to make minor alterations to the content to prevent detection that it came from the same source.
The posts cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process and made light of the pandemic.
[End of Project 2025: A Blueprint for Authritarianism]
Donald Trump 2024 presidential campaign
- YouTube Video: PROJECT 2025: They have a plan to make Trump dictator
- YouTube Video: Liz Cheney Says Trump Still a Danger to the Constitution
- YouTube Video: Podcast | Is Trump Disqualified from Office Under the 14th Amendment?
Donald Trump, who was the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, announced his campaign for a non-consecutive second presidential term in the 2024 U.S. presidential election on November 15, 2022.
Trump has campaigned on vastly expanding the authority of the federal government, particularly the executive branch, via Project 2025.
The campaign is unfolding as Trump faces the legal aftermath of four criminal indictments filed against him in 2023, as well as a civil investigation of the Trump Organization in New York.
Background:
Trump, the incumbent president, unsuccessfully sought election to a second term in the 2020 United States presidential election, losing to Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who obtained an electoral vote of 306 to Trump's 232. Trump also lost the popular vote by seven million votes.
He refused to concede the loss and claimed that the election was stolen. Trump and his allies in seven key states then allegedly devised a plot to create and submit fraudulent certificates of ascertainment that falsely asserted Trump had won the electoral college vote in those states.
The intent was to pass the fraudulent certificates to Mike Pence to count them rather than the authentic certificates and overturn Joe Biden's victory. Trump reportedly had been considering a 2024 presidential run immediately after his loss in the election if the plot failed to "work out."
In the week of November 9, 2020, Trump indicated to Republican Party senator Kevin Cramer: "If this doesn't work out, I'll just run again in four years."
Later, a group of Trump's supporters attacked the United States Capitol building to prevent the election results from being certified.
With one week remaining in his presidency, Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for incitement of insurrection for his actions during the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill attack, but was acquitted in the Senate with a bipartisan 57–43 vote in favor of conviction, which fell short of the two-thirds supermajority (67 out of 100 senators) required.
In December 2021, CNN reported that "Trump's wait-and-see approach to the 2024 election has frozen the next Republican presidential primary", with potential challengers keeping their heads down while awaiting Trump's official decision on the matter.
In July 2022, as the public hearings of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack were progressing, Trump was reportedly considering making an early announcement of his 2024 candidacy.
On July 14, 2022, Intelligencer published an interview with Trump, based upon which they reported that Trump had already made up his mind, and was just deciding when to declare.
Following the August 2022 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, many of Trump's allies urged that he announce his candidacy sooner, including some who had previously advised that he defer an announcement until after the mid-term elections.
During a rally in Iowa in the run-up to the 2022 United States midterm elections, Trump stated, "in order to make our country successful and safe and glorious, I will very, very, very probably do it again", indicating that he might announce his candidacy soon thereafter, prompting speculation that he would announce as soon as the week of November 14, 2022.
After months of speculation, Trump announced his candidacy for president in a November 15, 2022, speech to supporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. His announcement received wide media coverage and a mixed response from both Democrats and Republicans.
Some Democrats warily welcomed the campaign, viewing Trump as beatable, while others opposed it, citing negative effects it could have on U.S. democracy.
Some Republicans, consisting mostly of Trump loyalists, welcomed the campaign, while others (including many Republican elected officials) opposed it, viewing Trump as a weak and beatable candidate who had cost the Republicans the past several election cycles.
In August 2023, Trump was indicted separately both by the federal government and the state of Georgia on numerous criminal conspiracy and fraud charges he is alleged to have committed along with co-conspirators during efforts to illegally change and overturn the results of the lost 2020 presidential election.
The indictments allege that Trump engaged in a criminal conspiracy to illegally alter the results of the 2020 election via fraudulent electors in the Trump fake electors plot as well as pressuring government officials to illegally change vote tallies during incidents such as the Trump-Raffensperger phone call.
Prior to these indictments on charges relating to Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, on March 30, 2023, Trump was also indicted for 34 felony counts of fraud stemming from his alleged role in falsifying business records related to hush money payments made to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels during his 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign. Trump called his indictment political persecution and election interference.
Later, on June 8, Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly improperly retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence and destroying evidence related to the government probe.
In addition to the four criminal indictments brought against Trump in Georgia, Washington, Florida, and New York, on May 9, Trump was found liable in a civil lawsuit for sexual abuse and defamation against journalist E. Jean Carroll. Trump said that he will appeal the decision, describing it to be "unconstitutional silencing" and "political persecution."
Announcement:
On November 15, 2022, Trump announced his candidacy at Mar-a-Lago in an hour-long speech. The announcement came one week after the 2022 mid-term elections in which Trump-endorsed candidates underperformed non-Trump-endorsed candidates. His announcement speech had at least "20 false and misleading claims", uttering the first inaccurate claim "about two minutes in and a few minutes later, tick(ing) off at least four hyperbolic claims about his own accomplishments".
The New York Times Fact Check stated that "Mr. Trump repeated many familiar exaggerations about his own achievements, reiterated misleading attacks on political opponents and made dire assessments that were at odds with reality."
The New York Post mocked Trump's announcement by relegating it to page 26 and noting it on the cover with a banner reading "Florida Man Makes Announcement". The article referred to Mar-a-Lago as "Trump's classified-documents library" in reference to the ongoing investigation regarding Trump's alleged improper handling of classified materials which he had brought to Mar-a-Lago following his presidency for as yet unclear reasons.
Attendees:
The announcement was attended by:
The Insider noted "many members of Congress were not in attendance", including Matt Gaetz. Family members who attended included:
His daughters Ivanka and Tiffany did not attend the announcement party; Ivanka said she would not be engaging in politics going forward and would not be a part of her father's presidential bid.
Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. also did not attend. Stan Fitzgerald, president of Veterans for America First, attended.
Platform:
In campaign speeches, Trump stated that he would centralize government power under his authority, replace career federal civil service employees with political loyalists, and use the military for domestic law enforcement and the deportation of immigrants. In October 2023 he said undocumented immigrants were "poisoning the blood of our country," echoing rhetoric of white supremacists and Adolf Hitler.
The New York Times reported the next month that Trump planned "an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration," including "preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled."
Rhetoric:
In public remarks in September 2023, Trump used violent rhetoric, calling for shoplifters to be shot and Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff appointed by him, to be executed for treason; he also made fun of the hammer attack that critically injured the husband of the then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
On October 5, he used Nazi racial hygiene rhetoric in a video interview on a right-wing website, saying that undocumented immigrants were "poisoning the blood of our country", a term echoing white supremacists and Adolf Hitler.
In a campaign speech and a post on his social media site on Veterans Day, November 11, 2023, Trump called his political opponents "vermin", a term used by dictators Hitler and Benito Mussolini and in Nazi propaganda to dehumanize people. He said they were a greater threat to the United States than countries such as Russia, China, and North Korea and pledged to "root out" the "communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections".
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung responded to criticism by saying: "Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, and their sad, miserable existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House."
Campaign events:
On January 28, 2023, Trump held his first campaign events in South Carolina and New Hampshire.
On March 4, 2023, Trump delivered a lengthy keynote speech at the CPAC convention, also attended by Nikki Haley, but not by other prospective Republican candidates. In his speech, Trump promised to serve as the retribution for those who were wronged, and stated that he was the only candidate who could prevent World War III.
On March 25, Trump staged a rally in Waco, Texas during the 30th anniversary of the Waco siege.
In late April, Trump suggested he was not interested in debating other Republican contenders, at least not until later in the year.
On May 10, 2023, Trump appeared one-on-one with news host Kaitlan Collins on CNN Republican Town Hall with Donald Trump at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, with an audience of Republican and undecided voters.
During the event Trump took credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade (1973), supported defaulting on the national debt in the debt ceiling showdown, and again falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen. Trump also suggested pardoning those convicted as a result of the January 6 United States Capitol attack.
Eligibility:
The questions of Trump's eligibility to run for president in 2024 are delineated by the U.S. Constitution. Two amendments addressing this issue are the 14th and 22nd Amendments.
Additionally, although Trump has been indicted multiple times, neither the indictments nor any resulting convictions would render him ineligible for the office.
14th Amendment:
See also: Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution § Trump disqualification debate
In the aftermath of the American Civil War, the 14th Amendment was passed. Section 3 of the amendment prohibits anyone from holding public office if they had previously sworn an oath to support the Constitution, but then "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the [United States], or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."
The full text of this section reads:
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Trump's role in the January 6 United States Capitol attack is cited by opponents as a reason for his disqualification from seeking public office.
On January 10, 2021, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, formally requested Representatives' input as to whether Section 3 pertained to the outgoing President.
On January 13, 2021, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for 'incitement of insurrection' by a vote of 232-to-197. On February 13, 2021, the Senate voted on the charge, with 57 senators casting votes of 'Guilty' to 43 as 'Not Guilty'; removal by impeachment requires a two-thirds supermajority of the United States Senate to convict in an impeachment trial.
Prominent conservative legal scholars William Baude and Michael Paulsen argued that Trump “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” and gave “aid or comfort” to others engaging in such conduct, within the meaning of the 14th Amendment, and said that "if the public record is accurate, the case is not even close. He is no longer eligible to the office of Presidency".
Some legal experts believe a court would be required to make a final determination if Trump was disqualified under Section 3. In September 2022, a New Mexico District Court Judge removed local official Couy Griffin from office due to his participation in the January 6 attack, which some commentators felt established a precedent to bar Trump from office.
Scholars believe these challenges are likely to reach the Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority; lawyer Marshall Tanick said they are unlikely to disqualify Trump.
A state may also make a determination that Trump is disqualified under Section 3 from appearing on that state's ballot. Trump could appeal in court any disqualification by Congress or by a state.
In addition to state or federal legislative action, a court action could be brought against Trump seeking his disqualification under Section 3. The 14th Amendment itself provides a path for Congress to allow such a candidate to run, but this would require a vote of two-thirds of each House to remove such disability.
State ballot removal efforts:
The non-profit group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and other advocacy groups and individuals are planning state-by-state efforts to keep Trump off state ballots.
In 2023, court cases were brought in states including Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire.
22nd Amendment:
Trump has only been elected president once, in 2016, so is not limited from running again by the 22nd Amendment, which permits two full terms. Even before losing the 2020 election, he publicly proclaimed his willingness to seek a third term in 2024, despite this being explicitly prohibited.
Trump claimed that Barack Obama had spied on him and his campaign, and that this meant he was "'entitled' [to a third term] because he was spied on."
Trump is seeking to become the second president to ever serve non-consecutive terms, after Grover Cleveland who was re-elected in 1892.
The last one-term president to campaign for a second non-consecutive term was Herbert Hoover, who after serving from 1929 to 1933 made unsuccessful runs in 1936 and 1940 after his loss in 1932.
Post-announcement developments:
Three days after Trump announced his candidacy, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith to serve as special counsel for the investigations regarding Trump's role in the January 6 attack and into mishandling of government records. Special counsels can be appointed when there can be a conflict of interest or the appearance of it, and Garland said the announced political candidacies of both Trump and President Biden prompted him to take what he described as an "extraordinary step".
Special counsel investigations operate largely independent of Justice Department control under decades-old federal regulations, and Garland said the "appointment underscores the department's commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters".
On November 19, 2022, Elon Musk, four weeks after taking ownership of Twitter, resinstated both Trump's personal account and Trump's campaign account, nearly two years after Trump was permanently banned from the platform by previous Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, due to Twitter's Glorification of Violence and Civic Integerity policies, following the January 6 United States Capitol attack.
In late November 2022, Kanye West announced his own candidacy for the 2024 presidential election. Shortly thereafter, West visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago, bringing with him Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and Holocaust denier. West claimed that after he asked Trump to be his vice-presidential candidate, "Trump started basically screaming at me at the table telling me I was going to lose".
Trump responded with a statement that West "unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends, whom I knew nothing about", and in a further statement acknowledged advising West to drop out of the race.
Several other possible 2024 contenders spoke in the aftermath of this event, with Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson calling the meeting "very troubling", and Trump's former vice president Mike Pence calling on Trump to apologize for giving Fuentes "a seat at the table". Mitch McConnell said that Trump was unlikely to win the 2024 presidential election as a result of the dinner.
On December 3, 2022, following the publication of "The Twitter Files" by Elon Musk, Trump complained of election fraud and posted to Truth Social, calling for "the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution."
Vice-presidential choice:
Mike Pence served as Trump's vice president from 2017 to 2021, with Pence having been Trump's chosen running mate in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. In March 2021, Bloomberg News reported that if Trump runs again in 2024, Pence "likely won't be on the ticket" and that Trump had "discussed alternatives to Pence", while Trump's advisors "have discussed identifying a Black or female running mate for his next run".
In April 2021, Trump indicated that he was considering Florida governor Ron DeSantis for the position, noting his friendship with him; he later criticized and ridiculed DeSantis who launched his own presidential campaign on May 24, 2023.
In June 2022, a former aide testified that Trump had opined to his staff during the Capitol Hill attack that Pence "deserved" the chants of "hang Mike Pence" made by the mob. Names raised as possible candidates for the position include South Dakota governor Kristi Noem and South Carolina senator Tim Scott.
Endorsements:
Main article: List of Donald Trump 2024 presidential campaign primary endorsements
A number of Republican officials at both federal and state levels were quick to endorse Trump's candidacy, while others were noted for being silent on the question, with a few stating opposition, including:
Support:
Politico noted in December 2020 that many Republican figures were expressing support for a Trump 2024 run, quoting Missouri Senator Josh Hawley as saying "If he were to run in 2024, I think he would be the nominee. And I would support him doing that." National public opinion polling showed Trump quickly dominating the field of potential 2024 Republican candidates.
Utah Senator Mitt Romney, though opposed to Trump, stated in February 2021 that if Trump ran in 2024, he would win the Republican nomination in a landslide. The same month, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that he would "absolutely" support Trump if the latter was nominated again.
In April 2022, American intelligence officials assessed that Russia intended to exact revenge on the Biden administration for its sanctions against Russia and aid for Ukraine by intervening in the election on Trump's behalf. A Russian state TV host, Evgeny Popov, said in March 2020, "to again help our partner Trump to become president".
Opposition:
Main article: List of Republicans who oppose the Donald Trump 2024 presidential campaign
The donor network of Charles Koch announced it would fund a primary challenge to Trump.
Nikki Haley announced her 2024 presidential campaign on February 14, 2023, becoming the first challenger to Trump in the 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries. One of her first statements as a candidate was to call for candidates over the age of 75—which would include both Trump and Biden—to be required to take a competency test.
Primary election polling:
Main articles:
Trump led in primary polling by a wide margin, "with GOP primary voters still seeing him as best positioned to beat President Biden. Most would back Trump enthusiastically, were he to be renominated".
General election polling:
Main article: Nationwide opinion polling for the 2024 United States presidential election
show
See also:
Trump has campaigned on vastly expanding the authority of the federal government, particularly the executive branch, via Project 2025.
The campaign is unfolding as Trump faces the legal aftermath of four criminal indictments filed against him in 2023, as well as a civil investigation of the Trump Organization in New York.
Background:
Trump, the incumbent president, unsuccessfully sought election to a second term in the 2020 United States presidential election, losing to Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who obtained an electoral vote of 306 to Trump's 232. Trump also lost the popular vote by seven million votes.
He refused to concede the loss and claimed that the election was stolen. Trump and his allies in seven key states then allegedly devised a plot to create and submit fraudulent certificates of ascertainment that falsely asserted Trump had won the electoral college vote in those states.
The intent was to pass the fraudulent certificates to Mike Pence to count them rather than the authentic certificates and overturn Joe Biden's victory. Trump reportedly had been considering a 2024 presidential run immediately after his loss in the election if the plot failed to "work out."
In the week of November 9, 2020, Trump indicated to Republican Party senator Kevin Cramer: "If this doesn't work out, I'll just run again in four years."
Later, a group of Trump's supporters attacked the United States Capitol building to prevent the election results from being certified.
With one week remaining in his presidency, Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for incitement of insurrection for his actions during the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill attack, but was acquitted in the Senate with a bipartisan 57–43 vote in favor of conviction, which fell short of the two-thirds supermajority (67 out of 100 senators) required.
In December 2021, CNN reported that "Trump's wait-and-see approach to the 2024 election has frozen the next Republican presidential primary", with potential challengers keeping their heads down while awaiting Trump's official decision on the matter.
In July 2022, as the public hearings of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack were progressing, Trump was reportedly considering making an early announcement of his 2024 candidacy.
On July 14, 2022, Intelligencer published an interview with Trump, based upon which they reported that Trump had already made up his mind, and was just deciding when to declare.
Following the August 2022 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, many of Trump's allies urged that he announce his candidacy sooner, including some who had previously advised that he defer an announcement until after the mid-term elections.
During a rally in Iowa in the run-up to the 2022 United States midterm elections, Trump stated, "in order to make our country successful and safe and glorious, I will very, very, very probably do it again", indicating that he might announce his candidacy soon thereafter, prompting speculation that he would announce as soon as the week of November 14, 2022.
After months of speculation, Trump announced his candidacy for president in a November 15, 2022, speech to supporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. His announcement received wide media coverage and a mixed response from both Democrats and Republicans.
Some Democrats warily welcomed the campaign, viewing Trump as beatable, while others opposed it, citing negative effects it could have on U.S. democracy.
Some Republicans, consisting mostly of Trump loyalists, welcomed the campaign, while others (including many Republican elected officials) opposed it, viewing Trump as a weak and beatable candidate who had cost the Republicans the past several election cycles.
In August 2023, Trump was indicted separately both by the federal government and the state of Georgia on numerous criminal conspiracy and fraud charges he is alleged to have committed along with co-conspirators during efforts to illegally change and overturn the results of the lost 2020 presidential election.
The indictments allege that Trump engaged in a criminal conspiracy to illegally alter the results of the 2020 election via fraudulent electors in the Trump fake electors plot as well as pressuring government officials to illegally change vote tallies during incidents such as the Trump-Raffensperger phone call.
Prior to these indictments on charges relating to Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, on March 30, 2023, Trump was also indicted for 34 felony counts of fraud stemming from his alleged role in falsifying business records related to hush money payments made to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels during his 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign. Trump called his indictment political persecution and election interference.
Later, on June 8, Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly improperly retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence and destroying evidence related to the government probe.
In addition to the four criminal indictments brought against Trump in Georgia, Washington, Florida, and New York, on May 9, Trump was found liable in a civil lawsuit for sexual abuse and defamation against journalist E. Jean Carroll. Trump said that he will appeal the decision, describing it to be "unconstitutional silencing" and "political persecution."
Announcement:
On November 15, 2022, Trump announced his candidacy at Mar-a-Lago in an hour-long speech. The announcement came one week after the 2022 mid-term elections in which Trump-endorsed candidates underperformed non-Trump-endorsed candidates. His announcement speech had at least "20 false and misleading claims", uttering the first inaccurate claim "about two minutes in and a few minutes later, tick(ing) off at least four hyperbolic claims about his own accomplishments".
The New York Times Fact Check stated that "Mr. Trump repeated many familiar exaggerations about his own achievements, reiterated misleading attacks on political opponents and made dire assessments that were at odds with reality."
The New York Post mocked Trump's announcement by relegating it to page 26 and noting it on the cover with a banner reading "Florida Man Makes Announcement". The article referred to Mar-a-Lago as "Trump's classified-documents library" in reference to the ongoing investigation regarding Trump's alleged improper handling of classified materials which he had brought to Mar-a-Lago following his presidency for as yet unclear reasons.
Attendees:
The announcement was attended by:
- comedian Alex Stein,
- consultant Roger Stone,
- businessman Mike Lindell,
- outgoing Representative Madison Cawthorn (R-NC),
- former deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought,
- political advisor Jason Miller,
- attorney Kash Patel,
- political analyst Sebastian Gorka,
- and political aide Hogan Gidley.
The Insider noted "many members of Congress were not in attendance", including Matt Gaetz. Family members who attended included:
- Trump's wife and former first lady Melania,
- Trump's sons Barron and Eric,
- Eric's wife Lara,
- and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.
His daughters Ivanka and Tiffany did not attend the announcement party; Ivanka said she would not be engaging in politics going forward and would not be a part of her father's presidential bid.
Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. also did not attend. Stan Fitzgerald, president of Veterans for America First, attended.
Platform:
In campaign speeches, Trump stated that he would centralize government power under his authority, replace career federal civil service employees with political loyalists, and use the military for domestic law enforcement and the deportation of immigrants. In October 2023 he said undocumented immigrants were "poisoning the blood of our country," echoing rhetoric of white supremacists and Adolf Hitler.
The New York Times reported the next month that Trump planned "an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration," including "preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled."
Rhetoric:
In public remarks in September 2023, Trump used violent rhetoric, calling for shoplifters to be shot and Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff appointed by him, to be executed for treason; he also made fun of the hammer attack that critically injured the husband of the then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
On October 5, he used Nazi racial hygiene rhetoric in a video interview on a right-wing website, saying that undocumented immigrants were "poisoning the blood of our country", a term echoing white supremacists and Adolf Hitler.
In a campaign speech and a post on his social media site on Veterans Day, November 11, 2023, Trump called his political opponents "vermin", a term used by dictators Hitler and Benito Mussolini and in Nazi propaganda to dehumanize people. He said they were a greater threat to the United States than countries such as Russia, China, and North Korea and pledged to "root out" the "communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections".
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung responded to criticism by saying: "Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, and their sad, miserable existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House."
Campaign events:
On January 28, 2023, Trump held his first campaign events in South Carolina and New Hampshire.
On March 4, 2023, Trump delivered a lengthy keynote speech at the CPAC convention, also attended by Nikki Haley, but not by other prospective Republican candidates. In his speech, Trump promised to serve as the retribution for those who were wronged, and stated that he was the only candidate who could prevent World War III.
On March 25, Trump staged a rally in Waco, Texas during the 30th anniversary of the Waco siege.
In late April, Trump suggested he was not interested in debating other Republican contenders, at least not until later in the year.
On May 10, 2023, Trump appeared one-on-one with news host Kaitlan Collins on CNN Republican Town Hall with Donald Trump at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, with an audience of Republican and undecided voters.
During the event Trump took credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade (1973), supported defaulting on the national debt in the debt ceiling showdown, and again falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen. Trump also suggested pardoning those convicted as a result of the January 6 United States Capitol attack.
Eligibility:
The questions of Trump's eligibility to run for president in 2024 are delineated by the U.S. Constitution. Two amendments addressing this issue are the 14th and 22nd Amendments.
Additionally, although Trump has been indicted multiple times, neither the indictments nor any resulting convictions would render him ineligible for the office.
14th Amendment:
See also: Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution § Trump disqualification debate
In the aftermath of the American Civil War, the 14th Amendment was passed. Section 3 of the amendment prohibits anyone from holding public office if they had previously sworn an oath to support the Constitution, but then "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the [United States], or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."
The full text of this section reads:
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Trump's role in the January 6 United States Capitol attack is cited by opponents as a reason for his disqualification from seeking public office.
On January 10, 2021, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, formally requested Representatives' input as to whether Section 3 pertained to the outgoing President.
On January 13, 2021, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for 'incitement of insurrection' by a vote of 232-to-197. On February 13, 2021, the Senate voted on the charge, with 57 senators casting votes of 'Guilty' to 43 as 'Not Guilty'; removal by impeachment requires a two-thirds supermajority of the United States Senate to convict in an impeachment trial.
Prominent conservative legal scholars William Baude and Michael Paulsen argued that Trump “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” and gave “aid or comfort” to others engaging in such conduct, within the meaning of the 14th Amendment, and said that "if the public record is accurate, the case is not even close. He is no longer eligible to the office of Presidency".
Some legal experts believe a court would be required to make a final determination if Trump was disqualified under Section 3. In September 2022, a New Mexico District Court Judge removed local official Couy Griffin from office due to his participation in the January 6 attack, which some commentators felt established a precedent to bar Trump from office.
Scholars believe these challenges are likely to reach the Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority; lawyer Marshall Tanick said they are unlikely to disqualify Trump.
A state may also make a determination that Trump is disqualified under Section 3 from appearing on that state's ballot. Trump could appeal in court any disqualification by Congress or by a state.
In addition to state or federal legislative action, a court action could be brought against Trump seeking his disqualification under Section 3. The 14th Amendment itself provides a path for Congress to allow such a candidate to run, but this would require a vote of two-thirds of each House to remove such disability.
State ballot removal efforts:
The non-profit group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and other advocacy groups and individuals are planning state-by-state efforts to keep Trump off state ballots.
In 2023, court cases were brought in states including Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire.
- In the Michigan case, Trump v. Benson, Judge James Robert Redford ruled on November 14 that Trump's eligibility to appear on the Republican primary ballot "presents a political question that is nonjusticiable at the present time", and found that the general election question "is not ripe for adjudication at this time".The case has been appealed directly to the Michigan Supreme Court.
- In the Colorado case, Anderson v. Griswold, Judge Sarah Wallace found that Trump engaged in insurrection, by the standard of preponderance of the evidence required by Colorado law for presidential ballot access, and even by the higher standard of clear and convincing evidence, which is less than the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt required in his separate federal criminal case. Wallace cited as relevant Trump's "history of courting extremists", his years-long effort of having "embraced the virtue and necessity of political violence", and his awareness that "his supporters were willing to engage in political violence" on his behalf. She quoted Trump's rhetoric that day, he had stated that this was "the most corrupt election in the history, maybe of the world", so his supporters could, as a "matter of national security", follow "very different rules" and "fight like hell", or they would not "have a country anymore". Wallace further cited Trump's three hours of inaction and his 6:01 P.M. tweet on understanding the motive of the violent insurrectionists. But she declined to remove Trump from the primary ballot, saying there is "scant direct evidence regarding whether the Presidency is one of the positions subject to disqualification".
22nd Amendment:
Trump has only been elected president once, in 2016, so is not limited from running again by the 22nd Amendment, which permits two full terms. Even before losing the 2020 election, he publicly proclaimed his willingness to seek a third term in 2024, despite this being explicitly prohibited.
Trump claimed that Barack Obama had spied on him and his campaign, and that this meant he was "'entitled' [to a third term] because he was spied on."
Trump is seeking to become the second president to ever serve non-consecutive terms, after Grover Cleveland who was re-elected in 1892.
The last one-term president to campaign for a second non-consecutive term was Herbert Hoover, who after serving from 1929 to 1933 made unsuccessful runs in 1936 and 1940 after his loss in 1932.
Post-announcement developments:
Three days after Trump announced his candidacy, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith to serve as special counsel for the investigations regarding Trump's role in the January 6 attack and into mishandling of government records. Special counsels can be appointed when there can be a conflict of interest or the appearance of it, and Garland said the announced political candidacies of both Trump and President Biden prompted him to take what he described as an "extraordinary step".
Special counsel investigations operate largely independent of Justice Department control under decades-old federal regulations, and Garland said the "appointment underscores the department's commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters".
On November 19, 2022, Elon Musk, four weeks after taking ownership of Twitter, resinstated both Trump's personal account and Trump's campaign account, nearly two years after Trump was permanently banned from the platform by previous Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, due to Twitter's Glorification of Violence and Civic Integerity policies, following the January 6 United States Capitol attack.
In late November 2022, Kanye West announced his own candidacy for the 2024 presidential election. Shortly thereafter, West visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago, bringing with him Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and Holocaust denier. West claimed that after he asked Trump to be his vice-presidential candidate, "Trump started basically screaming at me at the table telling me I was going to lose".
Trump responded with a statement that West "unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends, whom I knew nothing about", and in a further statement acknowledged advising West to drop out of the race.
Several other possible 2024 contenders spoke in the aftermath of this event, with Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson calling the meeting "very troubling", and Trump's former vice president Mike Pence calling on Trump to apologize for giving Fuentes "a seat at the table". Mitch McConnell said that Trump was unlikely to win the 2024 presidential election as a result of the dinner.
On December 3, 2022, following the publication of "The Twitter Files" by Elon Musk, Trump complained of election fraud and posted to Truth Social, calling for "the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution."
Vice-presidential choice:
Mike Pence served as Trump's vice president from 2017 to 2021, with Pence having been Trump's chosen running mate in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. In March 2021, Bloomberg News reported that if Trump runs again in 2024, Pence "likely won't be on the ticket" and that Trump had "discussed alternatives to Pence", while Trump's advisors "have discussed identifying a Black or female running mate for his next run".
In April 2021, Trump indicated that he was considering Florida governor Ron DeSantis for the position, noting his friendship with him; he later criticized and ridiculed DeSantis who launched his own presidential campaign on May 24, 2023.
In June 2022, a former aide testified that Trump had opined to his staff during the Capitol Hill attack that Pence "deserved" the chants of "hang Mike Pence" made by the mob. Names raised as possible candidates for the position include South Dakota governor Kristi Noem and South Carolina senator Tim Scott.
Endorsements:
Main article: List of Donald Trump 2024 presidential campaign primary endorsements
A number of Republican officials at both federal and state levels were quick to endorse Trump's candidacy, while others were noted for being silent on the question, with a few stating opposition, including:
- former Attorney General Bill Barr,
- Senator Bill Cassidy,
- and Senator Mitt Romney
Support:
Politico noted in December 2020 that many Republican figures were expressing support for a Trump 2024 run, quoting Missouri Senator Josh Hawley as saying "If he were to run in 2024, I think he would be the nominee. And I would support him doing that." National public opinion polling showed Trump quickly dominating the field of potential 2024 Republican candidates.
Utah Senator Mitt Romney, though opposed to Trump, stated in February 2021 that if Trump ran in 2024, he would win the Republican nomination in a landslide. The same month, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that he would "absolutely" support Trump if the latter was nominated again.
In April 2022, American intelligence officials assessed that Russia intended to exact revenge on the Biden administration for its sanctions against Russia and aid for Ukraine by intervening in the election on Trump's behalf. A Russian state TV host, Evgeny Popov, said in March 2020, "to again help our partner Trump to become president".
Opposition:
Main article: List of Republicans who oppose the Donald Trump 2024 presidential campaign
The donor network of Charles Koch announced it would fund a primary challenge to Trump.
Nikki Haley announced her 2024 presidential campaign on February 14, 2023, becoming the first challenger to Trump in the 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries. One of her first statements as a candidate was to call for candidates over the age of 75—which would include both Trump and Biden—to be required to take a competency test.
Primary election polling:
Main articles:
- Nationwide opinion polling for the 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries
- Statewide opinion polling for the 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries
Trump led in primary polling by a wide margin, "with GOP primary voters still seeing him as best positioned to beat President Biden. Most would back Trump enthusiastically, were he to be renominated".
General election polling:
Main article: Nationwide opinion polling for the 2024 United States presidential election
show
See also:
2020 Georgia election investigation by Fani Willis, D.A. Fulton County, Georgia
- YouTbe Video: Fulton County DA Fani Willis speaks after indicting Donald Trump, 18 others
- YouTube Video: Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis proposes new trial date ahead of Trump's surrender
- YouTube Video: 'It's just a lie!': See DA Fani Willis face off against Trump RICO co-defendant | Full Hearing
2020 Georgia election investigation
In February 2021, Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney Fani Willis launched a criminal investigation into alleged efforts by then-president Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the certified 2020 election victory of Democratic candidate Joe Biden and award the state's electoral college votes to Trump.
A special grand jury recommended indictments in January 2023, followed by a grand jury that indicted Trump and 18 allies in August 2023. The charges include conspiracy, racketeering and other felonies.
The investigation scope includes Trump pressuring Brad Raffensperger, the Republican Georgia Secretary of State, in a recorded phone call to "find" sufficient ballots for him to win the state. Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and others met with state legislators to provide specious allegations of election fraud to encourage the legislature to convene a special session to reconsider its certified electoral vote that found Biden had won.
Sixteen Trump supporters convened to create fraudulent slates of Trump electors. Republican senator and ardent Trump supporter Lindsey Graham asked the secretary of state if he could discard legally-cast ballots.
The investigation examines one facet of many attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, others of which are being investigated by the Department of Justice and the Smith special counsel investigation.
Background:
Main article: Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election § Background
Accusations of electoral fraud
Throughout his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly sowed doubt on the election certification process. Campaigning in Colorado, Trump claimed that the Democratic Party "[rigged] the election at polling booths". Trump claimed that widespread voter fraud had occurred in the 2016 presidential election in a series of tweets in October 2016. These statements were echoed by Rudy Giuliani, Trump's legal advisor.
Attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election:
See also:
Following Trump's defeat in the 2020 presidential election, an outside advisor to Trump known as Kenneth Chesebro began drafting a plot to purport Trump supporters as electors.
Chesebro justified the plot using precedent set in the 1960 United States presidential election, by certifying a slate of electors declaring Trump the winner. Attempting to overturn the results of the election, Trump called Georgia governor Brian Kemp, asking him to convene Georgia's legislators to select electors that would support him in the election, and requested an audit of absentee ballots.
Georgia certified the results of the election multiple times and reaffirmed Joe Biden's win in the state, including a final time on December 7, prior to the Electoral College vote a week later.
Trump–Raffensperger phone call:
Main article: Trump–Raffensperger phone call
Trump called Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia Secretary of State, on January 2, 2021, and pressured him to alter the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Trump's call with Raffensperger was obtained by The Washington Post the following day.
Investigation:
Fani Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County, Georgia, began a criminal investigation into Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election on February 10, 2021.
Willis began interviewing election officials and staff working under Raffensperger in September 2021.
2022 special grand jury:
Willis requested a special grand jury for her investigation into Trump on January 20, 2022. The Superior Court of Fulton County granted the request four days later. The special grand jury was authorized to write a report but not to indict anyone.
About 75 witnesses testified.
Subpoenas;
Multiple subpoenas were issued on July 5, 2022. Some were sent to members of Trump's legal team, including;
Giuliani was deposed on August 17, Ellis on August 25, and Eastman on August 31. Another went to former Capitol Hill counsel Jacki Pick Deason, but a Texas court said she did not have to testify.
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham was also subpoenaed that day, and after the subpoena was upheld by a federal judge, an appeals court, and the U.S. Supreme Court, he was deposed on November 22.
Later subpoenas included:
Also testifying were:
December 2022 report:
On December 15, 2022, the grand jury completed its report.
On September 8, 2023, the report was released in full to the public, revealing that the grand jury had recommended charges against 39 people. (By the time this information was released, the district attorney had already charged 18 of them, plus one more the grand jury had not named.)
The 21 people not charged included Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, former GOP Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
A previous partial public release had revealed the grand jury's conclusion that some of the 75 witnesses may have committed perjury. The partial and full releases were both by order of Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney.
Allegation of defense attorneys misconduct:
In April 2023, Willis alleged two attorneys representing ten Georgia Republicans under investigation for acting as fake electors of falsely representing they had informed their clients of immunity deals offered by investigators though they had not.
Willis sought in a court filing to have one of the attorneys removed from the case. One Republican under investigation who was not represented by the two attorneys had accepted an immunity deal. One of the attorneys denied the allegation, while another was not available for comment.
Immunity agreements:
At least eight of the sixteen Republicans who allegedly participated in the fake electors scheme had accepted immunity deals to cooperate with Willis by May 2023.
2023 grand jury:
After Willis hinted that an indictment might come during the first half of August 2023, another grand jury was seated on July 11, this one empowered to vote to bring charges against Trump.
Indictment:
Main article: Georgia election racketeering prosecution
The grand jury indicted Trump and 18 allies on August 14. This followed a day of testimony by witnesses including former Georgia state senator Jen Jordan, former state representative Bee Nguyen, former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan and independent journalist George Chidi.
Gabe Sterling, a Georgia official for the Secretary of State, was also seen in the courthouse that day. The charges against Trump include racketeering and other felonies. Willis gave the 19 co-defendants the opportunity to voluntarily surrender no later than noon on Friday, August 25, 2023.
Each defendant is charged with one count of violating the Georgia version of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act and at least one other charge.
The co-defendants are:
Trump and Giuliani face 13 counts each. The other defendants face fewer charges.
There is overlap with the co-conspirators mentioned in the federal indictment of Trump issued two weeks earlier. In the federal indictment, Giuliani was co-conspirator No. #1, Eastman was #2, Powell was #3, Clark was #4, and Chesebro was #5. All five of these people, though not charged in the federal prosecution, are charged as co-defendants in the Georgia prosecution. (Co-conspirator No. #6 in the federal indictment has not yet been conclusively identified by the public.)
The indictment references thirty unidentified and unindicted co-conspirators.
When the indictment was unsealed, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis told reporters she would propose a trial date within the next six months and would seek to try all 19 co-defendants together.
Threats and security:
At the end of July, Willis disclosed to county leaders a threatening email she had received, calling her a "corrupt nigger" and a "Jim Crow Democrat whore"; "I guess I am sending this as a reminder that you should stay alert over the month of August and stay safe," Willis wrote.
In September, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote that Willis "travels with an around-the-clock security detail at work and at her home, and last year gave her frontline staff bulletproof vests and keychains with panic buttons", it also noted that her family has been threatened.
On August 1, two weeks before the indictment, county sheriff Pat Labat said normal procedures, including mug shot and fingerprints, would be followed for Trump were he to be indicted.
Plea agreements:
Further information: Georgia election racketeering prosecution § Guilty pleas
Bail bondsman Scott Hall pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties, on Friday September 29th 2023.
Lawyer Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors accusing her of conspiring to intentionally interfere with the performance of election duties, on Thursday October 19th 2023.
Lawyer Kenneth Chesebro pleaded guilty to one felony, conspiracy to commit filing false documents, on Friday October 20th 2023.
Lawyer Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony, aiding and abetting false statements and writings, on Tuesday October 24th 2023.
Other investigations:
Georgia Lieutenant governor Burt Jones was one of thirty unidentified and unindicted co-conspirators referenced in the Willis indictment. Jones was a state senator in 2020 and allegedly played a prominent role in seeking to replace official electors with Trump electors. After reviewing the Willis indictment, Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia, said he planned to appoint a special prosecutor to examine Jones's activities.
Responses:
Trump's response:
Upon the February 2023 release of excerpts of the special grand jury report, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung defended Trump and the phone call made between Trump and Raffensperger.
On July 14, Trump attorneys petitioned two courts to end the investigation. The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously rejected this petition the next business day, and Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney also rejected it on July 31.
Trump's team had asked to throw out evidence obtained by the special grand jury, ban prosecutors from presenting evidence to the charging grand jury and disqualify Willis from any related proceedings, alleging Trump would suffer "a violation of his fundamental constitutional rights" as he sought the Republican presidential nomination.
Other responses:
In February 2023, Timothy J. Heaphy, the top investigator on the January 6 House select committee, said he expected "indictments both in Georgia and at the federal level.”
In May 2023, Georgia Republicans enacted a law that created a commission empowered to discipline or remove state prosecutors who were alleged to have violated their duties. As he signed the bill creating the commission, governor Brian Kemp said it would curb "far-left prosecutors" who are "making our communities less safe."
State senator Chad Dixon announced in August that he would file a complaint against Willis when the commission commenced in October, alleging she had weaponized the justice system against political opponents with an "unabashed goal to become some sort of leftist celebrity."
On July 18, 2023, after the grand jury was seated, attorneys for David Shafer wrote to Willis arguing that Shafer's action was protected under the First, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Willis had already identified Shafer as a target of the investigation.
In February 2021, Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney Fani Willis launched a criminal investigation into alleged efforts by then-president Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the certified 2020 election victory of Democratic candidate Joe Biden and award the state's electoral college votes to Trump.
A special grand jury recommended indictments in January 2023, followed by a grand jury that indicted Trump and 18 allies in August 2023. The charges include conspiracy, racketeering and other felonies.
The investigation scope includes Trump pressuring Brad Raffensperger, the Republican Georgia Secretary of State, in a recorded phone call to "find" sufficient ballots for him to win the state. Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and others met with state legislators to provide specious allegations of election fraud to encourage the legislature to convene a special session to reconsider its certified electoral vote that found Biden had won.
Sixteen Trump supporters convened to create fraudulent slates of Trump electors. Republican senator and ardent Trump supporter Lindsey Graham asked the secretary of state if he could discard legally-cast ballots.
The investigation examines one facet of many attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, others of which are being investigated by the Department of Justice and the Smith special counsel investigation.
Background:
Main article: Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election § Background
Accusations of electoral fraud
Throughout his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly sowed doubt on the election certification process. Campaigning in Colorado, Trump claimed that the Democratic Party "[rigged] the election at polling booths". Trump claimed that widespread voter fraud had occurred in the 2016 presidential election in a series of tweets in October 2016. These statements were echoed by Rudy Giuliani, Trump's legal advisor.
Attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election:
See also:
- Trump fake electors plot
- 2020 United States presidential election in Georgia
- Post-election lawsuits related to the 2020 United States presidential election from Georgia
Following Trump's defeat in the 2020 presidential election, an outside advisor to Trump known as Kenneth Chesebro began drafting a plot to purport Trump supporters as electors.
Chesebro justified the plot using precedent set in the 1960 United States presidential election, by certifying a slate of electors declaring Trump the winner. Attempting to overturn the results of the election, Trump called Georgia governor Brian Kemp, asking him to convene Georgia's legislators to select electors that would support him in the election, and requested an audit of absentee ballots.
Georgia certified the results of the election multiple times and reaffirmed Joe Biden's win in the state, including a final time on December 7, prior to the Electoral College vote a week later.
Trump–Raffensperger phone call:
Main article: Trump–Raffensperger phone call
Trump called Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia Secretary of State, on January 2, 2021, and pressured him to alter the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Trump's call with Raffensperger was obtained by The Washington Post the following day.
Investigation:
Fani Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County, Georgia, began a criminal investigation into Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election on February 10, 2021.
Willis began interviewing election officials and staff working under Raffensperger in September 2021.
2022 special grand jury:
Willis requested a special grand jury for her investigation into Trump on January 20, 2022. The Superior Court of Fulton County granted the request four days later. The special grand jury was authorized to write a report but not to indict anyone.
About 75 witnesses testified.
Subpoenas;
Multiple subpoenas were issued on July 5, 2022. Some were sent to members of Trump's legal team, including;
Giuliani was deposed on August 17, Ellis on August 25, and Eastman on August 31. Another went to former Capitol Hill counsel Jacki Pick Deason, but a Texas court said she did not have to testify.
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham was also subpoenaed that day, and after the subpoena was upheld by a federal judge, an appeals court, and the U.S. Supreme Court, he was deposed on November 22.
Later subpoenas included:
- Georgia Governor Brian Kemp (subpoenaed August 4, deposed November 15)
- former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows (subpoenaed October 26, deposed)
- and former national security advisor Michael Flynn (subpoenaed November 15, deposed December 8).
Also testifying were:
- Former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan,
- Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger,
- Georgia attorney general Chris Carr,
- and former Georgia Speaker of the House David Ralston also testified.
December 2022 report:
On December 15, 2022, the grand jury completed its report.
On September 8, 2023, the report was released in full to the public, revealing that the grand jury had recommended charges against 39 people. (By the time this information was released, the district attorney had already charged 18 of them, plus one more the grand jury had not named.)
The 21 people not charged included Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, former GOP Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
A previous partial public release had revealed the grand jury's conclusion that some of the 75 witnesses may have committed perjury. The partial and full releases were both by order of Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney.
Allegation of defense attorneys misconduct:
In April 2023, Willis alleged two attorneys representing ten Georgia Republicans under investigation for acting as fake electors of falsely representing they had informed their clients of immunity deals offered by investigators though they had not.
Willis sought in a court filing to have one of the attorneys removed from the case. One Republican under investigation who was not represented by the two attorneys had accepted an immunity deal. One of the attorneys denied the allegation, while another was not available for comment.
Immunity agreements:
At least eight of the sixteen Republicans who allegedly participated in the fake electors scheme had accepted immunity deals to cooperate with Willis by May 2023.
2023 grand jury:
After Willis hinted that an indictment might come during the first half of August 2023, another grand jury was seated on July 11, this one empowered to vote to bring charges against Trump.
Indictment:
Main article: Georgia election racketeering prosecution
The grand jury indicted Trump and 18 allies on August 14. This followed a day of testimony by witnesses including former Georgia state senator Jen Jordan, former state representative Bee Nguyen, former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan and independent journalist George Chidi.
Gabe Sterling, a Georgia official for the Secretary of State, was also seen in the courthouse that day. The charges against Trump include racketeering and other felonies. Willis gave the 19 co-defendants the opportunity to voluntarily surrender no later than noon on Friday, August 25, 2023.
Each defendant is charged with one count of violating the Georgia version of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act and at least one other charge.
The co-defendants are:
- Former U.S. President Donald Trump
- Rudy Giuliani (attorney)
- Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows
- Georgia State Sen. Shawn Still
- John Eastman (attorney)
- Sidney Powell (attorney)
- Jenna Ellis (attorney)
- Bob Cheeley (attorney)
- Ray Smith III (attorney)
- Kenneth Chesebro (attorney)
- Former assistant U.S. attorney general Jeffrey Clark
- GOP strategist Michael Roman
- Former Coffee County elections supervisor Misty Hampton
- Former Coffee County GOP chairwoman Cathy Latham
- Atlanta bail bondsman Scott G. Hall
- Publicist Trevian Kutti
- Illinois pastor Steve Lee
- Harrison Floyd, former candidate for a U.S. House seat and director of Black Voices for Trump
- David Shafer, Georgia Republican Party chair and alleged fake elector
Trump and Giuliani face 13 counts each. The other defendants face fewer charges.
There is overlap with the co-conspirators mentioned in the federal indictment of Trump issued two weeks earlier. In the federal indictment, Giuliani was co-conspirator No. #1, Eastman was #2, Powell was #3, Clark was #4, and Chesebro was #5. All five of these people, though not charged in the federal prosecution, are charged as co-defendants in the Georgia prosecution. (Co-conspirator No. #6 in the federal indictment has not yet been conclusively identified by the public.)
The indictment references thirty unidentified and unindicted co-conspirators.
When the indictment was unsealed, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis told reporters she would propose a trial date within the next six months and would seek to try all 19 co-defendants together.
Threats and security:
At the end of July, Willis disclosed to county leaders a threatening email she had received, calling her a "corrupt nigger" and a "Jim Crow Democrat whore"; "I guess I am sending this as a reminder that you should stay alert over the month of August and stay safe," Willis wrote.
In September, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote that Willis "travels with an around-the-clock security detail at work and at her home, and last year gave her frontline staff bulletproof vests and keychains with panic buttons", it also noted that her family has been threatened.
On August 1, two weeks before the indictment, county sheriff Pat Labat said normal procedures, including mug shot and fingerprints, would be followed for Trump were he to be indicted.
Plea agreements:
Further information: Georgia election racketeering prosecution § Guilty pleas
Bail bondsman Scott Hall pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties, on Friday September 29th 2023.
Lawyer Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors accusing her of conspiring to intentionally interfere with the performance of election duties, on Thursday October 19th 2023.
Lawyer Kenneth Chesebro pleaded guilty to one felony, conspiracy to commit filing false documents, on Friday October 20th 2023.
Lawyer Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony, aiding and abetting false statements and writings, on Tuesday October 24th 2023.
Other investigations:
Georgia Lieutenant governor Burt Jones was one of thirty unidentified and unindicted co-conspirators referenced in the Willis indictment. Jones was a state senator in 2020 and allegedly played a prominent role in seeking to replace official electors with Trump electors. After reviewing the Willis indictment, Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia, said he planned to appoint a special prosecutor to examine Jones's activities.
Responses:
Trump's response:
Upon the February 2023 release of excerpts of the special grand jury report, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung defended Trump and the phone call made between Trump and Raffensperger.
On July 14, Trump attorneys petitioned two courts to end the investigation. The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously rejected this petition the next business day, and Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney also rejected it on July 31.
Trump's team had asked to throw out evidence obtained by the special grand jury, ban prosecutors from presenting evidence to the charging grand jury and disqualify Willis from any related proceedings, alleging Trump would suffer "a violation of his fundamental constitutional rights" as he sought the Republican presidential nomination.
Other responses:
In February 2023, Timothy J. Heaphy, the top investigator on the January 6 House select committee, said he expected "indictments both in Georgia and at the federal level.”
In May 2023, Georgia Republicans enacted a law that created a commission empowered to discipline or remove state prosecutors who were alleged to have violated their duties. As he signed the bill creating the commission, governor Brian Kemp said it would curb "far-left prosecutors" who are "making our communities less safe."
State senator Chad Dixon announced in August that he would file a complaint against Willis when the commission commenced in October, alleging she had weaponized the justice system against political opponents with an "unabashed goal to become some sort of leftist celebrity."
On July 18, 2023, after the grand jury was seated, attorneys for David Shafer wrote to Willis arguing that Shafer's action was protected under the First, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Willis had already identified Shafer as a target of the investigation.
Political Positions of Donald Trump including Policies of Donald Trump
- YouTube Video: How Trump is still damaging American politics
- YouTube Video: Trump wants to 'finish the hit job on our democracy
- YouTube Video: Donald Trump increasingly compared to Adolf Hitler (CBS News)
[Note that this topic preceded Trump's election and initiaally may appear dated. But the purpose is to cover his political beliefs/positions early on during his first election campaign to his latter reality as President.]
The political positions of Donald Trump (sometimes referred to as Trumpism), the 45th president of the United States, have frequently changed. Trump is primarily a populist, protectionist, isolationist, and nationalist.
Political affiliation and ideology:
Self-described:
Donald Trump registered as a Republican in Manhattan in 1987; since that time, he has changed his party affiliation five times:
In a 2004 interview, Trump told CNN's Wolf Blitzer: "In many cases, I probably identify more as Democrat", explaining: "It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans. Now, it shouldn't be that way. But if you go back, I mean it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats...But certainly we had some very good economies under Democrats, as well as Republicans. But we've had some pretty bad disaster under the Republicans."
In a July 2015 interview, Trump said that he has a broad range of political positions and that "I identify with some things as a Democrat."
During his 2016 campaign for the presidency, Trump consistently described the state of the United States in bleak terms, referring to it as a nation in dire peril that is plagued by lawlessness, poverty, and violence, constantly under threat, and at risk of having "nothing, absolutely nothing, left".
In accepting the Republican nomination for president, Trump said that "I alone can fix" the system, and pledged that if elected, "Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo."
He described himself as a "law and order" candidate and "the voice" of "the forgotten men and women" Trump's inaugural address on January 20, 2017, focused on his campaign theme of America in crisis and decline. He pledged to end what he referred to as "American carnage", depicting the United States in a dystopian light—as a "land of abandoned factories, economic angst, rising crime"—while pledging "a new era in American politics".
Although Trump was the Republican nominee, he has signaled that the official party platform, adopted at the 2016 Republican National Convention, diverges from his own views. According to a The Washington Post tally, Trump made some 282 campaign promises over the course of his 2016 campaign.
In February 2017, Trump stated that he was a "total nationalist" in a "true sense". In October 2018, Trump again described himself as a nationalist.
During the last week of his presidential term, Trump was reportedly considering founding a new political party and wanted to call it the Patriot Party.
As described by others:
Further information: Trumpism and Fascism in North America
Trump's political positions are viewed by some as populist. Politicians and pundits alike have referred to Trump's populism, anti-free trade, and anti-immigrant stances as "Trumpism".
Liberal economist and columnist Paul Krugman disputes that Trump is a populist, arguing that his policies favor the rich over those less well off.
Harvard Kennedy School political scientist Pippa Norris has described Trump as a "populist authoritarian" analogous to European parties such as the Swiss People's Party, Austrian Freedom Party, Swedish Democrats, and Danish People's Party.
Columnist Walter Shapiro and political commentator Jonathan Chait describe Trump as authoritarian.
Conservative commentator Mary Katharine Ham characterized Trump as a "casual authoritarian," saying "he is a candidate who has happily and proudly spurned the entire idea of limits on his power as an executive and doesn't have any interest in the Constitution and what it allows him to do and what [it] does not allow him to do. That is concerning for people who are interested in limited government."
Charles C. W. Cooke of the National Review has expressed similar views, terming Trump an "anti-constitutional authoritarian."
Libertarian journalist Nick Gillespie, by contrast, calls Trump "populist rather than an authoritarian". Rich Benjamin refers to Trump and his ideology as fascist and a form of inverted totalitarianism.
Legal experts spanning the political spectrum, including many conservative and libertarian scholars, have suggested that "Trump's blustery attacks on the press, complaints about the judicial system and bold claims of presidential power collectively sketch out a constitutional worldview that shows contempt for the First Amendment, the separation of powers and the rule of law."
Law professors Randy E. Barnett, Richard Epstein, and David G. Post, for example, suggest that Trump has little or no awareness of, or commitment to, the constitutional principles of separation of powers and federalism.
Law professor Ilya Somin believes that Trump "poses a serious threat to the press and the First Amendment," citing Trump's proposal to expand defamation laws to make it easier to sue journalists and his remark that the owner of The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, would "have problems" if Trump was elected president.
Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote in an op-ed published in The Washington Post in July 2016 that "Trump's proposed policies, if carried out, would trigger a constitutional crisis. By our reckoning, a Trump administration would violate the First, Fourth, Fifth and Eighth amendments if it tried to implement his most controversial plans."
Prior to his election as president, his views on social issues were often described as centrist or moderate. Political commentator Josh Barro termed Trump a "moderate Republican," saying that except on immigration, his views are "anything but ideologically rigid, and he certainly does not equate deal making with surrender."
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said Trump is essentially more like a "centrist Democrat" on social issues.
Journalist and political analyst John Heilemann characterized Trump as liberal on social issues, while conservative talk radio host and political commentator Rush Limbaugh said that Heilemann is seeing in Trump what he wants to see. Since he became president, commentators have generally characterized his policy agenda as socially conservative.
Trump and his political views have often been described as nationalist. John Cassidy of New Yorker writes that Trump seeks to make the Republican Party "into a more populist, nativist, avowedly protectionist, and semi-isolationist party that is skeptical of immigration, free trade, and military interventionism."
The Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt and College of the Holy Cross political scientist Donald Brand describe Trump as a nativist.
Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, instead calls Trump an "immigration hawk" and supports Trump's effort to return immigration levels to what Trump calls a "historically average level".
Trump is a protectionist, according to free-market advocate Stephen Moore and conservative economist Larry Kudlow.
Historian Joshua M. Zeitz wrote in 2016 that Trump's appeals to "law and order" and "the silent majority" were comparable to the dog-whistle and racially-coded terminology of Richard Nixon.
According to a 2020 study, voters had the most difficulty assessing the ideology of Trump in the 2016 election out of all presidential candidates since 1972 and all contemporary legislators.
Scales and rankings:
Crowdpac:
In 2015, Crowdpac gave Trump a ranking of 0.4L out of 10, indicating moderate positions. In 2016, the ranking was changed to 5.1C out of 10, shifting him more to the conservative spectrum.
On the issues:
The organization and website On the Issues has classified Trump in a variety of ways over time, showing the variance of his political beliefs:
Politics and policies during presidency:
As president, Trump has pursued sizable income tax cuts, deregulation, increased military spending, rollbacks of federal health-care protections, and the appointment of conservative judges consistent with conservative (Republican Party) policies.
However, his anti-globalization policies of trade protectionism cross party lines. In foreign affairs he has described himself as a nationalist. Trump has said that he is "totally flexible on very, very many issues."
Trump's signature issue is immigration, especially illegal immigration, and in particular building or expanding a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
In his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump promised significant infrastructure investment and protection for entitlements for the elderly, typically considered liberal (Democratic Party) policies.
In October 2016, Trump's campaign posted fourteen categories of policy proposals on his website, which have been since removed. During October 2016, Trump outlined a series of steps for his first 100 days in office.
Trump's political positions, and his descriptions of his beliefs, have often been inconsistent. Politico has described his positions as "eclectic, improvisational and often contradictory."
According to an NBC News count, over the course of his campaign Trump made "141 distinct shifts on 23 major issues."
Fact-checking organizations reported that during the campaign, Trump made a record number of false statements and lies compared to other candidates, a pattern that has continued – and further increased – in office.
Domestic policy
Campaign finance:
See also: Campaign finance reform in the United States
While Trump has repeatedly expressed support for "the idea of campaign finance reform", he has not outlined specifics of his actual views on campaign-finance regulation.
For example, Trump has not said whether he favors public financing of elections or caps on expenditures of campaigns, outside groups, and individuals.
During the Republican primary race, Trump on several occasions accused his Republican opponents of being bound to their campaign financiers, and asserted that anyone (including Trump himself) could buy their policies with donations. He called super PACs a "scam" and "a horrible thing". In October 2015, he said, "All Presidential candidates should immediately disavow their Super PACs. They're not only breaking the spirit of the law but the law itself."
Having previously touted the self-funding of his campaign as a sign of his independence from the political establishment and big donors, Trump reversed course and started to fundraise in early May 2016. While Trump systematically disavowed pro-Trump super PACs earlier in the race, he stopped doing so from early May 2016.
Civil servants:
According to Chris Christie (who served briefly as leader of Trump's White House transition team), Trump will seek to purge the federal government of officials appointed by Obama and will ask Congress to pass legislation making it easier to fire public workers.
Trump's former Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon, stated in February 2017 that Trump's goal is to "deconstruct the administrative state".
Disabled people:
Trump has provided "little detail regarding his positions on disability-related policies," and his campaign website made no mention of disabled people. As of June 1, 2016, Trump had not responded to the issue questionnaire of the nonpartisan disability group RespectAbility.
District of Columbia statehood:
Main article: Statehood movement in the District of Columbia
Trump is opposed to D.C. statehood. In 2020, Donald Trump indicated that if the statehood legislation for Washington, D.C. passes both houses of Congress, he would veto the admission legislation
Education:
Main article: Education in the United States
2016 campaign:
Trump has stated his support for school choice and local control for primary and secondary schools. On school choice he's commented, "Our public schools are capable of providing a more competitive product than they do today. Look at some of the high school tests from earlier in this century and you'll wonder if they weren't college-level tests. And we've got to bring on the competition—open the schoolhouse doors and let parents choose the best school for their children. Education reformers call this school choice, charter schools, vouchers, even opportunity scholarships. I call it competition—the American way."
Trump has blasted the Common Core State Standards Initiative, calling it a "total disaster".
Trump has asserted that Common Core is "education through Washington, D.C.", a claim which Politifact and other journalists have rated "false", since the adoption and implementation of Common Core is a state choice, not a federal one.
Trump has stated that Ben Carson will be "very much involved in education" under a Trump presidency. Carson rejects the theory of evolution and believes that "home-schoolers do the best, private schoolers next best, charter schoolers next best, and public schoolers worst"; he said that he wanted to "take the federal bureaucracy out of education."
Trump has proposed redirecting $20 billion in existing federal spending to block grants to states to give poor children vouchers to attend a school of their family's choice (including a charter school, private school, or online school).
Trump did not explain where the $20 billion in the federal budget would come from. Trump stated that "Distribution of this grant will favor states that have private school choice and charter laws."
Presidency:
As president, Trump chose Republican financier Betsy DeVos, a prominent Michigan charter school advocate, as Secretary of Education. The nomination was highly controversial; The Washington Post education writer Valerie Strauss wrote that "DeVos was considered the most controversial education nominee in the history of the nearly 40-year-old Education Department."
On the confirmation vote the Senate split 50/50 (along party lines, with two Republican senators joining all Democratic senators to vote against confirmation). Vice President Mike Pence used his tie-breaking vote to confirm the nomination, the first time in U.S. history that occurred.
2024 campaign:
During his 2024 presidential campaign Trump expressed opposition to the use of academic tenure and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in U.S. educational institutions.
Eminent domain:
See also: Eminent domain in the United States
In 2015 Trump called eminent domain "wonderful". He repeatedly asked the government to invoke it on his behalf during past development projects.
Food safety:
Main article: Food safety in the United States
In September 2016, Trump posted a list on his website of regulations that he would eliminate. The list included what it called the "FDA Food Police" and mentioned the Food and Drug Administration's rules governing "farm and food production hygiene" and "food temperatures". The factsheet provided by Trump mirrored a May report by the conservative Heritage Foundation. It was replaced later that month and the new factsheet did not mention the FDA.
Native Americans:
Further information: Native Americans in the United States
Colman McCarthy of The Washington Post wrote in 1993 that in testimony given that year to the House Natural Resources subcommittee on Native American Affairs, Trump "devoted much of his testimony to bad-mouthing Indians and their casinos," asserted that "organized crime is rampant on Indian reservations" and that "if it continues it will be the biggest scandal ever."
Trump offered no evidence in support of his claim, and testimony from the FBI's organized crime division, the Justice Department's criminal division, and the IRS's criminal investigation division did not support Trump's assertion.
Representative George Miller, a Democrat who was the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee at the time, stated: "In my 19 years in Congress, I've never heard more irresponsible testimony."
Trump bankrolled in 2000 a set of anti-Indian gaming ads in upstate New York that featured "a dark photograph showing hypodermic needles and drug paraphernalia," a warning that "violent criminals were coming to town," and an accusation that the St. Regis Mohawks had a "record of criminal activity."
The ad—aimed at stopping the construction of a casino in the Catskills that might hurt Trump's own Atlantic City casinos—was viewed as "incendiary" and racially charged, and at the time local tribal leaders, in response, bought a newspaper ad of their own to denounce the "smear" and "racist and inflammatory rhetoric" of the earlier ad.
The ads attracted the attention of the New York Temporary State Commission on Lobbying because they failed to disclose Trump's sponsorship as required by state lobbying rules.
Trump acknowledged that he sponsored the ads and reached a settlement with the state in which he and his associates agreed to issue a public apology and pay $250,000 (the largest civil penalty ever levied by the commission) for evading state disclosure rules.
In 2015, Trump defended the controversial team name and mascot of the Washington Redskins, saying that the NFL team should not change its name and he did not find the term to be offensive.
The "Change the Mascot" campaign, led by the Oneida Indian Nation and National Congress of American Indians, condemned Trump's stance.
While campaigning in 2016, Trump has repeatedly belittled Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts by calling her "Pocahontas" (a reference to Warren's claim, based on family lore, of Native American ancestry, which she has been unable to document).
Trump's comments were criticized by a number of public figures as racist and inappropriate. Gyasi Ross of the Blackfeet Nation, a Native American activist and author, criticized Trump's "badgering of Elizabeth Warren as 'Pocahontas'" as "simply the continuation of his pattern of racist bullying."
Questioning Obama's citizenship:
Main article: Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories
For several years Trump promoted "birther" conspiracy theories about Barack Obama's citizenship.
In March 2011, during an interview on Good Morning America, Trump said he was seriously considering running for president, that he was a "little" skeptical of Obama's citizenship and that someone who shares this view should not be so quickly dismissed as an "idiot". Trump added: "Growing up no one knew him"—a claim ranked "Pants on Fire" by Politifact.
Later, Trump appeared on The View repeating several times that "I want him (Obama) to show his birth certificate" and speculating that "there's something on that birth certificate that he doesn't like." Although officials in Hawaii certified Obama's citizenship, Trump said in April 2011 he would not let go of the issue, because he was not satisfied that Obama had proved his citizenship.
After Obama released his long-form birth certificate on April 27, 2011, Trump said: "I am really honored and I am really proud, that I was able to do something that nobody else could do." Trump continued to question Obama's birth certificate in the following years, as late as 2015.
In May 2012, Trump suggested that Obama might have been born in Kenya. In October 2012, Trump offered to donate five million dollars to the charity of Obama's choice in return for the publication of his college and passport applications before the end of the month.
In a 2014 interview, Trump questioned whether Obama had produced his long-form birth certificate. When asked in December 2015 if he still questioned Obama's legitimacy, Trump said that "I don't talk about that anymore."
On September 14, 2016, Trump declined to acknowledge whether he believed Obama was born in the United States.
On September 15, 2016, Trump for the first time acknowledged that Obama was born in the United States. He gave a terse statement, saying, "President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period."
He falsely accused Hillary Clinton of having started the "Birther" movement. He also asserted that he "finished" the birther controversy, apparently referring to Obama's 2011 release of his long-form birth certificate, despite the fact that he continued to question Obama's citizenship in the years that followed.
The next day, Trump tweeted a story in The Washington Post with the headline "Donald Trump's birther event is the greatest trick he's ever pulled". The "greatest trick" of the headline referred to the fact that cable networks aired the event live, waiting for a "birther" statement, while Trump touted his new hotel and supporters gave testimonials. In October 2016, Trump appeared to question the legitimacy of Barack Obama's presidency, referring to him at a rally as the "quote 'president' ".
Social Security and Medicare:
Main articles:
During his campaign Trump repeatedly promised "I'm not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I'm not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid." For the first three years of his presidency he said nothing about cutting Social Security or Medicare.
In a January 2020 interview he said he planned to "take a look" at entitlement programs like Medicare, but he then said via Twitter "We will not be touching your Social Security or Medicare in Fiscal 2021 Budget."
His proposed 2021 budget, unveiled in February 2020, included a $45 billion (~$48.2 billion in 2022) cut to the program within Social Security that supports disabled people, as well as cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.
In August 2020, as part of a package of executive orders related to the COVID-19 pandemic, he signed an order to postpone the collection of the payroll taxes that support Social Security and Medicare, paid by employees and employers, for the rest of 2020. He also said that if he wins re-election, he will forgive the postponed payroll taxes and make permanent cuts to the payroll tax, saying he would "terminate the tax", although only Congress can change tax law.
Analysts said such an action would threaten Social Security and Medicare by eliminating the dedicated funding which pays for the programs.
Veterans:
2016 presidential campaign:
Trump caused a stir in July 2015 when he charged that Senator John McCain had "done nothing to help the vets," a statement ruled false by PolitiFact and the Chicago Tribune. Trump added that McCain is "not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured."
As a presidential candidate, Trump was critical of the ways in which veterans are treated in the United States, saying "the vets are horribly treated in this country...they are living in hell."
He favored eliminating backlogs and wait-lists that had caused a Veterans Health Administration scandal the previous year. He claimed that "over 300,000 veterans have died waiting for care."
He said he believed Veterans Affairs (VA) facilities needed to be technologically upgraded, to hire more veterans to treat other veterans, to increase support of female veterans, and to create satellite clinics within hospitals in rural areas.
He proposed a plan for reforming the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs with provisions to allow veterans to obtain care from any doctor or facility that accepts Medicare, to increase funding for PTSD and suicide prevention services, and to provide ob/gyn services at every VA hospital.
Trump called for greater privatization of veterans' care, although his plan made no direct reference to letting veterans get health care outside the VA system. The Wall Street Journal noted that "such a plan is counter to recommendations from major veterans groups, the VA itself and from the Commission on Care, an independent body established by Congress that last week made recommendations for VA changes."
Trump's plan calls "for legislation making it easier to fire underperforming employees, increasing mental-health resources and adding a White House hotline so veterans can bypass the VA and bring problems directly to the president." Trump opposed the current G.I. Bill in 2016.
In January 2016, Trump hosted a fundraising rally for veterans (skipping a televised Republican debate to do so). Weeks later, after The Wall Street Journal inquired with the Trump campaign when veterans' groups would receive their checks, the funds began to be disbursed.
In April, the Journal reported that the funds had yet to be fully distributed. In May, NPR confirmed directly with 30 recipient charities that they had received their funds, "accounting for $4.27 million of the $5.6 million total," while the remaining 11 charities did not answer the question.
Presidency and 2020 campaign:
In February 2018, the Trump administration initiated a policy known as 'Deploy Or Get Out' (DOGO), ordering the Pentagon to discharge any soldier who would be ineligible for deployment within the next 12 months. This mainly affected disabled soldiers. It also affected HIV-positive soldiers, who are allowed to serve within the US but cannot be deployed overseas; the DOGO policy meant that they could no longer serve within the US, either.
In August 2019, Trump credited himself for passing the Veterans Choice Act, a law that had actually been passed under the previous president, Barack Obama, in 2014. Trump did sign an expansion of that Act in 2018.
In September 2020, The Atlantic reported that Trump referred to Americans who were casualties of war as "losers" and "suckers", citing multiple people who were present for the statements; later reporting by the Associated Press and Fox News corroborated some of these stories.
Veterans expressed scorn over the report's allegations. Trump denied these allegations and called them "disgraceful", adding: "I would be willing to swear on anything that I never said that about our fallen heroes". John Bolton, who was present at the discussion, also said he never heard Trump make such comments.
Economy and trade
Main articles:
Environment and energy
Main article: Environmental policy under the Trump administration
By March 2016, Trump had not released any plans to combat climate change or provided details regarding his approach to energy issues more broadly.
In May 2016, Trump asked Republican U.S. representative Kevin Cramer of North Dakota—described by Reuters as "one of America's most ardent drilling advocates and climate change skeptics"—to draft Trump's energy policy.
California drought:
Main article: Droughts in California
In May 2016, Trump said that he could solve the water crisis in California. He declared that "there is no drought", a statement which the Associated Press noted is incorrect. Trump accused California state officials of denying farmers of water so they can send it out to sea "to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish." According to the AP, Trump appeared to be referring to a dispute between Central Valley farming interests and environmental interests; California farmers accuse water authorities of short-changing them of the water in their efforts to protect endangered native fish species.
Climate change and pollution:
Main articles:
Trump rejects the scientific consensus on climate change, repeatedly contending that global warming is a "hoax." He has said that "the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive," a statement which Trump later said was a joke. However, it was also pointed out that he often conflates weather with climate change.
Trump criticized President Obama's description of climate change as "the greatest threat to future generations" for being "naive" and "one of the dumbest statements I've ever heard." A 2016 report by the Sierra Club contended that, were he to be elected president, Trump would be the only head of state in the world to contend that climate change is a hoax.
In December 2009, Trump and his three adult children had signed a full-page advertisement from "business leaders" in The New York Times stating "If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet" and encouraging "investment in the clean energy economy" to "create new energy jobs and increase our energy security".
Although "not a believer in climate change", Trump has stated that "clean air is a pressing problem" and has said: "There is still much that needs to be investigated in the field of climate change. Perhaps the best use of our limited financial resources should be in dealing with making sure that every person in the world has clean water."
In May 2016, during his presidential campaign, Trump issued an energy plan focused on promoting fossil fuels and weakening environmental regulation. Trump promised to "rescind" in his first 100 days in office a variety of Environmental Protection Agency regulations established during the Obama administration to limit carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants, which contribute to a warming global climate.
Trump has specifically pledged to revoke the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the United States rule, which he characterizes as two "job-destroying Obama executive actions."
Trump has said "we're practically not allowed to use coal any more", a statement rated "mostly false" by PolitiFact. Trump has criticized the Obama administration's coal policies, describing the administration's moves to phase out the use of coal-fired power plants as "stupid".
Trump has criticized the Obama administration for prohibiting "coal production on federal land" and states that it seeks to adopt "draconian climate rules that, unless stopped, would effectively bypass Congress to impose job-killing cap-and-trade."
Trump has vowed to revive the U.S. coal economy, a pledge that is viewed by experts as unlikely to be fulfilled because the decline of the coal industry is driven by market forces, and specifically by the U.S. natural gas boom.
An analysis by Scientific American found that Trump's promise to bring back closed coal mines would be difficult to fulfill, both because of environmental regulations and economic shifts.
An analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance dismissed Trump's claims of a "war on coal": "U.S. coal's main problem has been cheap natural gas and renewable power, not a politically driven 'war on coal'...[coal] will continue being pushed out of the generating mix."
Trump wrote in his 2011 book that he opposed a cap-and-trade system to control carbon emissions.
According to FactCheck.org, over at least a five-year period, Trump has on several occasions made incorrect claims about the use of hair spray and its role in ozone depletion.
At a rally in May 2016, "Trump implied that the regulations on hairspray and coal mining are both unwarranted" and incorrectly asserted that hairspray use in a "sealed" apartment prevents the spray's ozone-depleting substances from reaching the atmosphere.
In June 2019, the Trump White House tried to prevent a State Department intelligence analyst from testifying to Congress about "possibly catastrophic" effects of human-caused climate change, and prevented his written testimony containing science from NASA and NOAA from being included in the official Congressional Record because it was not consistent with administration positions.
In August 2019, Trump described America's coal production as "clean, beautiful", despite coal being a particularly polluting energy source. Although "clean coal" is a specific jargon used by the coal industry for certain technologies, Trump instead generally describes that coal itself is "clean".
Opposition to international cooperation on climate change
See also: United States withdrawal from the Paris Agreement
Trump pledged in his May 2016 speech on energy policy to "cancel the Paris climate agreement" adopted at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (in which 170 countries committed to reductions in carbon emissions).
Trump pledged to cancel the agreement in his first hundred days in office. This pledge followed earlier comments by Trump, in which he said that as president, he would "at a minimum" seek to renegotiate the agreement and "at a maximum I may do something else."
Trump characterizes the Paris Agreement as "one-sided" and "bad for the United States", believing that the agreement is too favorable to China and other countries. In his May 2016 speech, Trump inaccurately said that the Paris Agreement "gives foreign bureaucrats control over how much energy we use on our land, in our country"; in fact, the Paris Agreement is based on voluntary government pledges, and no country controls the emissions-reduction plan of any other country.
Once the agreement is ratified by 55 nations representing 55 percent of global emissions (which has not yet occurred), a four-year waiting period goes into effect for any country wishing to withdraw from the agreement. A U.S. move to withdraw from the Paris Agreement as Trump proposed was viewed as likely to unravel the agreement; according to Reuters, such a move would spell "potential doom for an agreement many view as a last chance to turn the tide on global warming."
In Trump's May 2016 speech on energy policy, he declared that if elected president, he would "stop all payment of U.S. tax dollars to global warming programs." This would be a reversal of the U.S. pledge to commit funds to developing countries to assist in climate change mitigation and could undermine the willingness of other countries to take action against climate change.
In August 2016, 375 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, including 30 Nobel laureates, issued an open letter warning that Trump's plan to unilaterally withdraw from the Paris Agreement would have dire effects on the fight against climate change. The scientists wrote, in part: [I]t is of great concern that the Republican nominee for President has advocated U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Accord.
A "Parexit" would send a clear signal to the rest of the world: "The United States does not care about the global problem of human-caused climate change. You are on your own." Such a decision would make it far more difficult to develop effective global strategies for mitigating and adapting to climate change. The consequences of opting out of the global community would be severe and long-lasting – for our planet's climate and for the international credibility of the United States.
Energy independence:
Main article: United States energy independence
In his May 2016 speech on energy policy, Trump stated: "Under my presidency, we will accomplish complete American energy independence. We will become totally independent of the need to import energy from the oil cartel or any nation hostile to our interest."
The New York Times reported that "experts say that such remarks display a basic ignorance of the workings of the global oil markets."
Environmental regulation:
In January 2016, Trump vowed "tremendous cutting" of the budget for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency if elected. In an October 2015 interview with Chris Wallace, Trump explained, "what they do is a disgrace. Every week they come out with new regulations." When Wallace asked, "Who's going to protect the environment?", Trump answered "we'll be fine with the environment. We can leave a little bit, but you can't destroy businesses."
Trump has charged that the "U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service abuses the Endangered Species Act to restrict oil and gas exploration." In 2011, Trump said that would permit drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska.
In July 2016, Trump suggested that he was in favor of state and local bans on hydraulic fracturing (fracking), saying, "I'm in favor of fracking, but I think that voters should have a big say in it. I mean, there's some areas, maybe, they don't want to have fracking. And I think if the voters are voting for it, that's up to them...if a municipality or a state wants to ban fracking, I can understand that."
Pipelines:
Keystone XL
Main article: Keystone Pipeline
Trump promised to construct the Keystone XL pipeline, a proposed project to bring Canadian petroleum to the U.S. Trump pledged that if elected, he would ask TransCanada Corp. to renew its permit application for the project within his first hundred days in office. Trump claimed that Keystone XL pipeline will have "no impact on environment" and create "lots of jobs for U.S.", although in fact the pipeline is projected to create only 35 permanent jobs.
In his first days in office, Trump revived the Keystone XL project, signing a presidential memorandum reversing the rejection of the proposed pipeline that President Obama had made. Trump "also signed a directive ordering an end to protracted environmental reviews," pledging to make environmental review " a very short process".
Dakota Access Pipeline:
Main articles:
After months of protest by thousands of protesters, including the largest gathering of Native Americans in 100 years, in December 2016 the United States Army Corps of Engineers under the Obama administration announced that it would not grant an easement for the pipeline, and the Corps of Engineers undertook an environmental impact statement to look at possible alternative routes.
However, in February 2017, newly elected President Donald Trump ended the environmental impact assessment and ordered construction to continue. Trump has financial ties to Energy Transfer Partners and Phillips 66, who are both directly involved in the controversial project. The CEO of Energy Transfer Partners is a campaign donor for Donald Trump.
Renewable energy:
Main article: Renewable energy in the United States
In his 2015 book Crippled America, Trump is highly critical of the "big push" to develop renewable energy, arguing that the push is based on a mistaken belief that greenhouse gases contribute to climate change.
He writes, "There has been a big push to develop alternative forms of energy—so-called green energy—from renewable sources. That's a big mistake. To begin with, the whole push for renewable energy is being driven by the wrong motivation, the mistaken belief that global climate change is being caused by carbon emissions. If you don't buy that—and I don't—then what we have is really just an expensive way of making the tree-huggers feel good about themselves."
Despite criticizing wind farms in the past (calling them "ugly"), Trump has said that he does not oppose the wind production tax credit, saying: "I'm okay with subsidies, to an extent."
Trump has criticized wind energy for being expensive and for not working without "massive subsidies". He added, "windmills are killing hundreds and hundreds of eagles. One of the most beautiful, one of the most treasured birds—and they're killing them by the hundreds and nothing happens," a claim rated as "mostly false" by PolitiFact since best estimates indicate that about one hundred golden eagles are killed each year by wind turbine blades.
In his official platform, Trump claims that he will reduce bureaucracy which would then lead to greater innovation. His platform mentions "renewable energies", including "nuclear, wind and solar energy" in that regard but adds that he would not support those "to the exclusion of other energy".
Trump supports a higher ethanol mandate (the amount of ethanol required by federal regulation to be blended into the U.S. gasoline supply). Trump vowed to protect the government's Renewable Fuel Standard and corn-based ethanol.
In August 2019, Trump claimed: "if a windmill is within two miles of your house, your house is practically worthless"; this claim is not supported by studies in the United States.
Wildlife conservation and animal welfare:
In October 2016, the Humane Society of the United States denounced Trump's campaign, saying that a "Trump presidency would be a threat to animals everywhere" and that he has "a team of advisors and financial supporters tied in with trophy hunting, puppy mills, factory farming, horse slaughter, and other abusive industries."
In February 2017, under the Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) unexpectedly removed from its public website "all enforcement records related to horse soring and to animal welfare at dog breeding operations and other facilities."
The decision prompted criticism from animal welfare advocates (such as the Animal Welfare Institute), investigative journalists, and some of the regulated industries (the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the group Speaking of Research said that the move created an impression of non-transparency).
Foreign policy and defense:
Main articles:
Health care
Actions while in office
Legislation
Further information:
President Trump advocated repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act (ACA or "Obamacare").
The Republican-controlled House passed the American Health Care Act (AHCA) in May 2017, handing it to the Senate, which decided to write its own version of the bill rather than voting on the AHCA.
The Senate bill, called the "Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017" (BCRA), failed on a vote of 45–55 in the Senate during July 2017. Other variations also failed to gather the required support, facing unanimous Democratic Party opposition and some Republican opposition.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bills would increase the number of uninsured by over 20 million persons, while reducing the budget deficit marginally.
Actions to hinder the implementation of ACA
See also: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
President Trump continued Republican attacks on the ACA while in office, including steps such as:
Several insurers and actuary groups cited uncertainty created by President Trump, specifically non-enforcement of the individual mandate and not funding cost sharing reduction subsidies, as contributing 20-30 percentage points to premium increases for the 2018 plan year on the ACA exchanges.
In other words, absent Trump's actions against the ACA, premium increases would have averaged 10% or less, rather than the estimated 28-40% under the uncertainty his actions created.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) maintains a timeline of many "sabotage" efforts by the Trump Administration.
Ending cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments:
Main article: Cost sharing reductions subsidy
President Trump announced in October 2017 he would end the smaller of the two types of subsidies under the ACA, the cost sharing reduction (CSR) subsidies. This controversial decision significantly raised premiums on the ACA exchanges (as much as 20 percentage points) along with the premium tax credit subsidies that rise with them, with the CBO estimating a $200 billion increase in the budget deficit over a decade.
CBO also estimated that initially up to one million fewer would have health insurance coverage, although more might have it in the long run as the subsidies expand. CBO expected the exchanges to remain stable (e.g., no "death spiral") as the premiums would increase and prices would stabilize at the higher (non-CSR) level.
President Trump's argument that the CSR payments were a "bailout" for insurance companies and therefore should be stopped, actually results in the government paying more to insurance companies ($200B over a decade) due to increases in the premium tax credit subsidies.
Journalist Sarah Kliff therefore described Trump's argument as "completely incoherent."
2020 campaign
In August 2019, at a campaign rally, Trump claimed that his administration "will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions, always." However, his administration had already repeatedly attempted to water down or repeal the ACA's protections for people with preexisting medical conditions, without any proposal on how to restore these protections if the ACA is rendered void.
Prior to election
According to a report by the RAND Corporation, Trump's proposed health-care policy proposals, depending on specific elements implemented, would result in between 15 and 25 million fewer people with health insurance and increase the federal deficit in a range from zero to $41 billion (~$47.3 billion in 2022) in 2018.
This was in contrast to Clinton's proposals, which would expand health insurance coverage for between zero and 10 million people while increasing the deficit in a range from zero to $90 billion (~$104 billion in 2022) in 2018.
According to the report, low-income individuals and sicker people would be most adversely affected by his proposed policies, although it was pointed out that not all policy proposals have been modeled.
Affordable Care Act and health-care reform
Main articles:
As the 2016 campaign unfolded, Trump stated that he favors repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA or "Obamacare")—which Trump refers to as a "complete disaster"—and replacing it with a "free-market system".
On his campaign website, Trump says, "on day one of the Trump Administration, we will ask Congress to immediately deliver a full repeal of Obamacare." Trump's campaign has insisted that the candidate has "never supported socialized medicine."
Trump has cited the rising costs of premiums and deductibles as a motivation to repeal the Affordable Care Act. However, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the after-subsidy premium costs to those with insurance coverage via the Affordable Care Act's exchanges did not change significantly on average from 2016 to 2017, as increases in the subsidies offset pre-subsidy insurance premium increases.
For example, after-subsidy costs for a popular "silver plan" remained around $200/month in 2016 and 2017. An estimated 70% of persons on the exchanges could purchase a plan for $75/month after subsidies. Further, in the employer market, health insurance premium cost increases from 2015 to 2016 were an estimated 3% on average, low by historical standards.
While deductibles rose 12% on average from 2015 to 2016, more workers are pairing higher-deductible plans with tax-preferred health savings accounts (HSAs), offsetting some of the deductible increase (i.e., lowering their effective deductible).
The Congressional Budget Office reported in March 2016 that there were approximately 23 million people with insurance due to the law, with 12 million people covered by the exchanges (10 million of whom received subsidies to help pay for insurance) and 11 million made eligible for Medicaid.
The CBO also reported in June 2015 that: "Including the budgetary effects of macroeconomic feedback, repealing the ACA would increase federal budget deficits by $137 billion over the 2016–2025 period." CBO also estimated that excluding the effects of macroeconomic feedback, repeal of the ACA would increase the deficit by $353 billion over that same period.
In the early part of his campaign, Trump responded to questions about his plan to replace the ACA by saying that it would be "something terrific!"
Trump subsequently said at various points that he believes that the government should have limited involvement in health care, but has also said that "at the lower end, where people have no money, I want to try and help those people," by "work[ing] out some sort of a really smart deal with hospitals across the country."
And he has said "everybody's got to be covered."
At a February 2016 town hall on CNN, Trump said that he supported the individual health insurance mandate of the ACA, which requires all Americans to have health insurance, saying "I like the mandate. So here's where I'm a little bit different [from other Republican candidates]." In March 2016, Trump reversed himself, saying that "Our elected representatives must eliminate the individual mandate. No person should be required to buy insurance unless he or she wants to."
In March 2016, Trump released his health care plan, which called for allowing health insurance companies to compete across state lines and for making Medicaid into a block grant system for the states. He also called for elimination of the individual mandate for health insurance, for allowing health insurance premiums to be deducted on tax returns, and for international competition in the drug market.
In the same document, Trump acknowledged that mental health care in the U.S. is often inadequate but offered no immediate solution to the problem, instead stating that "there are promising reforms being developed in Congress." Trump also emphasized the removal of market entry barriers for drug providers and improved access to imported medication corresponding to safety standards.
Explaining how he would address the problem of ensuring the people that would lose their insurance coverage if Obamacare were repealed, Trump said, "We have to come up, and we can come up with many different plans.
In fact, plans you don't even know about will be devised because we're going to come up with plans—health care plans—that will be so good. And so much less expensive both for the country and for the people. And so much better."
His plan has been criticized by Republican health experts as "a jumbled hodgepodge of old Republican ideas, randomly selected, that don't fit together" (Robert Laszewski) providing nothing that "would do anything more than cover a couple million people" (Gail R. Wilensky).
In 1999, during his abortive 2000 Reform Party presidential campaign, Trump told TV interviewer Larry King, "I believe in universal health care."
In his 2000 book, The America We Deserve, Trump reiterated his call for universal health care and focused on a Canadian-style single-payer health care system as a means to achieve it.
Though he characterized the Canadian healthcare system as "catastrophic in certain ways" in October 2016 during the second presidential debate, the Trump campaign website wrote in June 2015 about his support for "a system that would mirror Canada's government-run healthcare service" under the title "What does Donald Trump believe? Where the candidate stands on 10 issues". In 2015, Trump also expressed admiration for the Scottish health-care system, which is single payer.
Public health:
Ebola
Main article: Ebola virus cases in the United States
In 2014, after a New York physician returned from treating Ebola patients in West Africa and showed symptoms of the disease, Trump tweeted that if the doctor had Ebola, "Obama should apologize to the American people & resign!"
When the doctor was later confirmed to have developed Ebola in New York, Trump tweeted that it was "Obama's fault" and "I have been saying for weeks for President Obama to stop the flights from West Africa. So simple, but he refused. A TOTAL incompetent!"
Trump also criticized President Obama's decision to send 3,000 U.S. troops to affected regions to help combat the outbreak (see Operation United Assistance).
As doctor Kent Brantly returned to the U.S. for treatment, Trump tweeted that U.S. doctors who went abroad to treat Ebola were "great" but "must suffer the consequences" if they became infected and insisted that "the U.S. must immediately stop all flights from EBOLA infected countries or the plague will start and spread inside our 'borders.'"
When an Ebola patient was scheduled to come to the U.S. for treatment, Trump tweeted, "now I know for sure that our leaders are incompetent. KEEP THEM OUT OF HERE!"
Trump's suggestion on the Ebola crisis "would go against all the expert advice being offered". Doctors warned "that isolating West Africa would only make the Ebola outbreak much worse" by "potentially denying help and supplies from getting in", and might destabilize the countries and contribute to the disease's spread outside West Africa.
Zika
Main article: 2015–2016 Zika virus epidemic
On August 3, 2016, Trump called the Zika virus outbreak in Florida "a big problem". He expressed his support for Florida governor Rick Scott's handling of the crisis, saying that he's "doing a fantastic job". When asked if Congress should convene an emergency session to approve Zika funding, Trump answered, "I would say that it's up to Rick Scott." On August 11, 2016, Trump said that he was in favor of Congress setting aside money to combat the Zika virus.
Vaccines:
Trump believed that childhood vaccinations were related to autism, a hypothesis which has been repeatedly debunked. The American Academy of Pediatrics and Autism Speaks have "decried Trump's remarks as false and potentially dangerous."
In 2010, the Donald J. Trump Foundation donated $10,000 to Generation Rescue, Jenny McCarthy's nonprofit organization that advocates the incorrect view that autism and related disorders are primarily caused by vaccines.
Despite his prior views, however, Trump did drop his claims of vaccines being related to autism in 2019 after the 2019 measles outbreaks, in saying: "They have to get those shots," as well as "...vaccinations are so important".
Immigration:
Main article: Immigration policy of Donald Trump
Illegal immigration was a signature issue of Trump's presidential campaign, and his proposed reforms and controversial remarks regarding immigration have also expressed support for a variety of "limits on legal immigration and guest-worker visas," including a "pause" on granting green cards, which Trump says will "allow record immigration levels to subside to more moderate historical averages."
In August 2019, Trump accused Democrats of supporting "open borders" by attempting to use their opposition to his immigration priorities as an example despite no explicit evidence to support his claim.
He also claimed that his administration is "building the wall faster and better than ever", but no new barriers were erected by June 2019 at the Mexico–United States border unlike what Trump promised during his 2016 campaign. The only installations have been replacement fencing of old barriers.
Trump also falsely claimed that only 2% of migrants who were released instead of detained eventually returned for their immigration hearings. The 2017 statistic is 72% for migrants, and 89% of migrants applying for asylum.
Law and order:
Capital punishment:
See also: Capital punishment in the United States
Trump has long advocated for capital punishment in the United States. In May 1989, shortly after the Central Park jogger case received widespread media attention, Trump purchased a full-page ad in four New York City newspapers with the title "BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY!"
Five defendants (the "Central Park Five") were wrongfully convicted in the case and were subsequently exonerated. By October 2016, Trump still maintained that the Central Park Five were guilty.
In December 2015, in a speech accepting the endorsement of the New England Police Benevolent Association, Trump said that "One of the first things I do [if elected President] in terms of executive order if I win will be to sign a strong, strong statement that will go out to the country, out to the world, that...anybody killing a police officer—death penalty. It's going to happen, O.K.?"
However, the president has no authority over these prosecutions as they usually take place in state court under state law, and over one-third of U.S. states have already abolished the death penalty. Furthermore, mandatory death sentences are unconstitutional, as held by the Supreme Court in Woodson v. North Carolina (1976).
Torture:
Main article: Torture and the United States
Trump has said that he believes that "torture absolutely works". During his campaign, Trump said that "I would bring back waterboarding, and I'd bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding".
However, during his presidency, he did not bring back waterboarding.
Criminal justice:
Main article: Criminal justice reform in the United States
As of May 2016, Trump's campaign website made no mention of criminal justice reform, and Trump rarely talked in specifics.
Trump has stated that he would be "tough on crime" and criticized Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's criminal justice reform proposals. When asked about specific criminal justice reforms, Trump reportedly often changes the subject back to supporting police or vague answers about needing to be "tough." In January 2016, Trump said that along with veterans, "the most mistreated people in this country are police."
Trump supports the use of "stop and frisk" tactics, of the kind once used in New York City. In 2000, Trump also rejected as elitist and naive the arguments of criminal justice reformers that the U.S. criminal justice system puts too many criminals in jail. Trump is in favor of at least one mandatory sentence, where using a gun to commit a crime results in a five-year sentence.
Trump on several occasions asserted that crime was rising in the United States. Trump's assertions that crime was rising were false; in fact, both violent and property crimes declined consistently declined in the U.S. from the early 1990s until 2014. Trump's claim that "inner-city crime is reaching record levels" received a "pants-on-fire" rating from PolitiFact.
As president, Trump reiterated in February 2017 the false claim that crime was rising, saying, "the murder rate in our country is the highest it's been in 47 years."
In May 2016, Trump stated that the cities of Oakland and Ferguson are "among the most dangerous in the world". In response, CBS News in San Francisco reported that the murder rates in Oakland and Baghdad are comparable, but PolitiFact rated Trump's claim false given that "homicide rates alone are not enough to gauge whether a city is dangerous or not".
On November 22, 2015, Trump retweeted a graphic with purported statistics—cited to a nonexistent "Crime Statistics Bureau"—which claimed that African Americans were responsible for 81% of the homicides of White Americans and that police were responsible for 1% of black homicides compared to 4% of white homicides.
Trump's retweet earned PolitiFact's "Pants on Fire" rating and was called "grossly inaccurate" by FactCheck.org the next day. Blacks were actually responsible for only 15% of white homicides according to FBI data for 2014.
The breakdown of the racial differences in police killings in Trump's retweet was also inaccurate. Based on the percentages, the number of whites killed by police would be almost 4 times greater than the number of blacks.
Data from The Washington Post for 2009 to 2013 showed a ratio of 1.5 white deaths by police for each black death. A separate estimate by Peter Moskos, associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice attributed 10% of white homicides to police and 4% to police for blacks. When asked about the statistics, Trump maintained that the statistics came "from sources that are very credible."
Drug policy:
See also: Federal drug policy of the United States
Trump's views on drug policy have shifted dramatically over time.
At a luncheon hosted by the Miami Herald in April 1990, Trump told a crowd of 700 people that U.S. drug enforcement policy was "a joke," and that: "We're losing badly the war on drugs. You have to legalize drugs to win that war. You have to take the profit away from these drug czars."
In his campaign for the presidency in 2015 and 2016, however, Trump adopted "drug warrior" positions and has sought advice on the issue from William J. Bennett, who served as the U.S. first "drug czar" in the 1980s "and has remained a proponent of harsh 1980s-style drug war tactics."
Trump told Sean Hannity in June 2015 that he opposes marijuana legalization and that "I feel strongly about that." Trump also claims to have personally never used controlled substances of any kind.
Trump has voiced support for medical marijuana, saying that he is "a hundred percent in favor" because "I know people that have serious problems...and...it really, really does help them." When asked about Colorado (where recreational use of marijuana is legal), Trump softened his previously expressed views and essentially said that states should be able to decide on whether marijuana for recreational purposes should be legal.
The administration organized the Marijuana Policy Coordination Committee in 2018.
Gun regulation:
Main article: Gun politics in the United States
In his 2000 book The America We Deserve, Trump wrote that he generally opposed gun control, but supported the Federal Assault Weapons Ban and supported a "slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun."
In his book, Trump also criticized the gun lobby, saying: "The Republicans walk the N.R.A. line and refuse even limited restrictions." In 2008, Trump opposed hunting-education classes in schools and called the "thought of voluntarily putting guns in the classroom...a really bad plan."
While campaigning for the presidency Trump reversed some of his positions on gun issues, calling for the expansion of gun rights. In 2015 he described himself as a staunch advocate of the Second Amendment and said concealed carry "is a right, not a privilege."
He proposed eliminating prohibitions on assault weapons, military-style weapons and high-capacity magazines (which Trump described as "scary sounding phrases" used by gun control advocates "to confuse people"), as well as making concealed carry permits valid nationwide, rather than on the current state-to-state basis.
At his campaign website he called for an overhaul of the current federal background check system, arguing that "Too many states are failing to put criminal and mental health records into the system."
On the campaign trail in 2015, Trump praised the National Rifle Association (NRA), and received the group's endorsement after becoming the presumptive Republican nominee.
He asserted that the presence of more guns in schools and public places could have stopped mass shootings such as those in 2015 in Paris; in San Bernardino, California; and at Umpqua Community College.
Trump supported barring people on the government's terrorist watch list from purchasing weapons, saying in 2015: "If somebody is on a watch list and an enemy of state and we know it's an enemy of state, I would keep them away, absolutely."
On this position, Trump departed from the position of gun-rights groups and most of his 2016 Republican rivals for the presidency and supported a stance backed by Senate Democrats.
Trump said that he holds a New York concealed carry permit and that "I carry on occasion, sometimes a lot. I like to be unpredictable." A 1987 Associated Press story said that he held a handgun permit at that time.
In January 2016, Trump said: "I will get rid of gun-free zones on schools, and—you have to—and on military bases...My first day, it gets signed, okay? My first day. There's no more gun-free zones." Trump could not eliminate gun-free school zones by executive order, however, since such zones were created by a federal law that can only be reversed by Congress.
In May 2016, Trump made ambiguous comments on guns in classrooms, saying: "I don't want to have guns in classrooms. Although, in some cases, teachers should have guns in classrooms."
In May 2016, Trump accused Hillary Clinton of lying when she claimed that "Donald Trump would force schools to allow guns in classrooms on his first day in office." According to The Washington Post fact-checker, Clinton's statement was accurate.
In June 2016, Trump said "it would have been a beautiful, beautiful sight" to see Omar Mateen shot in the head by an armed patron in the Orlando nightclub shooting, reiterating his stance that more people should be armed in public places.
A few days later, after two top officials of the NRA challenged the notion that drinking clubgoers should be armed, Trump reversed his position, saying that he "obviously" meant that additional guards or employees should have been armed in the nightclub.
Security personnel and other staffers at a number of Trump's hotels and golf courses told ABC News that patrons are not permitted to carry guns on the property. A Trump spokesman denied this, saying that licensed persons are permitted to carry guns on the premises.
At a rally on August 9, 2016, Trump accused his opponent of wanting to "essentially abolish the Second Amendment", and went on: "By the way, and if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know." These comments were interpreted by critics as suggesting violence against Clinton or her appointees, but Trump's campaign stated that he was referring to gun rights advocates' "great political power" as a voting bloc.
One month after his inauguration, Trump reversed an Obama-era regulation that had been intended to prevent weapons purchases by certain people with mental health problems. Had the regulation been allowed to take effect, it would have added 75,000 names, including the names of those who receive federal financial assistance due to a mental illness or who have financial proxies due to a mental illness, to a background check database.
Following the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in February 2018, Trump met with students and others at the White House for a "listening session". Trump suggested arming up to 20% of the teachers to stop "maniacs" from attacking students. The following day Trump called a "gun free" school a "magnet" for criminals and tweeted, "Highly trained, gun adept, teachers/coaches would solve the problem instantly, before police arrive. GREAT DETERRENT!"
In August 2019, following mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and in Dayton, Ohio, Trump declined to support universal background checks, saying that existing background checks are already "very, very strong," even though "we have sort of missing areas and areas that don't complete the whole circle." He also indicated that he was not interested in working on bipartisan compromises.
In a speech at a 2023 NRA convention, Trump expressed support for national concealed carry reciprocity which would allow a person with a concealed carry permit in one state to have their permit apply across state lines nationwide.
Judiciary:
Further information: List of federal judges appointed by Donald Trump
According to The New York Times, many of Trump's statements on legal topics are "extemporaneous and resist conventional legal analysis," with some appearing "to betray ignorance of fundamental legal concepts."
Supreme Court
Main article: Donald Trump Supreme Court candidates
Trump stated he wanted to replace U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, who had died, with "a person of similar views and principles". He has released a list of eleven potential picks to replace Scalia.
The jurists were widely considered to be conservative. All are white, and eight of the eleven are men.
The list included five out of the eight individuals recommended by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Trump had previously insisted that he would seek guidance from conservative groups such as the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation when it came to picking Supreme Court candidates. Several of the judges listed by Trump had questioned abortion rights. Six of the eleven judges had clerked for conservative Supreme Court justices.
Trump has claimed that he "would probably appoint" justices to the Supreme Court who "would look very seriously" at the Hillary Clinton email controversy "because it's a criminal activity."
However, under the U.S. Constitution, Supreme Court justices "are neither investigators nor prosecutors."
Trump criticized Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, as a "nightmare for conservatives," citing Roberts' vote in the 2015 decision in King v. Burwell, which upheld provisions of the Affordable Care Act. He also blamed Roberts for the June 2015 Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, apparently in error, since in that case Roberts actually dissented from the majority opinion.
In February 2016, Trump called on the Senate to stop Obama from filling the vacant seat on the Supreme Court.
An analysis by FiveThirtyEight predicted that, under the assumption that Scalia's vacant seat on the Court would not be filled before Trump's presidency, and taking account of the advanced age of three of the sitting justices, that a Trump presidency would move the Supreme Court "rightward toward its most conservative position in recent memory".
Trump ultimately appointed three justices to the court: Neil Gorsuch to replace Scalia, Brett Kavanaugh to replace Anthony Kennedy, and Amy Coney Barrett to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The appointments of Trump's nominees shifted the court to a strongly conservative position. In the period after Trump left office, the court issued several conservative rulings, including declaring that the constitution does not protect abortion, in which Trump's appointees contributed to the majority.
Comments on judges and judicial decisions:
Since taking office, Trump has made a series of "escalating attacks on the federal judiciary" in response to judicial decisions against him. After a federal district judge, James Robart, issued a stay of Trump's executive order on travel, immigration, and refugees, Trump disparaged him on Twitter, referring to him as a "the so-called judge" and writing: "[He] put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!"
While presidents in the past have sometimes offered muted criticism of judicial opinions, Trump's personal attacks on individual judges are seen as unprecedented in American history. Trump's remarks prompted criticism from his own nominee, Gorsuch, who told Senator Richard Blumenthal that Trump's statements were "disheartening" and "demoralizing" to the federal judiciary. A number of legal scholars feared that Trump's conduct could undermine public confidence in the courts and endanger the independence of the judiciary.
Term limits and ethics regulations:
Main article: Term limits in the United States
In October 2016, Trump said that he would push for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress, so that members of the House of Representatives could serve for a maximum of six years and senators for a maximum of twelve years.
Trump also pledged to re-institute a ban on executive branch officials from lobbying for five years after leaving government service and said that he supported Congress instituting a similar five-year lobbying ban of its own, applicable to former members and staff.
Under current "cooling-off period" regulations, former U.S. representatives are required to wait one year before they can lobby Congress, former U.S. senators are required to two years, and former executive-branch officials "must wait either two years or one year before lobbying their former agency, depending on how senior they were."
Twenty-second Amendment:
On multiple occasions since taking office in 2017, Trump has questioned presidential term limits and in public remarks has talked about serving beyond the limits of the Twenty-second Amendment. For instance, during an April 2019 White House event for the Wounded Warrior Project, he joked that he would remain president "at least for 10 or 14 years".
Flag desecration:
During a rally in June 2020, President Trump told supporters that he thinks flag burning should be punishable by one year in prison.
Official language
In 2015 during a debate, Trump said, "This is a country where we speak English, not Spanish."
In June 2019, Senator Steve Daines proposed reviving the previously unsuccessful language amendment, and in doing so received the support of the Trump administration.
Video game violence:
Main article: Violence and video games
Trump has voiced his opposition to video game violence. After it was erroneously reported that the Sandy Hook shooter frequently played violent video games, Trump tweeted, "Video game violence & glorification must be stopped—it is creating monsters!"
After the 2019 El Paso shooting, Trump said in a speech, "We must stop the glorification of violence in our society. This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace. It is too easy today for troubled youth to surround themselves with a culture that celebrates violence. We must stop or substantially reduce this and it has to begin immediately."
Online gambling:
Trump supports online gambling, based on the following reasoning: "This has to happen because many other countries are doing it and like usual the U.S. is just missing out."
Science and technology:
See also Climate change and pollution, above.
A 2016 report in Scientific American graded Trump and three other top presidential candidates—Hillary Clinton, Gary Johnson, and Jill Stein—on science policy, based on their responses to a twenty-question ScienceDebate.org survey. Trump "came in last on all counts" in grading, with scientists and researchers faulting him for a lack of knowledge or appreciation of scientific issues.
Space:
Main article: Space policy of the Donald Trump administration
As of October 2016, one of Trump's policy advisors declared that, under Trump, NASA would recreate the National Space Council and pursue a goal of "human exploration of the solar system by the end of the century", to drive technology developments to a stronger degree than a crewed mission to Mars.
Other goals would include shifting budget to deep space exploration from Earth science and climate research, and pursuit of small satellites and hypersonic technology. A possibility of China joining the International Space Station program was also considered.
A stronger role of crewed Lunar exploration is possible in NASA's quest for a crewed mission to Mars. Prior to that statement, the Trump campaign appeared to have little to no space policy at all.
Technology and net neutrality:
Main article: Net neutrality in the United States
As of June 2016, Trump has published no tech policy proposals. On the campaign trail, Trump frequently antagonized Silicon Valley figures, using his Twitter account to lambast tech leaders such as Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, and Brian Chesky of Airbnb over a series of months.
He is particularly concerned about the social breakdown of American culture caused by technology, and said, "the Internet and the whole computer age is really a mixed bag," having "complicated lives very greatly".
Trump is opposed to net neutrality, asserting that it is "Obama's attack on the internet" and saying that it "will target the conservative media."
Trump has suggested closing "certain areas" of the Internet. Regarding how this relates to freedom of speech, he added "Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people."
The tech publication Recode reports that Trump has made no public statements on the issues of patent reform or broadband access.
The Free Press Action Fund, a group of tech policy activists, rated Trump the worst 2016 presidential candidate for "citizens' digital lives," citing his positions opposing reforming the Patriot Act, favoring Internet censorship, and opposing net neutrality.
Social issues and civil liberties:
Main article: Social policy of Donald Trump
Abortion:
Main article: Abortion in the United States
Trump describes himself as pro-life and generally opposes abortion with some exceptions: rape, incest, and circumstances endangering the health of the mother. As a candidate, he said he believes the issue of abortion "would have been better if it were up to the states." He said he was committed to appointing justices who would overturn the ruling in Roe v. Wade.
After Roe v. Wade was overturned in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Trump took credit for the decision but has not stated whether he supports a federal ban or federal restrictions on abortion.
LGBT rights:
See also: LGBT rights in the United States
The Trump administration rolled back many existing LGBT protections and also introduced new policies that undermine LGBT rights.
Workplace discrimination
Main article: Employment discrimination law in the United States
In early 2017, Trump reversed an Obama-era directive that had required companies with large federal contracts to prove their compliance with LGBT protections.
In 2018, Trump signed the United States–Mexico–Canada trade agreement with a footnote exempting the United States from complying with the agreement's call for an end to "sex-based discrimination".
The Trump administration unsuccessfully tried to eliminate nondiscrimination protections at the level of the Supreme Court, where the Justice Department intervened in three employment lawsuits--Bostock v. Clayton County; Altitude Express, Inc. v. Zarda; and Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC—arguing that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not prohibit job discrimination based on sexual orientation or "transgender status."
However, despite the Trump administration's intervention, the Supreme Court ruled on these three cases on June 15, 2020, that sexual orientation and gender identity are indeed covered under existing protections for "sex discrimination".
Healthcare discrimination:
The Affordable Care Act included an Obama-era nondiscrimination provision that explicitly entitled people to receive care regardless of sex or gender identity, but the Trump administration reversed it. On June 12, 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services finalized and revealed its replacement rule. Now, healthcare providers and insurers may decide whether to serve transgender people.
Transgender rights
Main article: Transgender rights in the United States
One month after taking office, Trump reversed a directive from the Obama administration that had allowed transgender students to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity; this reversal allowed public schools to make their own rules about gendered bathrooms.
In 2020, the U.S. Department of Education threatened to withhold funding from Connecticut school districts that allow transgender girls to compete on girls' teams, claiming that the transgender students' participation is a violation of Title IX.
Six months into his presidency, Trump tweeted that transgender individuals would not be allowed to serve "in any capacity" in the U.S. military, an order that took Pentagon officials by surprise.
Eventually, in 2019, the Supreme Court—without hearing arguments or explaining its own decision—allowed the Trump administration to move ahead with the ban.
In 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services wrote a memo planning to establish a definition of gender based on sex assignment at birth. The memo argued in favor of a definition of gender "on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable" and the government's prerogative to genetically test individuals to determine their sex.
If approved by the Justice Department, the definition would apply across federal agencies, notably the departments of Education, Justice, and Labor, which, along with Health and Human Services, are responsible for enforcing Title IX nondiscrimination statutes.
The Trump administration also reversed Obama-era guidance on transgender prisoners, ordering the Bureau of Prisons instead to house them according to their "biological sex."
In 2019, HUD proposed a new rule to weaken the 2012 Equal Access Rule, which requires equal access to housing regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. This could allow homeless shelters to place transgender women in men's housing or to deny transgender people admission altogether.
In a 2021 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, Trump referred to transgender women who are athletes as "biological males".
In April 2021 Donald Trump attacked Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson for vetoing legislation that would have banned gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.
In a video posted on his 2024 campaign website, Trump called gender-affirming care to minors "chemical, physical, and emotional mutilation" and that he would pass a federal law banning it if in office.
He also stated that he would have the Department of Justice investigate pharmaceutical companies and hospital networks to determine if they "covered up the long-term side effects of gender transitions" and would remove hospitals who provide gender-affirming care from receiving funds from both Medicare and Medicaid.
On his 2024 campaign website Trump states that he would direct Congress to pass a bill that would designate that would mandate the United States only recognize the male and female genders and that they are assigned at birth.
Same-sex marriage:
Main article: Same-sex marriage in the United States
After several decades of national debate, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015 in the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling. After his election, Trump acknowledged that the court had already "settled" the issue.
Trump has not, however, been a personal proponent of same-sex marriage, saying as recently as 2011 that he was "not in favor of gay marriage" and saying during his 2016 campaign that he would "strongly consider" appointing Supreme Court justices who were inclined to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges.
He had previously supported and been a proponent of civil unions and he included the policy in his 2000 presidential campaign as a Reform Party candidate.
During his last year in office, Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign launched "Trump Pride", a coalition within the Trump campaign focused on outreach to LGBTQ voters, and claimed that Trump now supports same-sex marriage.
Data collection:
The Trump administration has made efforts to remove questions about LGBT identity and relationships from the 2020 census, the American Community Survey, the annual National Survey of Older Americans Act Participants, and the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System.
HIV/AIDS
Main article: HIV/AIDS in the United States
In 2017, Trump dissolved the Office of National AIDS Policy and the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, both of which had existed since the 1990s. Every year on World AIDS Day—2017, 2018, 2019—Trump's proclamations have omitted mention of LGBT people.
Religion-based exemptionsIn 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the creation of the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division. Its purpose is to enforce federal laws that related to "conscience and religious freedom"; that is, to enable individuals and businesses to exempt themselves from obeying nondiscrimination laws.
In 2019, HHS granted an exemption from an Obama-era nondiscrimination regulation to a foster care agency in South Carolina. HHS cited the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) as a basis for allowing federally funded Christian groups to discriminate against non-Christians.
Later that year, the Department of Labor, also referencing the RFRA, proposed a new rule to exempt "religious organizations" from obeying employment nondiscrimination law if they invoke "sincerely held religious tenets and beliefs" as their reason to discriminate. In 2020, the Justice Department filed a brief with the Supreme Court in support of another foster care agency in Pennsylvania, defending the agency's right to turn away same-sex couples as part of its "free exercise of religion".
In 2019, the State Department created the Commission on Unalienable Rights to initiate philosophical discussions of human rights that are grounded in the Catholic concept of "natural law" rather than modern identities based on gender and sexuality. Most of the twelve members of the commission have a history of anti-LGBT comments.
Education:
In March 2022 Trump said he approved of Florida's Parental Rights in Education bill, also referred to as the "don't say gay" bill, during an interview with The Washington Post that occurred after the bill was signed by Florida governor Ron DeSantis, but did not elaborate as to why he supports it.
Diplomacy:
The Trump administration eliminated the State Department's position for a Special Envoy for the Human Rights of LGBTI Persons.
In 2018, the Trump administration denied visas to the unmarried same-sex partners of foreign diplomats, even if they were from countries that recognize only civil partnership or that ban same-sex marriage.
Richard Grenell, nominated by Trump as the U.S. ambassador to Germany, is openly gay. In February 2019, Grenell was announced as the leader of a new campaign to decriminalize homosexuality worldwide, and he hosted a meeting with 11 European activists.
Trump seemed unaware of the initiative when he was asked about it the next day. Several months later, Trump tweeted that, "as we celebrate LGBT Pride Month," Americans should "stand in solidarity with the many LGBT people who live in dozens of countries worldwide that punish, imprison, or even execute" people for their sexual orientation.
However, that same week, the Trump administration instructed U.S. embassies not to fly the pride flag during Pride Month.
Judicial appointments:
See also: List of federal judges appointed by Donald Trump
About one-third of Trump's judicial nominees have anti-LGBT records. The U.S. Senate has, as of May 2020, confirmed nearly 400 of Trump's nominees to their new roles. At least one of the confirmed judges, Patrick Bumatay, is openly gay.
Marijuana:
See also: Cannabis policy of the Donald Trump administration
Marijuana and the rights of individual states to legalize recreational and medical marijuana was an issue of Trump's presidential campaign, and he formally stated during his campaign that he believed states should have the right to manage their own policies with regard to medical and recreational marijuana.
Following his election, he reversed his position on recreational marijuana and stated he believed medical marijuana should be allowed but stated the Federal Government may seek legal resolutions for those states which regulate the growth and sale of recreational marijuana.
However, in April 2018, he once again reversed himself, endorsing leaving the issue to the states; and in June 2018, Trump backed a bill introduced by Republican senator Cory Gardner of Colorado and Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts that would leave the decision to the states.
See also:
The political positions of Donald Trump (sometimes referred to as Trumpism), the 45th president of the United States, have frequently changed. Trump is primarily a populist, protectionist, isolationist, and nationalist.
Political affiliation and ideology:
Self-described:
Donald Trump registered as a Republican in Manhattan in 1987; since that time, he has changed his party affiliation five times:
- In 1999, Trump changed his party affiliation to the Independence Party of New York.
- In August 2001, Trump changed his party affiliation to Democratic.
- In September 2009, Trump changed his party affiliation back to the Republican Party.
- In December 2011, Trump changed to "no party affiliation" (independent).
- In April 2012, Trump again returned to the Republican Party.
In a 2004 interview, Trump told CNN's Wolf Blitzer: "In many cases, I probably identify more as Democrat", explaining: "It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans. Now, it shouldn't be that way. But if you go back, I mean it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats...But certainly we had some very good economies under Democrats, as well as Republicans. But we've had some pretty bad disaster under the Republicans."
In a July 2015 interview, Trump said that he has a broad range of political positions and that "I identify with some things as a Democrat."
During his 2016 campaign for the presidency, Trump consistently described the state of the United States in bleak terms, referring to it as a nation in dire peril that is plagued by lawlessness, poverty, and violence, constantly under threat, and at risk of having "nothing, absolutely nothing, left".
In accepting the Republican nomination for president, Trump said that "I alone can fix" the system, and pledged that if elected, "Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo."
He described himself as a "law and order" candidate and "the voice" of "the forgotten men and women" Trump's inaugural address on January 20, 2017, focused on his campaign theme of America in crisis and decline. He pledged to end what he referred to as "American carnage", depicting the United States in a dystopian light—as a "land of abandoned factories, economic angst, rising crime"—while pledging "a new era in American politics".
Although Trump was the Republican nominee, he has signaled that the official party platform, adopted at the 2016 Republican National Convention, diverges from his own views. According to a The Washington Post tally, Trump made some 282 campaign promises over the course of his 2016 campaign.
In February 2017, Trump stated that he was a "total nationalist" in a "true sense". In October 2018, Trump again described himself as a nationalist.
During the last week of his presidential term, Trump was reportedly considering founding a new political party and wanted to call it the Patriot Party.
As described by others:
Further information: Trumpism and Fascism in North America
Trump's political positions are viewed by some as populist. Politicians and pundits alike have referred to Trump's populism, anti-free trade, and anti-immigrant stances as "Trumpism".
Liberal economist and columnist Paul Krugman disputes that Trump is a populist, arguing that his policies favor the rich over those less well off.
Harvard Kennedy School political scientist Pippa Norris has described Trump as a "populist authoritarian" analogous to European parties such as the Swiss People's Party, Austrian Freedom Party, Swedish Democrats, and Danish People's Party.
Columnist Walter Shapiro and political commentator Jonathan Chait describe Trump as authoritarian.
Conservative commentator Mary Katharine Ham characterized Trump as a "casual authoritarian," saying "he is a candidate who has happily and proudly spurned the entire idea of limits on his power as an executive and doesn't have any interest in the Constitution and what it allows him to do and what [it] does not allow him to do. That is concerning for people who are interested in limited government."
Charles C. W. Cooke of the National Review has expressed similar views, terming Trump an "anti-constitutional authoritarian."
Libertarian journalist Nick Gillespie, by contrast, calls Trump "populist rather than an authoritarian". Rich Benjamin refers to Trump and his ideology as fascist and a form of inverted totalitarianism.
Legal experts spanning the political spectrum, including many conservative and libertarian scholars, have suggested that "Trump's blustery attacks on the press, complaints about the judicial system and bold claims of presidential power collectively sketch out a constitutional worldview that shows contempt for the First Amendment, the separation of powers and the rule of law."
Law professors Randy E. Barnett, Richard Epstein, and David G. Post, for example, suggest that Trump has little or no awareness of, or commitment to, the constitutional principles of separation of powers and federalism.
Law professor Ilya Somin believes that Trump "poses a serious threat to the press and the First Amendment," citing Trump's proposal to expand defamation laws to make it easier to sue journalists and his remark that the owner of The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, would "have problems" if Trump was elected president.
Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote in an op-ed published in The Washington Post in July 2016 that "Trump's proposed policies, if carried out, would trigger a constitutional crisis. By our reckoning, a Trump administration would violate the First, Fourth, Fifth and Eighth amendments if it tried to implement his most controversial plans."
Prior to his election as president, his views on social issues were often described as centrist or moderate. Political commentator Josh Barro termed Trump a "moderate Republican," saying that except on immigration, his views are "anything but ideologically rigid, and he certainly does not equate deal making with surrender."
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said Trump is essentially more like a "centrist Democrat" on social issues.
Journalist and political analyst John Heilemann characterized Trump as liberal on social issues, while conservative talk radio host and political commentator Rush Limbaugh said that Heilemann is seeing in Trump what he wants to see. Since he became president, commentators have generally characterized his policy agenda as socially conservative.
Trump and his political views have often been described as nationalist. John Cassidy of New Yorker writes that Trump seeks to make the Republican Party "into a more populist, nativist, avowedly protectionist, and semi-isolationist party that is skeptical of immigration, free trade, and military interventionism."
The Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt and College of the Holy Cross political scientist Donald Brand describe Trump as a nativist.
Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, instead calls Trump an "immigration hawk" and supports Trump's effort to return immigration levels to what Trump calls a "historically average level".
Trump is a protectionist, according to free-market advocate Stephen Moore and conservative economist Larry Kudlow.
Historian Joshua M. Zeitz wrote in 2016 that Trump's appeals to "law and order" and "the silent majority" were comparable to the dog-whistle and racially-coded terminology of Richard Nixon.
According to a 2020 study, voters had the most difficulty assessing the ideology of Trump in the 2016 election out of all presidential candidates since 1972 and all contemporary legislators.
Scales and rankings:
Crowdpac:
In 2015, Crowdpac gave Trump a ranking of 0.4L out of 10, indicating moderate positions. In 2016, the ranking was changed to 5.1C out of 10, shifting him more to the conservative spectrum.
On the issues:
The organization and website On the Issues has classified Trump in a variety of ways over time, showing the variance of his political beliefs:
- "Moderate populist" (2003)
- "Liberal-leaning populist" (2003–2011)
- "Moderate populist conservative" (2011–2012)
- "Libertarian-leaning conservative" (2012–2013)
- "Moderate conservative" (2013–2014)
- "Libertarian-leaning conservative" (2014–2015)
- "Hard-core conservative" (2015)
- "Libertarian-leaning conservative" (2015–2016)
- "Moderate conservative" (2016–2017)
- "Hard-core conservative" (2017–present)
Politics and policies during presidency:
As president, Trump has pursued sizable income tax cuts, deregulation, increased military spending, rollbacks of federal health-care protections, and the appointment of conservative judges consistent with conservative (Republican Party) policies.
However, his anti-globalization policies of trade protectionism cross party lines. In foreign affairs he has described himself as a nationalist. Trump has said that he is "totally flexible on very, very many issues."
Trump's signature issue is immigration, especially illegal immigration, and in particular building or expanding a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
In his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump promised significant infrastructure investment and protection for entitlements for the elderly, typically considered liberal (Democratic Party) policies.
In October 2016, Trump's campaign posted fourteen categories of policy proposals on his website, which have been since removed. During October 2016, Trump outlined a series of steps for his first 100 days in office.
Trump's political positions, and his descriptions of his beliefs, have often been inconsistent. Politico has described his positions as "eclectic, improvisational and often contradictory."
According to an NBC News count, over the course of his campaign Trump made "141 distinct shifts on 23 major issues."
Fact-checking organizations reported that during the campaign, Trump made a record number of false statements and lies compared to other candidates, a pattern that has continued – and further increased – in office.
Domestic policy
Campaign finance:
See also: Campaign finance reform in the United States
While Trump has repeatedly expressed support for "the idea of campaign finance reform", he has not outlined specifics of his actual views on campaign-finance regulation.
For example, Trump has not said whether he favors public financing of elections or caps on expenditures of campaigns, outside groups, and individuals.
During the Republican primary race, Trump on several occasions accused his Republican opponents of being bound to their campaign financiers, and asserted that anyone (including Trump himself) could buy their policies with donations. He called super PACs a "scam" and "a horrible thing". In October 2015, he said, "All Presidential candidates should immediately disavow their Super PACs. They're not only breaking the spirit of the law but the law itself."
Having previously touted the self-funding of his campaign as a sign of his independence from the political establishment and big donors, Trump reversed course and started to fundraise in early May 2016. While Trump systematically disavowed pro-Trump super PACs earlier in the race, he stopped doing so from early May 2016.
Civil servants:
According to Chris Christie (who served briefly as leader of Trump's White House transition team), Trump will seek to purge the federal government of officials appointed by Obama and will ask Congress to pass legislation making it easier to fire public workers.
Trump's former Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon, stated in February 2017 that Trump's goal is to "deconstruct the administrative state".
Disabled people:
Trump has provided "little detail regarding his positions on disability-related policies," and his campaign website made no mention of disabled people. As of June 1, 2016, Trump had not responded to the issue questionnaire of the nonpartisan disability group RespectAbility.
District of Columbia statehood:
Main article: Statehood movement in the District of Columbia
Trump is opposed to D.C. statehood. In 2020, Donald Trump indicated that if the statehood legislation for Washington, D.C. passes both houses of Congress, he would veto the admission legislation
Education:
Main article: Education in the United States
2016 campaign:
Trump has stated his support for school choice and local control for primary and secondary schools. On school choice he's commented, "Our public schools are capable of providing a more competitive product than they do today. Look at some of the high school tests from earlier in this century and you'll wonder if they weren't college-level tests. And we've got to bring on the competition—open the schoolhouse doors and let parents choose the best school for their children. Education reformers call this school choice, charter schools, vouchers, even opportunity scholarships. I call it competition—the American way."
Trump has blasted the Common Core State Standards Initiative, calling it a "total disaster".
Trump has asserted that Common Core is "education through Washington, D.C.", a claim which Politifact and other journalists have rated "false", since the adoption and implementation of Common Core is a state choice, not a federal one.
Trump has stated that Ben Carson will be "very much involved in education" under a Trump presidency. Carson rejects the theory of evolution and believes that "home-schoolers do the best, private schoolers next best, charter schoolers next best, and public schoolers worst"; he said that he wanted to "take the federal bureaucracy out of education."
Trump has proposed redirecting $20 billion in existing federal spending to block grants to states to give poor children vouchers to attend a school of their family's choice (including a charter school, private school, or online school).
Trump did not explain where the $20 billion in the federal budget would come from. Trump stated that "Distribution of this grant will favor states that have private school choice and charter laws."
Presidency:
As president, Trump chose Republican financier Betsy DeVos, a prominent Michigan charter school advocate, as Secretary of Education. The nomination was highly controversial; The Washington Post education writer Valerie Strauss wrote that "DeVos was considered the most controversial education nominee in the history of the nearly 40-year-old Education Department."
On the confirmation vote the Senate split 50/50 (along party lines, with two Republican senators joining all Democratic senators to vote against confirmation). Vice President Mike Pence used his tie-breaking vote to confirm the nomination, the first time in U.S. history that occurred.
2024 campaign:
During his 2024 presidential campaign Trump expressed opposition to the use of academic tenure and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in U.S. educational institutions.
Eminent domain:
See also: Eminent domain in the United States
In 2015 Trump called eminent domain "wonderful". He repeatedly asked the government to invoke it on his behalf during past development projects.
Food safety:
Main article: Food safety in the United States
In September 2016, Trump posted a list on his website of regulations that he would eliminate. The list included what it called the "FDA Food Police" and mentioned the Food and Drug Administration's rules governing "farm and food production hygiene" and "food temperatures". The factsheet provided by Trump mirrored a May report by the conservative Heritage Foundation. It was replaced later that month and the new factsheet did not mention the FDA.
Native Americans:
Further information: Native Americans in the United States
Colman McCarthy of The Washington Post wrote in 1993 that in testimony given that year to the House Natural Resources subcommittee on Native American Affairs, Trump "devoted much of his testimony to bad-mouthing Indians and their casinos," asserted that "organized crime is rampant on Indian reservations" and that "if it continues it will be the biggest scandal ever."
Trump offered no evidence in support of his claim, and testimony from the FBI's organized crime division, the Justice Department's criminal division, and the IRS's criminal investigation division did not support Trump's assertion.
Representative George Miller, a Democrat who was the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee at the time, stated: "In my 19 years in Congress, I've never heard more irresponsible testimony."
Trump bankrolled in 2000 a set of anti-Indian gaming ads in upstate New York that featured "a dark photograph showing hypodermic needles and drug paraphernalia," a warning that "violent criminals were coming to town," and an accusation that the St. Regis Mohawks had a "record of criminal activity."
The ad—aimed at stopping the construction of a casino in the Catskills that might hurt Trump's own Atlantic City casinos—was viewed as "incendiary" and racially charged, and at the time local tribal leaders, in response, bought a newspaper ad of their own to denounce the "smear" and "racist and inflammatory rhetoric" of the earlier ad.
The ads attracted the attention of the New York Temporary State Commission on Lobbying because they failed to disclose Trump's sponsorship as required by state lobbying rules.
Trump acknowledged that he sponsored the ads and reached a settlement with the state in which he and his associates agreed to issue a public apology and pay $250,000 (the largest civil penalty ever levied by the commission) for evading state disclosure rules.
In 2015, Trump defended the controversial team name and mascot of the Washington Redskins, saying that the NFL team should not change its name and he did not find the term to be offensive.
The "Change the Mascot" campaign, led by the Oneida Indian Nation and National Congress of American Indians, condemned Trump's stance.
While campaigning in 2016, Trump has repeatedly belittled Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts by calling her "Pocahontas" (a reference to Warren's claim, based on family lore, of Native American ancestry, which she has been unable to document).
Trump's comments were criticized by a number of public figures as racist and inappropriate. Gyasi Ross of the Blackfeet Nation, a Native American activist and author, criticized Trump's "badgering of Elizabeth Warren as 'Pocahontas'" as "simply the continuation of his pattern of racist bullying."
Questioning Obama's citizenship:
Main article: Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories
For several years Trump promoted "birther" conspiracy theories about Barack Obama's citizenship.
In March 2011, during an interview on Good Morning America, Trump said he was seriously considering running for president, that he was a "little" skeptical of Obama's citizenship and that someone who shares this view should not be so quickly dismissed as an "idiot". Trump added: "Growing up no one knew him"—a claim ranked "Pants on Fire" by Politifact.
Later, Trump appeared on The View repeating several times that "I want him (Obama) to show his birth certificate" and speculating that "there's something on that birth certificate that he doesn't like." Although officials in Hawaii certified Obama's citizenship, Trump said in April 2011 he would not let go of the issue, because he was not satisfied that Obama had proved his citizenship.
After Obama released his long-form birth certificate on April 27, 2011, Trump said: "I am really honored and I am really proud, that I was able to do something that nobody else could do." Trump continued to question Obama's birth certificate in the following years, as late as 2015.
In May 2012, Trump suggested that Obama might have been born in Kenya. In October 2012, Trump offered to donate five million dollars to the charity of Obama's choice in return for the publication of his college and passport applications before the end of the month.
In a 2014 interview, Trump questioned whether Obama had produced his long-form birth certificate. When asked in December 2015 if he still questioned Obama's legitimacy, Trump said that "I don't talk about that anymore."
On September 14, 2016, Trump declined to acknowledge whether he believed Obama was born in the United States.
On September 15, 2016, Trump for the first time acknowledged that Obama was born in the United States. He gave a terse statement, saying, "President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period."
He falsely accused Hillary Clinton of having started the "Birther" movement. He also asserted that he "finished" the birther controversy, apparently referring to Obama's 2011 release of his long-form birth certificate, despite the fact that he continued to question Obama's citizenship in the years that followed.
The next day, Trump tweeted a story in The Washington Post with the headline "Donald Trump's birther event is the greatest trick he's ever pulled". The "greatest trick" of the headline referred to the fact that cable networks aired the event live, waiting for a "birther" statement, while Trump touted his new hotel and supporters gave testimonials. In October 2016, Trump appeared to question the legitimacy of Barack Obama's presidency, referring to him at a rally as the "quote 'president' ".
Social Security and Medicare:
Main articles:
During his campaign Trump repeatedly promised "I'm not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I'm not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid." For the first three years of his presidency he said nothing about cutting Social Security or Medicare.
In a January 2020 interview he said he planned to "take a look" at entitlement programs like Medicare, but he then said via Twitter "We will not be touching your Social Security or Medicare in Fiscal 2021 Budget."
His proposed 2021 budget, unveiled in February 2020, included a $45 billion (~$48.2 billion in 2022) cut to the program within Social Security that supports disabled people, as well as cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.
In August 2020, as part of a package of executive orders related to the COVID-19 pandemic, he signed an order to postpone the collection of the payroll taxes that support Social Security and Medicare, paid by employees and employers, for the rest of 2020. He also said that if he wins re-election, he will forgive the postponed payroll taxes and make permanent cuts to the payroll tax, saying he would "terminate the tax", although only Congress can change tax law.
Analysts said such an action would threaten Social Security and Medicare by eliminating the dedicated funding which pays for the programs.
Veterans:
2016 presidential campaign:
Trump caused a stir in July 2015 when he charged that Senator John McCain had "done nothing to help the vets," a statement ruled false by PolitiFact and the Chicago Tribune. Trump added that McCain is "not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured."
As a presidential candidate, Trump was critical of the ways in which veterans are treated in the United States, saying "the vets are horribly treated in this country...they are living in hell."
He favored eliminating backlogs and wait-lists that had caused a Veterans Health Administration scandal the previous year. He claimed that "over 300,000 veterans have died waiting for care."
He said he believed Veterans Affairs (VA) facilities needed to be technologically upgraded, to hire more veterans to treat other veterans, to increase support of female veterans, and to create satellite clinics within hospitals in rural areas.
He proposed a plan for reforming the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs with provisions to allow veterans to obtain care from any doctor or facility that accepts Medicare, to increase funding for PTSD and suicide prevention services, and to provide ob/gyn services at every VA hospital.
Trump called for greater privatization of veterans' care, although his plan made no direct reference to letting veterans get health care outside the VA system. The Wall Street Journal noted that "such a plan is counter to recommendations from major veterans groups, the VA itself and from the Commission on Care, an independent body established by Congress that last week made recommendations for VA changes."
Trump's plan calls "for legislation making it easier to fire underperforming employees, increasing mental-health resources and adding a White House hotline so veterans can bypass the VA and bring problems directly to the president." Trump opposed the current G.I. Bill in 2016.
In January 2016, Trump hosted a fundraising rally for veterans (skipping a televised Republican debate to do so). Weeks later, after The Wall Street Journal inquired with the Trump campaign when veterans' groups would receive their checks, the funds began to be disbursed.
In April, the Journal reported that the funds had yet to be fully distributed. In May, NPR confirmed directly with 30 recipient charities that they had received their funds, "accounting for $4.27 million of the $5.6 million total," while the remaining 11 charities did not answer the question.
Presidency and 2020 campaign:
In February 2018, the Trump administration initiated a policy known as 'Deploy Or Get Out' (DOGO), ordering the Pentagon to discharge any soldier who would be ineligible for deployment within the next 12 months. This mainly affected disabled soldiers. It also affected HIV-positive soldiers, who are allowed to serve within the US but cannot be deployed overseas; the DOGO policy meant that they could no longer serve within the US, either.
In August 2019, Trump credited himself for passing the Veterans Choice Act, a law that had actually been passed under the previous president, Barack Obama, in 2014. Trump did sign an expansion of that Act in 2018.
In September 2020, The Atlantic reported that Trump referred to Americans who were casualties of war as "losers" and "suckers", citing multiple people who were present for the statements; later reporting by the Associated Press and Fox News corroborated some of these stories.
Veterans expressed scorn over the report's allegations. Trump denied these allegations and called them "disgraceful", adding: "I would be willing to swear on anything that I never said that about our fallen heroes". John Bolton, who was present at the discussion, also said he never heard Trump make such comments.
Economy and trade
Main articles:
Environment and energy
Main article: Environmental policy under the Trump administration
By March 2016, Trump had not released any plans to combat climate change or provided details regarding his approach to energy issues more broadly.
In May 2016, Trump asked Republican U.S. representative Kevin Cramer of North Dakota—described by Reuters as "one of America's most ardent drilling advocates and climate change skeptics"—to draft Trump's energy policy.
California drought:
Main article: Droughts in California
In May 2016, Trump said that he could solve the water crisis in California. He declared that "there is no drought", a statement which the Associated Press noted is incorrect. Trump accused California state officials of denying farmers of water so they can send it out to sea "to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish." According to the AP, Trump appeared to be referring to a dispute between Central Valley farming interests and environmental interests; California farmers accuse water authorities of short-changing them of the water in their efforts to protect endangered native fish species.
Climate change and pollution:
Main articles:
- Pollution in the United States, Climate change,
- Climate change policy of the United States,
- Climate change denial
Trump rejects the scientific consensus on climate change, repeatedly contending that global warming is a "hoax." He has said that "the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive," a statement which Trump later said was a joke. However, it was also pointed out that he often conflates weather with climate change.
Trump criticized President Obama's description of climate change as "the greatest threat to future generations" for being "naive" and "one of the dumbest statements I've ever heard." A 2016 report by the Sierra Club contended that, were he to be elected president, Trump would be the only head of state in the world to contend that climate change is a hoax.
In December 2009, Trump and his three adult children had signed a full-page advertisement from "business leaders" in The New York Times stating "If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet" and encouraging "investment in the clean energy economy" to "create new energy jobs and increase our energy security".
Although "not a believer in climate change", Trump has stated that "clean air is a pressing problem" and has said: "There is still much that needs to be investigated in the field of climate change. Perhaps the best use of our limited financial resources should be in dealing with making sure that every person in the world has clean water."
In May 2016, during his presidential campaign, Trump issued an energy plan focused on promoting fossil fuels and weakening environmental regulation. Trump promised to "rescind" in his first 100 days in office a variety of Environmental Protection Agency regulations established during the Obama administration to limit carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants, which contribute to a warming global climate.
Trump has specifically pledged to revoke the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the United States rule, which he characterizes as two "job-destroying Obama executive actions."
Trump has said "we're practically not allowed to use coal any more", a statement rated "mostly false" by PolitiFact. Trump has criticized the Obama administration's coal policies, describing the administration's moves to phase out the use of coal-fired power plants as "stupid".
Trump has criticized the Obama administration for prohibiting "coal production on federal land" and states that it seeks to adopt "draconian climate rules that, unless stopped, would effectively bypass Congress to impose job-killing cap-and-trade."
Trump has vowed to revive the U.S. coal economy, a pledge that is viewed by experts as unlikely to be fulfilled because the decline of the coal industry is driven by market forces, and specifically by the U.S. natural gas boom.
An analysis by Scientific American found that Trump's promise to bring back closed coal mines would be difficult to fulfill, both because of environmental regulations and economic shifts.
An analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance dismissed Trump's claims of a "war on coal": "U.S. coal's main problem has been cheap natural gas and renewable power, not a politically driven 'war on coal'...[coal] will continue being pushed out of the generating mix."
Trump wrote in his 2011 book that he opposed a cap-and-trade system to control carbon emissions.
According to FactCheck.org, over at least a five-year period, Trump has on several occasions made incorrect claims about the use of hair spray and its role in ozone depletion.
At a rally in May 2016, "Trump implied that the regulations on hairspray and coal mining are both unwarranted" and incorrectly asserted that hairspray use in a "sealed" apartment prevents the spray's ozone-depleting substances from reaching the atmosphere.
In June 2019, the Trump White House tried to prevent a State Department intelligence analyst from testifying to Congress about "possibly catastrophic" effects of human-caused climate change, and prevented his written testimony containing science from NASA and NOAA from being included in the official Congressional Record because it was not consistent with administration positions.
In August 2019, Trump described America's coal production as "clean, beautiful", despite coal being a particularly polluting energy source. Although "clean coal" is a specific jargon used by the coal industry for certain technologies, Trump instead generally describes that coal itself is "clean".
Opposition to international cooperation on climate change
See also: United States withdrawal from the Paris Agreement
Trump pledged in his May 2016 speech on energy policy to "cancel the Paris climate agreement" adopted at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (in which 170 countries committed to reductions in carbon emissions).
Trump pledged to cancel the agreement in his first hundred days in office. This pledge followed earlier comments by Trump, in which he said that as president, he would "at a minimum" seek to renegotiate the agreement and "at a maximum I may do something else."
Trump characterizes the Paris Agreement as "one-sided" and "bad for the United States", believing that the agreement is too favorable to China and other countries. In his May 2016 speech, Trump inaccurately said that the Paris Agreement "gives foreign bureaucrats control over how much energy we use on our land, in our country"; in fact, the Paris Agreement is based on voluntary government pledges, and no country controls the emissions-reduction plan of any other country.
Once the agreement is ratified by 55 nations representing 55 percent of global emissions (which has not yet occurred), a four-year waiting period goes into effect for any country wishing to withdraw from the agreement. A U.S. move to withdraw from the Paris Agreement as Trump proposed was viewed as likely to unravel the agreement; according to Reuters, such a move would spell "potential doom for an agreement many view as a last chance to turn the tide on global warming."
In Trump's May 2016 speech on energy policy, he declared that if elected president, he would "stop all payment of U.S. tax dollars to global warming programs." This would be a reversal of the U.S. pledge to commit funds to developing countries to assist in climate change mitigation and could undermine the willingness of other countries to take action against climate change.
In August 2016, 375 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, including 30 Nobel laureates, issued an open letter warning that Trump's plan to unilaterally withdraw from the Paris Agreement would have dire effects on the fight against climate change. The scientists wrote, in part: [I]t is of great concern that the Republican nominee for President has advocated U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Accord.
A "Parexit" would send a clear signal to the rest of the world: "The United States does not care about the global problem of human-caused climate change. You are on your own." Such a decision would make it far more difficult to develop effective global strategies for mitigating and adapting to climate change. The consequences of opting out of the global community would be severe and long-lasting – for our planet's climate and for the international credibility of the United States.
Energy independence:
Main article: United States energy independence
In his May 2016 speech on energy policy, Trump stated: "Under my presidency, we will accomplish complete American energy independence. We will become totally independent of the need to import energy from the oil cartel or any nation hostile to our interest."
The New York Times reported that "experts say that such remarks display a basic ignorance of the workings of the global oil markets."
Environmental regulation:
In January 2016, Trump vowed "tremendous cutting" of the budget for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency if elected. In an October 2015 interview with Chris Wallace, Trump explained, "what they do is a disgrace. Every week they come out with new regulations." When Wallace asked, "Who's going to protect the environment?", Trump answered "we'll be fine with the environment. We can leave a little bit, but you can't destroy businesses."
Trump has charged that the "U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service abuses the Endangered Species Act to restrict oil and gas exploration." In 2011, Trump said that would permit drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska.
In July 2016, Trump suggested that he was in favor of state and local bans on hydraulic fracturing (fracking), saying, "I'm in favor of fracking, but I think that voters should have a big say in it. I mean, there's some areas, maybe, they don't want to have fracking. And I think if the voters are voting for it, that's up to them...if a municipality or a state wants to ban fracking, I can understand that."
Pipelines:
Keystone XL
Main article: Keystone Pipeline
Trump promised to construct the Keystone XL pipeline, a proposed project to bring Canadian petroleum to the U.S. Trump pledged that if elected, he would ask TransCanada Corp. to renew its permit application for the project within his first hundred days in office. Trump claimed that Keystone XL pipeline will have "no impact on environment" and create "lots of jobs for U.S.", although in fact the pipeline is projected to create only 35 permanent jobs.
In his first days in office, Trump revived the Keystone XL project, signing a presidential memorandum reversing the rejection of the proposed pipeline that President Obama had made. Trump "also signed a directive ordering an end to protracted environmental reviews," pledging to make environmental review " a very short process".
Dakota Access Pipeline:
Main articles:
After months of protest by thousands of protesters, including the largest gathering of Native Americans in 100 years, in December 2016 the United States Army Corps of Engineers under the Obama administration announced that it would not grant an easement for the pipeline, and the Corps of Engineers undertook an environmental impact statement to look at possible alternative routes.
However, in February 2017, newly elected President Donald Trump ended the environmental impact assessment and ordered construction to continue. Trump has financial ties to Energy Transfer Partners and Phillips 66, who are both directly involved in the controversial project. The CEO of Energy Transfer Partners is a campaign donor for Donald Trump.
Renewable energy:
Main article: Renewable energy in the United States
In his 2015 book Crippled America, Trump is highly critical of the "big push" to develop renewable energy, arguing that the push is based on a mistaken belief that greenhouse gases contribute to climate change.
He writes, "There has been a big push to develop alternative forms of energy—so-called green energy—from renewable sources. That's a big mistake. To begin with, the whole push for renewable energy is being driven by the wrong motivation, the mistaken belief that global climate change is being caused by carbon emissions. If you don't buy that—and I don't—then what we have is really just an expensive way of making the tree-huggers feel good about themselves."
Despite criticizing wind farms in the past (calling them "ugly"), Trump has said that he does not oppose the wind production tax credit, saying: "I'm okay with subsidies, to an extent."
Trump has criticized wind energy for being expensive and for not working without "massive subsidies". He added, "windmills are killing hundreds and hundreds of eagles. One of the most beautiful, one of the most treasured birds—and they're killing them by the hundreds and nothing happens," a claim rated as "mostly false" by PolitiFact since best estimates indicate that about one hundred golden eagles are killed each year by wind turbine blades.
In his official platform, Trump claims that he will reduce bureaucracy which would then lead to greater innovation. His platform mentions "renewable energies", including "nuclear, wind and solar energy" in that regard but adds that he would not support those "to the exclusion of other energy".
Trump supports a higher ethanol mandate (the amount of ethanol required by federal regulation to be blended into the U.S. gasoline supply). Trump vowed to protect the government's Renewable Fuel Standard and corn-based ethanol.
In August 2019, Trump claimed: "if a windmill is within two miles of your house, your house is practically worthless"; this claim is not supported by studies in the United States.
Wildlife conservation and animal welfare:
In October 2016, the Humane Society of the United States denounced Trump's campaign, saying that a "Trump presidency would be a threat to animals everywhere" and that he has "a team of advisors and financial supporters tied in with trophy hunting, puppy mills, factory farming, horse slaughter, and other abusive industries."
In February 2017, under the Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) unexpectedly removed from its public website "all enforcement records related to horse soring and to animal welfare at dog breeding operations and other facilities."
The decision prompted criticism from animal welfare advocates (such as the Animal Welfare Institute), investigative journalists, and some of the regulated industries (the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the group Speaking of Research said that the move created an impression of non-transparency).
Foreign policy and defense:
Main articles:
Health care
Actions while in office
Legislation
Further information:
President Trump advocated repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act (ACA or "Obamacare").
The Republican-controlled House passed the American Health Care Act (AHCA) in May 2017, handing it to the Senate, which decided to write its own version of the bill rather than voting on the AHCA.
The Senate bill, called the "Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017" (BCRA), failed on a vote of 45–55 in the Senate during July 2017. Other variations also failed to gather the required support, facing unanimous Democratic Party opposition and some Republican opposition.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bills would increase the number of uninsured by over 20 million persons, while reducing the budget deficit marginally.
Actions to hinder the implementation of ACA
See also: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
President Trump continued Republican attacks on the ACA while in office, including steps such as:
- Weakening the individual mandate through his first executive order, which resulted in limiting enforcement of mandate penalties by the IRS. For example, tax returns without indications of health insurance ("silent returns") will still be processed, overriding instructions from the Obama administration to the IRS to reject them.
- Reducing funding for advertising for the 2017 and 2018 exchange enrollment periods by up to 90%, with other reductions to support resources used to answer questions and help people sign-up for coverage. This action could reduce ACA enrollment.
- Cutting the enrollment period for 2018 by half, to 45 days. The NYT editorial board referred to this as part of a concerted "sabotage" effort.
- Issuing public statements that the exchanges are unstable or in a death spiral. CBO reported in May 2017 that the exchanges would remain stable under current law (ACA), but would be less stable if the AHCA were passed.
Several insurers and actuary groups cited uncertainty created by President Trump, specifically non-enforcement of the individual mandate and not funding cost sharing reduction subsidies, as contributing 20-30 percentage points to premium increases for the 2018 plan year on the ACA exchanges.
In other words, absent Trump's actions against the ACA, premium increases would have averaged 10% or less, rather than the estimated 28-40% under the uncertainty his actions created.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) maintains a timeline of many "sabotage" efforts by the Trump Administration.
Ending cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments:
Main article: Cost sharing reductions subsidy
President Trump announced in October 2017 he would end the smaller of the two types of subsidies under the ACA, the cost sharing reduction (CSR) subsidies. This controversial decision significantly raised premiums on the ACA exchanges (as much as 20 percentage points) along with the premium tax credit subsidies that rise with them, with the CBO estimating a $200 billion increase in the budget deficit over a decade.
CBO also estimated that initially up to one million fewer would have health insurance coverage, although more might have it in the long run as the subsidies expand. CBO expected the exchanges to remain stable (e.g., no "death spiral") as the premiums would increase and prices would stabilize at the higher (non-CSR) level.
President Trump's argument that the CSR payments were a "bailout" for insurance companies and therefore should be stopped, actually results in the government paying more to insurance companies ($200B over a decade) due to increases in the premium tax credit subsidies.
Journalist Sarah Kliff therefore described Trump's argument as "completely incoherent."
2020 campaign
In August 2019, at a campaign rally, Trump claimed that his administration "will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions, always." However, his administration had already repeatedly attempted to water down or repeal the ACA's protections for people with preexisting medical conditions, without any proposal on how to restore these protections if the ACA is rendered void.
Prior to election
According to a report by the RAND Corporation, Trump's proposed health-care policy proposals, depending on specific elements implemented, would result in between 15 and 25 million fewer people with health insurance and increase the federal deficit in a range from zero to $41 billion (~$47.3 billion in 2022) in 2018.
This was in contrast to Clinton's proposals, which would expand health insurance coverage for between zero and 10 million people while increasing the deficit in a range from zero to $90 billion (~$104 billion in 2022) in 2018.
According to the report, low-income individuals and sicker people would be most adversely affected by his proposed policies, although it was pointed out that not all policy proposals have been modeled.
Affordable Care Act and health-care reform
Main articles:
- Healthcare reform in the United States
- Healthcare reform debate in the United States
- Affordable Care Act
As the 2016 campaign unfolded, Trump stated that he favors repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA or "Obamacare")—which Trump refers to as a "complete disaster"—and replacing it with a "free-market system".
On his campaign website, Trump says, "on day one of the Trump Administration, we will ask Congress to immediately deliver a full repeal of Obamacare." Trump's campaign has insisted that the candidate has "never supported socialized medicine."
Trump has cited the rising costs of premiums and deductibles as a motivation to repeal the Affordable Care Act. However, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the after-subsidy premium costs to those with insurance coverage via the Affordable Care Act's exchanges did not change significantly on average from 2016 to 2017, as increases in the subsidies offset pre-subsidy insurance premium increases.
For example, after-subsidy costs for a popular "silver plan" remained around $200/month in 2016 and 2017. An estimated 70% of persons on the exchanges could purchase a plan for $75/month after subsidies. Further, in the employer market, health insurance premium cost increases from 2015 to 2016 were an estimated 3% on average, low by historical standards.
While deductibles rose 12% on average from 2015 to 2016, more workers are pairing higher-deductible plans with tax-preferred health savings accounts (HSAs), offsetting some of the deductible increase (i.e., lowering their effective deductible).
The Congressional Budget Office reported in March 2016 that there were approximately 23 million people with insurance due to the law, with 12 million people covered by the exchanges (10 million of whom received subsidies to help pay for insurance) and 11 million made eligible for Medicaid.
The CBO also reported in June 2015 that: "Including the budgetary effects of macroeconomic feedback, repealing the ACA would increase federal budget deficits by $137 billion over the 2016–2025 period." CBO also estimated that excluding the effects of macroeconomic feedback, repeal of the ACA would increase the deficit by $353 billion over that same period.
In the early part of his campaign, Trump responded to questions about his plan to replace the ACA by saying that it would be "something terrific!"
Trump subsequently said at various points that he believes that the government should have limited involvement in health care, but has also said that "at the lower end, where people have no money, I want to try and help those people," by "work[ing] out some sort of a really smart deal with hospitals across the country."
And he has said "everybody's got to be covered."
At a February 2016 town hall on CNN, Trump said that he supported the individual health insurance mandate of the ACA, which requires all Americans to have health insurance, saying "I like the mandate. So here's where I'm a little bit different [from other Republican candidates]." In March 2016, Trump reversed himself, saying that "Our elected representatives must eliminate the individual mandate. No person should be required to buy insurance unless he or she wants to."
In March 2016, Trump released his health care plan, which called for allowing health insurance companies to compete across state lines and for making Medicaid into a block grant system for the states. He also called for elimination of the individual mandate for health insurance, for allowing health insurance premiums to be deducted on tax returns, and for international competition in the drug market.
In the same document, Trump acknowledged that mental health care in the U.S. is often inadequate but offered no immediate solution to the problem, instead stating that "there are promising reforms being developed in Congress." Trump also emphasized the removal of market entry barriers for drug providers and improved access to imported medication corresponding to safety standards.
Explaining how he would address the problem of ensuring the people that would lose their insurance coverage if Obamacare were repealed, Trump said, "We have to come up, and we can come up with many different plans.
In fact, plans you don't even know about will be devised because we're going to come up with plans—health care plans—that will be so good. And so much less expensive both for the country and for the people. And so much better."
His plan has been criticized by Republican health experts as "a jumbled hodgepodge of old Republican ideas, randomly selected, that don't fit together" (Robert Laszewski) providing nothing that "would do anything more than cover a couple million people" (Gail R. Wilensky).
In 1999, during his abortive 2000 Reform Party presidential campaign, Trump told TV interviewer Larry King, "I believe in universal health care."
In his 2000 book, The America We Deserve, Trump reiterated his call for universal health care and focused on a Canadian-style single-payer health care system as a means to achieve it.
Though he characterized the Canadian healthcare system as "catastrophic in certain ways" in October 2016 during the second presidential debate, the Trump campaign website wrote in June 2015 about his support for "a system that would mirror Canada's government-run healthcare service" under the title "What does Donald Trump believe? Where the candidate stands on 10 issues". In 2015, Trump also expressed admiration for the Scottish health-care system, which is single payer.
Public health:
Ebola
Main article: Ebola virus cases in the United States
In 2014, after a New York physician returned from treating Ebola patients in West Africa and showed symptoms of the disease, Trump tweeted that if the doctor had Ebola, "Obama should apologize to the American people & resign!"
When the doctor was later confirmed to have developed Ebola in New York, Trump tweeted that it was "Obama's fault" and "I have been saying for weeks for President Obama to stop the flights from West Africa. So simple, but he refused. A TOTAL incompetent!"
Trump also criticized President Obama's decision to send 3,000 U.S. troops to affected regions to help combat the outbreak (see Operation United Assistance).
As doctor Kent Brantly returned to the U.S. for treatment, Trump tweeted that U.S. doctors who went abroad to treat Ebola were "great" but "must suffer the consequences" if they became infected and insisted that "the U.S. must immediately stop all flights from EBOLA infected countries or the plague will start and spread inside our 'borders.'"
When an Ebola patient was scheduled to come to the U.S. for treatment, Trump tweeted, "now I know for sure that our leaders are incompetent. KEEP THEM OUT OF HERE!"
Trump's suggestion on the Ebola crisis "would go against all the expert advice being offered". Doctors warned "that isolating West Africa would only make the Ebola outbreak much worse" by "potentially denying help and supplies from getting in", and might destabilize the countries and contribute to the disease's spread outside West Africa.
Zika
Main article: 2015–2016 Zika virus epidemic
On August 3, 2016, Trump called the Zika virus outbreak in Florida "a big problem". He expressed his support for Florida governor Rick Scott's handling of the crisis, saying that he's "doing a fantastic job". When asked if Congress should convene an emergency session to approve Zika funding, Trump answered, "I would say that it's up to Rick Scott." On August 11, 2016, Trump said that he was in favor of Congress setting aside money to combat the Zika virus.
Vaccines:
Trump believed that childhood vaccinations were related to autism, a hypothesis which has been repeatedly debunked. The American Academy of Pediatrics and Autism Speaks have "decried Trump's remarks as false and potentially dangerous."
In 2010, the Donald J. Trump Foundation donated $10,000 to Generation Rescue, Jenny McCarthy's nonprofit organization that advocates the incorrect view that autism and related disorders are primarily caused by vaccines.
Despite his prior views, however, Trump did drop his claims of vaccines being related to autism in 2019 after the 2019 measles outbreaks, in saying: "They have to get those shots," as well as "...vaccinations are so important".
Immigration:
Main article: Immigration policy of Donald Trump
Illegal immigration was a signature issue of Trump's presidential campaign, and his proposed reforms and controversial remarks regarding immigration have also expressed support for a variety of "limits on legal immigration and guest-worker visas," including a "pause" on granting green cards, which Trump says will "allow record immigration levels to subside to more moderate historical averages."
In August 2019, Trump accused Democrats of supporting "open borders" by attempting to use their opposition to his immigration priorities as an example despite no explicit evidence to support his claim.
He also claimed that his administration is "building the wall faster and better than ever", but no new barriers were erected by June 2019 at the Mexico–United States border unlike what Trump promised during his 2016 campaign. The only installations have been replacement fencing of old barriers.
Trump also falsely claimed that only 2% of migrants who were released instead of detained eventually returned for their immigration hearings. The 2017 statistic is 72% for migrants, and 89% of migrants applying for asylum.
Law and order:
Capital punishment:
See also: Capital punishment in the United States
Trump has long advocated for capital punishment in the United States. In May 1989, shortly after the Central Park jogger case received widespread media attention, Trump purchased a full-page ad in four New York City newspapers with the title "BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY!"
Five defendants (the "Central Park Five") were wrongfully convicted in the case and were subsequently exonerated. By October 2016, Trump still maintained that the Central Park Five were guilty.
In December 2015, in a speech accepting the endorsement of the New England Police Benevolent Association, Trump said that "One of the first things I do [if elected President] in terms of executive order if I win will be to sign a strong, strong statement that will go out to the country, out to the world, that...anybody killing a police officer—death penalty. It's going to happen, O.K.?"
However, the president has no authority over these prosecutions as they usually take place in state court under state law, and over one-third of U.S. states have already abolished the death penalty. Furthermore, mandatory death sentences are unconstitutional, as held by the Supreme Court in Woodson v. North Carolina (1976).
Torture:
Main article: Torture and the United States
Trump has said that he believes that "torture absolutely works". During his campaign, Trump said that "I would bring back waterboarding, and I'd bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding".
However, during his presidency, he did not bring back waterboarding.
Criminal justice:
Main article: Criminal justice reform in the United States
As of May 2016, Trump's campaign website made no mention of criminal justice reform, and Trump rarely talked in specifics.
Trump has stated that he would be "tough on crime" and criticized Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's criminal justice reform proposals. When asked about specific criminal justice reforms, Trump reportedly often changes the subject back to supporting police or vague answers about needing to be "tough." In January 2016, Trump said that along with veterans, "the most mistreated people in this country are police."
Trump supports the use of "stop and frisk" tactics, of the kind once used in New York City. In 2000, Trump also rejected as elitist and naive the arguments of criminal justice reformers that the U.S. criminal justice system puts too many criminals in jail. Trump is in favor of at least one mandatory sentence, where using a gun to commit a crime results in a five-year sentence.
Trump on several occasions asserted that crime was rising in the United States. Trump's assertions that crime was rising were false; in fact, both violent and property crimes declined consistently declined in the U.S. from the early 1990s until 2014. Trump's claim that "inner-city crime is reaching record levels" received a "pants-on-fire" rating from PolitiFact.
As president, Trump reiterated in February 2017 the false claim that crime was rising, saying, "the murder rate in our country is the highest it's been in 47 years."
In May 2016, Trump stated that the cities of Oakland and Ferguson are "among the most dangerous in the world". In response, CBS News in San Francisco reported that the murder rates in Oakland and Baghdad are comparable, but PolitiFact rated Trump's claim false given that "homicide rates alone are not enough to gauge whether a city is dangerous or not".
On November 22, 2015, Trump retweeted a graphic with purported statistics—cited to a nonexistent "Crime Statistics Bureau"—which claimed that African Americans were responsible for 81% of the homicides of White Americans and that police were responsible for 1% of black homicides compared to 4% of white homicides.
Trump's retweet earned PolitiFact's "Pants on Fire" rating and was called "grossly inaccurate" by FactCheck.org the next day. Blacks were actually responsible for only 15% of white homicides according to FBI data for 2014.
The breakdown of the racial differences in police killings in Trump's retweet was also inaccurate. Based on the percentages, the number of whites killed by police would be almost 4 times greater than the number of blacks.
Data from The Washington Post for 2009 to 2013 showed a ratio of 1.5 white deaths by police for each black death. A separate estimate by Peter Moskos, associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice attributed 10% of white homicides to police and 4% to police for blacks. When asked about the statistics, Trump maintained that the statistics came "from sources that are very credible."
Drug policy:
See also: Federal drug policy of the United States
Trump's views on drug policy have shifted dramatically over time.
At a luncheon hosted by the Miami Herald in April 1990, Trump told a crowd of 700 people that U.S. drug enforcement policy was "a joke," and that: "We're losing badly the war on drugs. You have to legalize drugs to win that war. You have to take the profit away from these drug czars."
In his campaign for the presidency in 2015 and 2016, however, Trump adopted "drug warrior" positions and has sought advice on the issue from William J. Bennett, who served as the U.S. first "drug czar" in the 1980s "and has remained a proponent of harsh 1980s-style drug war tactics."
Trump told Sean Hannity in June 2015 that he opposes marijuana legalization and that "I feel strongly about that." Trump also claims to have personally never used controlled substances of any kind.
Trump has voiced support for medical marijuana, saying that he is "a hundred percent in favor" because "I know people that have serious problems...and...it really, really does help them." When asked about Colorado (where recreational use of marijuana is legal), Trump softened his previously expressed views and essentially said that states should be able to decide on whether marijuana for recreational purposes should be legal.
The administration organized the Marijuana Policy Coordination Committee in 2018.
Gun regulation:
Main article: Gun politics in the United States
In his 2000 book The America We Deserve, Trump wrote that he generally opposed gun control, but supported the Federal Assault Weapons Ban and supported a "slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun."
In his book, Trump also criticized the gun lobby, saying: "The Republicans walk the N.R.A. line and refuse even limited restrictions." In 2008, Trump opposed hunting-education classes in schools and called the "thought of voluntarily putting guns in the classroom...a really bad plan."
While campaigning for the presidency Trump reversed some of his positions on gun issues, calling for the expansion of gun rights. In 2015 he described himself as a staunch advocate of the Second Amendment and said concealed carry "is a right, not a privilege."
He proposed eliminating prohibitions on assault weapons, military-style weapons and high-capacity magazines (which Trump described as "scary sounding phrases" used by gun control advocates "to confuse people"), as well as making concealed carry permits valid nationwide, rather than on the current state-to-state basis.
At his campaign website he called for an overhaul of the current federal background check system, arguing that "Too many states are failing to put criminal and mental health records into the system."
On the campaign trail in 2015, Trump praised the National Rifle Association (NRA), and received the group's endorsement after becoming the presumptive Republican nominee.
He asserted that the presence of more guns in schools and public places could have stopped mass shootings such as those in 2015 in Paris; in San Bernardino, California; and at Umpqua Community College.
Trump supported barring people on the government's terrorist watch list from purchasing weapons, saying in 2015: "If somebody is on a watch list and an enemy of state and we know it's an enemy of state, I would keep them away, absolutely."
On this position, Trump departed from the position of gun-rights groups and most of his 2016 Republican rivals for the presidency and supported a stance backed by Senate Democrats.
Trump said that he holds a New York concealed carry permit and that "I carry on occasion, sometimes a lot. I like to be unpredictable." A 1987 Associated Press story said that he held a handgun permit at that time.
In January 2016, Trump said: "I will get rid of gun-free zones on schools, and—you have to—and on military bases...My first day, it gets signed, okay? My first day. There's no more gun-free zones." Trump could not eliminate gun-free school zones by executive order, however, since such zones were created by a federal law that can only be reversed by Congress.
In May 2016, Trump made ambiguous comments on guns in classrooms, saying: "I don't want to have guns in classrooms. Although, in some cases, teachers should have guns in classrooms."
In May 2016, Trump accused Hillary Clinton of lying when she claimed that "Donald Trump would force schools to allow guns in classrooms on his first day in office." According to The Washington Post fact-checker, Clinton's statement was accurate.
In June 2016, Trump said "it would have been a beautiful, beautiful sight" to see Omar Mateen shot in the head by an armed patron in the Orlando nightclub shooting, reiterating his stance that more people should be armed in public places.
A few days later, after two top officials of the NRA challenged the notion that drinking clubgoers should be armed, Trump reversed his position, saying that he "obviously" meant that additional guards or employees should have been armed in the nightclub.
Security personnel and other staffers at a number of Trump's hotels and golf courses told ABC News that patrons are not permitted to carry guns on the property. A Trump spokesman denied this, saying that licensed persons are permitted to carry guns on the premises.
At a rally on August 9, 2016, Trump accused his opponent of wanting to "essentially abolish the Second Amendment", and went on: "By the way, and if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know." These comments were interpreted by critics as suggesting violence against Clinton or her appointees, but Trump's campaign stated that he was referring to gun rights advocates' "great political power" as a voting bloc.
One month after his inauguration, Trump reversed an Obama-era regulation that had been intended to prevent weapons purchases by certain people with mental health problems. Had the regulation been allowed to take effect, it would have added 75,000 names, including the names of those who receive federal financial assistance due to a mental illness or who have financial proxies due to a mental illness, to a background check database.
Following the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in February 2018, Trump met with students and others at the White House for a "listening session". Trump suggested arming up to 20% of the teachers to stop "maniacs" from attacking students. The following day Trump called a "gun free" school a "magnet" for criminals and tweeted, "Highly trained, gun adept, teachers/coaches would solve the problem instantly, before police arrive. GREAT DETERRENT!"
In August 2019, following mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and in Dayton, Ohio, Trump declined to support universal background checks, saying that existing background checks are already "very, very strong," even though "we have sort of missing areas and areas that don't complete the whole circle." He also indicated that he was not interested in working on bipartisan compromises.
In a speech at a 2023 NRA convention, Trump expressed support for national concealed carry reciprocity which would allow a person with a concealed carry permit in one state to have their permit apply across state lines nationwide.
Judiciary:
Further information: List of federal judges appointed by Donald Trump
According to The New York Times, many of Trump's statements on legal topics are "extemporaneous and resist conventional legal analysis," with some appearing "to betray ignorance of fundamental legal concepts."
Supreme Court
Main article: Donald Trump Supreme Court candidates
Trump stated he wanted to replace U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, who had died, with "a person of similar views and principles". He has released a list of eleven potential picks to replace Scalia.
The jurists were widely considered to be conservative. All are white, and eight of the eleven are men.
The list included five out of the eight individuals recommended by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Trump had previously insisted that he would seek guidance from conservative groups such as the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation when it came to picking Supreme Court candidates. Several of the judges listed by Trump had questioned abortion rights. Six of the eleven judges had clerked for conservative Supreme Court justices.
Trump has claimed that he "would probably appoint" justices to the Supreme Court who "would look very seriously" at the Hillary Clinton email controversy "because it's a criminal activity."
However, under the U.S. Constitution, Supreme Court justices "are neither investigators nor prosecutors."
Trump criticized Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, as a "nightmare for conservatives," citing Roberts' vote in the 2015 decision in King v. Burwell, which upheld provisions of the Affordable Care Act. He also blamed Roberts for the June 2015 Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, apparently in error, since in that case Roberts actually dissented from the majority opinion.
In February 2016, Trump called on the Senate to stop Obama from filling the vacant seat on the Supreme Court.
An analysis by FiveThirtyEight predicted that, under the assumption that Scalia's vacant seat on the Court would not be filled before Trump's presidency, and taking account of the advanced age of three of the sitting justices, that a Trump presidency would move the Supreme Court "rightward toward its most conservative position in recent memory".
Trump ultimately appointed three justices to the court: Neil Gorsuch to replace Scalia, Brett Kavanaugh to replace Anthony Kennedy, and Amy Coney Barrett to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The appointments of Trump's nominees shifted the court to a strongly conservative position. In the period after Trump left office, the court issued several conservative rulings, including declaring that the constitution does not protect abortion, in which Trump's appointees contributed to the majority.
Comments on judges and judicial decisions:
Since taking office, Trump has made a series of "escalating attacks on the federal judiciary" in response to judicial decisions against him. After a federal district judge, James Robart, issued a stay of Trump's executive order on travel, immigration, and refugees, Trump disparaged him on Twitter, referring to him as a "the so-called judge" and writing: "[He] put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!"
While presidents in the past have sometimes offered muted criticism of judicial opinions, Trump's personal attacks on individual judges are seen as unprecedented in American history. Trump's remarks prompted criticism from his own nominee, Gorsuch, who told Senator Richard Blumenthal that Trump's statements were "disheartening" and "demoralizing" to the federal judiciary. A number of legal scholars feared that Trump's conduct could undermine public confidence in the courts and endanger the independence of the judiciary.
Term limits and ethics regulations:
Main article: Term limits in the United States
In October 2016, Trump said that he would push for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress, so that members of the House of Representatives could serve for a maximum of six years and senators for a maximum of twelve years.
Trump also pledged to re-institute a ban on executive branch officials from lobbying for five years after leaving government service and said that he supported Congress instituting a similar five-year lobbying ban of its own, applicable to former members and staff.
Under current "cooling-off period" regulations, former U.S. representatives are required to wait one year before they can lobby Congress, former U.S. senators are required to two years, and former executive-branch officials "must wait either two years or one year before lobbying their former agency, depending on how senior they were."
Twenty-second Amendment:
On multiple occasions since taking office in 2017, Trump has questioned presidential term limits and in public remarks has talked about serving beyond the limits of the Twenty-second Amendment. For instance, during an April 2019 White House event for the Wounded Warrior Project, he joked that he would remain president "at least for 10 or 14 years".
Flag desecration:
During a rally in June 2020, President Trump told supporters that he thinks flag burning should be punishable by one year in prison.
Official language
In 2015 during a debate, Trump said, "This is a country where we speak English, not Spanish."
In June 2019, Senator Steve Daines proposed reviving the previously unsuccessful language amendment, and in doing so received the support of the Trump administration.
Video game violence:
Main article: Violence and video games
Trump has voiced his opposition to video game violence. After it was erroneously reported that the Sandy Hook shooter frequently played violent video games, Trump tweeted, "Video game violence & glorification must be stopped—it is creating monsters!"
After the 2019 El Paso shooting, Trump said in a speech, "We must stop the glorification of violence in our society. This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace. It is too easy today for troubled youth to surround themselves with a culture that celebrates violence. We must stop or substantially reduce this and it has to begin immediately."
Online gambling:
Trump supports online gambling, based on the following reasoning: "This has to happen because many other countries are doing it and like usual the U.S. is just missing out."
Science and technology:
See also Climate change and pollution, above.
A 2016 report in Scientific American graded Trump and three other top presidential candidates—Hillary Clinton, Gary Johnson, and Jill Stein—on science policy, based on their responses to a twenty-question ScienceDebate.org survey. Trump "came in last on all counts" in grading, with scientists and researchers faulting him for a lack of knowledge or appreciation of scientific issues.
Space:
Main article: Space policy of the Donald Trump administration
As of October 2016, one of Trump's policy advisors declared that, under Trump, NASA would recreate the National Space Council and pursue a goal of "human exploration of the solar system by the end of the century", to drive technology developments to a stronger degree than a crewed mission to Mars.
Other goals would include shifting budget to deep space exploration from Earth science and climate research, and pursuit of small satellites and hypersonic technology. A possibility of China joining the International Space Station program was also considered.
A stronger role of crewed Lunar exploration is possible in NASA's quest for a crewed mission to Mars. Prior to that statement, the Trump campaign appeared to have little to no space policy at all.
Technology and net neutrality:
Main article: Net neutrality in the United States
As of June 2016, Trump has published no tech policy proposals. On the campaign trail, Trump frequently antagonized Silicon Valley figures, using his Twitter account to lambast tech leaders such as Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, and Brian Chesky of Airbnb over a series of months.
He is particularly concerned about the social breakdown of American culture caused by technology, and said, "the Internet and the whole computer age is really a mixed bag," having "complicated lives very greatly".
Trump is opposed to net neutrality, asserting that it is "Obama's attack on the internet" and saying that it "will target the conservative media."
Trump has suggested closing "certain areas" of the Internet. Regarding how this relates to freedom of speech, he added "Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people."
The tech publication Recode reports that Trump has made no public statements on the issues of patent reform or broadband access.
The Free Press Action Fund, a group of tech policy activists, rated Trump the worst 2016 presidential candidate for "citizens' digital lives," citing his positions opposing reforming the Patriot Act, favoring Internet censorship, and opposing net neutrality.
Social issues and civil liberties:
Main article: Social policy of Donald Trump
Abortion:
Main article: Abortion in the United States
Trump describes himself as pro-life and generally opposes abortion with some exceptions: rape, incest, and circumstances endangering the health of the mother. As a candidate, he said he believes the issue of abortion "would have been better if it were up to the states." He said he was committed to appointing justices who would overturn the ruling in Roe v. Wade.
After Roe v. Wade was overturned in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Trump took credit for the decision but has not stated whether he supports a federal ban or federal restrictions on abortion.
LGBT rights:
See also: LGBT rights in the United States
The Trump administration rolled back many existing LGBT protections and also introduced new policies that undermine LGBT rights.
Workplace discrimination
Main article: Employment discrimination law in the United States
In early 2017, Trump reversed an Obama-era directive that had required companies with large federal contracts to prove their compliance with LGBT protections.
In 2018, Trump signed the United States–Mexico–Canada trade agreement with a footnote exempting the United States from complying with the agreement's call for an end to "sex-based discrimination".
The Trump administration unsuccessfully tried to eliminate nondiscrimination protections at the level of the Supreme Court, where the Justice Department intervened in three employment lawsuits--Bostock v. Clayton County; Altitude Express, Inc. v. Zarda; and Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC—arguing that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not prohibit job discrimination based on sexual orientation or "transgender status."
However, despite the Trump administration's intervention, the Supreme Court ruled on these three cases on June 15, 2020, that sexual orientation and gender identity are indeed covered under existing protections for "sex discrimination".
Healthcare discrimination:
The Affordable Care Act included an Obama-era nondiscrimination provision that explicitly entitled people to receive care regardless of sex or gender identity, but the Trump administration reversed it. On June 12, 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services finalized and revealed its replacement rule. Now, healthcare providers and insurers may decide whether to serve transgender people.
Transgender rights
Main article: Transgender rights in the United States
One month after taking office, Trump reversed a directive from the Obama administration that had allowed transgender students to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity; this reversal allowed public schools to make their own rules about gendered bathrooms.
In 2020, the U.S. Department of Education threatened to withhold funding from Connecticut school districts that allow transgender girls to compete on girls' teams, claiming that the transgender students' participation is a violation of Title IX.
Six months into his presidency, Trump tweeted that transgender individuals would not be allowed to serve "in any capacity" in the U.S. military, an order that took Pentagon officials by surprise.
Eventually, in 2019, the Supreme Court—without hearing arguments or explaining its own decision—allowed the Trump administration to move ahead with the ban.
In 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services wrote a memo planning to establish a definition of gender based on sex assignment at birth. The memo argued in favor of a definition of gender "on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable" and the government's prerogative to genetically test individuals to determine their sex.
If approved by the Justice Department, the definition would apply across federal agencies, notably the departments of Education, Justice, and Labor, which, along with Health and Human Services, are responsible for enforcing Title IX nondiscrimination statutes.
The Trump administration also reversed Obama-era guidance on transgender prisoners, ordering the Bureau of Prisons instead to house them according to their "biological sex."
In 2019, HUD proposed a new rule to weaken the 2012 Equal Access Rule, which requires equal access to housing regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. This could allow homeless shelters to place transgender women in men's housing or to deny transgender people admission altogether.
In a 2021 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, Trump referred to transgender women who are athletes as "biological males".
In April 2021 Donald Trump attacked Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson for vetoing legislation that would have banned gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.
In a video posted on his 2024 campaign website, Trump called gender-affirming care to minors "chemical, physical, and emotional mutilation" and that he would pass a federal law banning it if in office.
He also stated that he would have the Department of Justice investigate pharmaceutical companies and hospital networks to determine if they "covered up the long-term side effects of gender transitions" and would remove hospitals who provide gender-affirming care from receiving funds from both Medicare and Medicaid.
On his 2024 campaign website Trump states that he would direct Congress to pass a bill that would designate that would mandate the United States only recognize the male and female genders and that they are assigned at birth.
Same-sex marriage:
Main article: Same-sex marriage in the United States
After several decades of national debate, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015 in the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling. After his election, Trump acknowledged that the court had already "settled" the issue.
Trump has not, however, been a personal proponent of same-sex marriage, saying as recently as 2011 that he was "not in favor of gay marriage" and saying during his 2016 campaign that he would "strongly consider" appointing Supreme Court justices who were inclined to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges.
He had previously supported and been a proponent of civil unions and he included the policy in his 2000 presidential campaign as a Reform Party candidate.
During his last year in office, Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign launched "Trump Pride", a coalition within the Trump campaign focused on outreach to LGBTQ voters, and claimed that Trump now supports same-sex marriage.
Data collection:
The Trump administration has made efforts to remove questions about LGBT identity and relationships from the 2020 census, the American Community Survey, the annual National Survey of Older Americans Act Participants, and the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System.
HIV/AIDS
Main article: HIV/AIDS in the United States
In 2017, Trump dissolved the Office of National AIDS Policy and the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, both of which had existed since the 1990s. Every year on World AIDS Day—2017, 2018, 2019—Trump's proclamations have omitted mention of LGBT people.
Religion-based exemptionsIn 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the creation of the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division. Its purpose is to enforce federal laws that related to "conscience and religious freedom"; that is, to enable individuals and businesses to exempt themselves from obeying nondiscrimination laws.
In 2019, HHS granted an exemption from an Obama-era nondiscrimination regulation to a foster care agency in South Carolina. HHS cited the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) as a basis for allowing federally funded Christian groups to discriminate against non-Christians.
Later that year, the Department of Labor, also referencing the RFRA, proposed a new rule to exempt "religious organizations" from obeying employment nondiscrimination law if they invoke "sincerely held religious tenets and beliefs" as their reason to discriminate. In 2020, the Justice Department filed a brief with the Supreme Court in support of another foster care agency in Pennsylvania, defending the agency's right to turn away same-sex couples as part of its "free exercise of religion".
In 2019, the State Department created the Commission on Unalienable Rights to initiate philosophical discussions of human rights that are grounded in the Catholic concept of "natural law" rather than modern identities based on gender and sexuality. Most of the twelve members of the commission have a history of anti-LGBT comments.
Education:
In March 2022 Trump said he approved of Florida's Parental Rights in Education bill, also referred to as the "don't say gay" bill, during an interview with The Washington Post that occurred after the bill was signed by Florida governor Ron DeSantis, but did not elaborate as to why he supports it.
Diplomacy:
The Trump administration eliminated the State Department's position for a Special Envoy for the Human Rights of LGBTI Persons.
In 2018, the Trump administration denied visas to the unmarried same-sex partners of foreign diplomats, even if they were from countries that recognize only civil partnership or that ban same-sex marriage.
Richard Grenell, nominated by Trump as the U.S. ambassador to Germany, is openly gay. In February 2019, Grenell was announced as the leader of a new campaign to decriminalize homosexuality worldwide, and he hosted a meeting with 11 European activists.
Trump seemed unaware of the initiative when he was asked about it the next day. Several months later, Trump tweeted that, "as we celebrate LGBT Pride Month," Americans should "stand in solidarity with the many LGBT people who live in dozens of countries worldwide that punish, imprison, or even execute" people for their sexual orientation.
However, that same week, the Trump administration instructed U.S. embassies not to fly the pride flag during Pride Month.
Judicial appointments:
See also: List of federal judges appointed by Donald Trump
About one-third of Trump's judicial nominees have anti-LGBT records. The U.S. Senate has, as of May 2020, confirmed nearly 400 of Trump's nominees to their new roles. At least one of the confirmed judges, Patrick Bumatay, is openly gay.
Marijuana:
See also: Cannabis policy of the Donald Trump administration
Marijuana and the rights of individual states to legalize recreational and medical marijuana was an issue of Trump's presidential campaign, and he formally stated during his campaign that he believed states should have the right to manage their own policies with regard to medical and recreational marijuana.
Following his election, he reversed his position on recreational marijuana and stated he believed medical marijuana should be allowed but stated the Federal Government may seek legal resolutions for those states which regulate the growth and sale of recreational marijuana.
However, in April 2018, he once again reversed himself, endorsing leaving the issue to the states; and in June 2018, Trump backed a bill introduced by Republican senator Cory Gardner of Colorado and Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts that would leave the decision to the states.
See also:
- Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign#Political positions
- Social media use by Donald Trump
- Presidency of Donald Trump
Indictments against Donald Trump
- YouTube Video: Former President Trump indicted by New York grand jury (CBS News)
- YouTube Video Legal recap: August started w/federal indictment in DC & ended w/Georgia RICO case being televised
- YouTube Video: Trump pleads not guilty to 2020 election charges — 8/3 (FULL LIVE STREAM)
* -- Trump Trials Clearinghouse
by Norman L. Eisen, Ryan Goodman, Siven Watt, Francois Barrilleaux, Sasha Matsuki and Arava Rose
December 5, 2023
Former President Donald Trump is a defendant in a sizable number of criminal and civil cases. To help readers parse through these complex legal developments, we have centralized information on Trump’s major cases in the most comprehensive clearinghouse of its kind.
Below you will find links to relevant court proceedings, key statutes, government documents, and defense documents – as well as Just Security resources and analysis, media and other guides.
We will continue updating this page with new information as the trials develop. Moreover, as Trump’s co-defendants plead guilty and cases close, this page will remain a one-stop source for those matters. We hope this repository of information will be useful for analysts, researchers, investigators, journalists, educators, and the public at large.
If you think the Trump Trials Clearinghouse is missing something important, please send recommendations for additional content by email to [email protected].
Click Here for a Master Calendar of Trump Court Dates: Criminal and Civil Cases
___________________________________________________________________________
Indictments against Donald Trump (Wikipedia)
In 2023, four criminal indictments were filed against Donald Trump, the president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Two indictments are on state charges (one in New York and one in Georgia) and two indictments (as well as one superseding indictment) are on federal charges. These indictments amount to a total of 91 felony charges.
Trials are scheduled to begin in March and May 2024, while the Georgia trial has not yet been scheduled.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him. Neither the indictments nor any resulting convictions would disqualify his 2024 presidential candidacy.
March 2023 indictment in New York:
Main article: Prosecution of Donald Trump in New York
A March 2023 indictment in New York, in which Trump faces 34 criminal charges of falsifying business records in the first degree related to payments made to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election. The trial is scheduled for March 25, 2024.
June 2023 federal indictment in Florida:
Main article: Federal prosecution of Donald Trump (classified documents case)
A June 2023 federal indictment related to classified government documents, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, in which Trump faces 40 criminal charges alleging mishandling of sensitive documents and conspiracy to obstruct the government in retrieving these documents. The trial is scheduled for May 20, 2024.
August 2023 federal indictment in Washington, D.C.
Main article: Federal prosecution of Donald Trump (election obstruction case)
An August 2023 federal indictment related to attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, in which Trump faces four criminal charges of conspiring to defraud the government and disenfranchise voters, and corruptly obstructing an official proceeding. The trial is scheduled for March 4, 2024.
August 2023 indictment in Georgia:
Main article: Georgia election racketeering prosecution
An August 2023 indictment in Georgia, in which Trump faces 13 criminal charges related to alleged attempts to overturn Joe Biden's victory in Georgia, alongside 18 accused co-conspirators. The trial is not yet scheduled.
by Norman L. Eisen, Ryan Goodman, Siven Watt, Francois Barrilleaux, Sasha Matsuki and Arava Rose
December 5, 2023
Former President Donald Trump is a defendant in a sizable number of criminal and civil cases. To help readers parse through these complex legal developments, we have centralized information on Trump’s major cases in the most comprehensive clearinghouse of its kind.
Below you will find links to relevant court proceedings, key statutes, government documents, and defense documents – as well as Just Security resources and analysis, media and other guides.
We will continue updating this page with new information as the trials develop. Moreover, as Trump’s co-defendants plead guilty and cases close, this page will remain a one-stop source for those matters. We hope this repository of information will be useful for analysts, researchers, investigators, journalists, educators, and the public at large.
If you think the Trump Trials Clearinghouse is missing something important, please send recommendations for additional content by email to [email protected].
Click Here for a Master Calendar of Trump Court Dates: Criminal and Civil Cases
___________________________________________________________________________
Indictments against Donald Trump (Wikipedia)
In 2023, four criminal indictments were filed against Donald Trump, the president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Two indictments are on state charges (one in New York and one in Georgia) and two indictments (as well as one superseding indictment) are on federal charges. These indictments amount to a total of 91 felony charges.
Trials are scheduled to begin in March and May 2024, while the Georgia trial has not yet been scheduled.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him. Neither the indictments nor any resulting convictions would disqualify his 2024 presidential candidacy.
March 2023 indictment in New York:
Main article: Prosecution of Donald Trump in New York
A March 2023 indictment in New York, in which Trump faces 34 criminal charges of falsifying business records in the first degree related to payments made to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election. The trial is scheduled for March 25, 2024.
June 2023 federal indictment in Florida:
Main article: Federal prosecution of Donald Trump (classified documents case)
A June 2023 federal indictment related to classified government documents, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, in which Trump faces 40 criminal charges alleging mishandling of sensitive documents and conspiracy to obstruct the government in retrieving these documents. The trial is scheduled for May 20, 2024.
August 2023 federal indictment in Washington, D.C.
Main article: Federal prosecution of Donald Trump (election obstruction case)
An August 2023 federal indictment related to attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, in which Trump faces four criminal charges of conspiring to defraud the government and disenfranchise voters, and corruptly obstructing an official proceeding. The trial is scheduled for March 4, 2024.
August 2023 indictment in Georgia:
Main article: Georgia election racketeering prosecution
An August 2023 indictment in Georgia, in which Trump faces 13 criminal charges related to alleged attempts to overturn Joe Biden's victory in Georgia, alongside 18 accused co-conspirators. The trial is not yet scheduled.
Jack Smith: independent special counsel, responsible for overseeing two preexisting Justice Department criminal investigations into former president Donald Trump)
- YouTube Video: Following Trump arraignment, Merrick Garland defends appointment of special counsel Jack Smith
- YouTube Video: What we know about Jack Smith, special counsel appointed to oversee Trump investigations (CBS News)
- YouTube Video: Gagged? Trump on defense as Jack Smith takes tough gag order to powerful court
* -- For months, Donald Trump has been going on the attack against Jack Smith, the special prosecutor tasked with two criminal investigations involving the former president—and who appears likely to indict the former president.
One investigation focuses on the 26 boxes’ worth of classified documents Trump took back to his Mar-a-Lago property; the other seeks to determine whether he unlawfully interfered with the transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election.
Trump has laid into Smith in screeds on Truth Social and in speeches, questioning the authenticity of Smith’s name and calling his work “treasonous.”
Upon Smith’s appointment last year, Trump wrote that he was a “Trump Hating THUG” and a “fully weaponized monster.” This quickly spread, with some of Trump’s biggest supporters in Washington, including Sen. Ted Cruz, Rep. Elise Stefanik, and Rep. Jim Jordan, also arguing that Smith and the Department of Justice were corrupt.
A few months later, Trump began questioning whether Jack Smith was the prosecutor’s real name, and went so far as to call him an “unfair Savage.” The name-questioning got so bad (“What did his name used to be?”) that Smith’s hometown paper felt compelled to track down Smith’s high school yearbook, and now, the whole world can ponder his 1980s borderline-mullet situation. (He is, indeed, identified as Jack Smith, Class of ’87).
But Trump is still going strong. Just a few weeks ago, Trump blasted Smith in a series of Truth Social posts calling him a “TRUMP Hating Special Prosecutor” who is “working overtime on this treasonous quest.” Trump’s lawyers even asked Attorney General Merrick Garland for a meeting to discuss their perceived “unfair” treatment by Smith.
One might wonder about the wisdom of attacking a government-appointed prosecutor who is actively investigating you. What’s Trump’s angle here?
Trump isn’t technically violating any rules or laws by publicly attacking Smith, but he could be hurting his own case, according to frequent Slate contributor Robert Katzberg, a former federal prosecutor who now focuses on white-collar criminal cases for Holland & Knight.
If a grand jury votes to indict Trump on either of Smith’s investigations, his online rhetoric could put a bad taste in the mouth of the judge assigned to his case. “No one likes to be insulted. No one likes to be attacked,” said Katzberg. “It can’t be good. It’s not good for Trump, it’s just more self-inflicted wounds.”
So why do it?
To Katzberg, it’s a simple case of Trump being characteristically impulsive and reacting emotionally. “I just don’t think he’s able to control himself. Any experienced lawyer would have resigned a long time before that.”
Trump has similarly gone after all the other prosecutors currently investigating him. He called Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who recently charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with alleged hush money payments, a “degenerate psychopath that truly hates the USA.”
He’s also attacked New York Attorney General Letitia James and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, calling them “racists in reverse.” Rather than being a reflection of any strategy, Katzberg says, it’s a sign that Trump “has the thinnest skin of any human being in history and is incapable of keeping his mouth closed.”
And it’s an example of Trump doing what he always does—working his audience like a pro wrestler.
Chris Kelly, author of the book The Donald: How Trump Turned Presidential Politics into Pro Wrestling, said this isn’t by accident, either—Trump has had a long relationship with World Wrestling Entertainment, dating back to the ’80s. He’s hosted WrestleMania at Trump Plaza twice and fake “bought” Monday Night Raw.
Once he became president, he even appointed Linda McMahon—wife of the former CEO of WWE—to be head of the Small Business Administration.
The way Trump stirs up his audience by hamming up these attacks mirrors the way villain characters in wrestling—heels—cut promos on their opponents (i.e., build themselves up against whoever they’re feuding with in interviews). Like wrestlers do, Trump has taken the kernel of his real personality and turned the volume dial up to create a larger-than-life character: The Donald.
“I think that’s part of why it’s been so resonant. He’s not out there with charts and facts and figures, he just hits it at an emotional level. He can play this heel and this persona,” Kelly said.
And people tend to love a heel, because the heel gets to do things they can’t do in real life. “Those are always the great wrestlers that fans like,” he said. “They say, ‘Oh I’d love to be the guy that can slam his boss in the ring, or can knock out my enemies.’ ”
Trump’s tendency to create catchy, funny nicknames for people he’s attacking is also reminiscent of wrestlers coming up with epithets for each other. And like a wrestler, Trump plays off the crowd reaction—testing what appeals to his audience. “We’ve seen this before, where he comes up with nicknames and maybe tries it out, it doesn’t resonate, and he changes course,” Kelly said.
In other words, Trump’s attacks on Jack Smith might seem bizarre and legally unwise—but if he keeps doing it, that could be because it resonates with his base. However, Trump aides told the New York Times the bravado may be masking a deeper anxiety, since Smith’s investigations are serious business that, if successful, could land him in prison.
Whether these attacks are an impulsive temper tantrum or a tactic to play on his supporters’ emotions, there is one thing everyone agrees on: Trump isn’t going to stop anytime soon. It’s essential to his magic.
To get your head around this, it’s helpful to understand the wrestling concept of “kayfabe.” Here’s how a sociologist named Nick Rogers described it in relation to Trump in a 2017 New York Times opinion piece:
Although the etymology of the word is a matter of debate, for at least 50 years “kayfabe” has referred to the unspoken contract between wrestlers and spectators: We’ll present you something clearly fake under the insistence that it’s real, and you will experience genuine emotion. Neither party acknowledges the bargain, or else the magic is ruined.
To a wrestling audience, the fake and the real coexist peacefully. If you ask a fan whether a match or backstage brawl was scripted, the question will seem irrelevant. You may as well ask a roller-coaster enthusiast whether he knows he’s not really on a runaway mine car. The artifice is not only understood but appreciated: The performer cares enough about the viewer’s emotions to want to influence them. Kayfabe isn’t about factual verifiability; it’s about emotional fidelity.
Trump spins a narrative about how he’s being unfairly persecuted by elites in the hopes that it hits on real emotions his supporters are feeling about their personal experiences with the government. He plays the heel in various ways, riling up the crowd against perceived enemies, —such as special prosecutor Jack Smith. It’s also the essential tool in Trump’s 2024 campaign for president.
“It’s been very difficult to kind of defeat him at his own game, because very few politicians have taken him up on combating him in the same type of language he uses,” Kelly said. “He’s starting again in the primary. It’s unclear if any of these other competitors can match the same tactic, because it’s been largely a winning one.”
___________________________________________________________________________
Jack Smith (Wikipedia)
John Luman Smith (born June 5, 1969) is an American attorney who has served in the United States Department of Justice as an assistant U.S. attorney, acting U.S. attorney, and head of the department's Public Integrity Section.
He was also the chief prosecutor at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, an international tribunal at The Hague tasked with investigating and prosecuting war crimes in the Kosovo War.
In November 2022, attorney general Merrick Garland appointed Smith an independent special counsel, responsible for overseeing two preexisting Justice Department criminal investigations into former president Donald Trump, three days after Trump announced his 2024 presidential campaign: one regarding Trump's role in the January 6 U.S. Capitol attack, and the other into alleged mishandling of government records, including classified documents. The documents case resulted in a 37-count indictment of Trump in June 2023 to which three counts were later added in July. In August, the January 6 case resulted in an indictment on four charges.
Early life and education:
Smith was born on June 5, 1969. He grew up in Clay, New York, a suburb of Syracuse. His father was a draftsman of air-conditioning systems; his mother was a homemaker for most of Smith's childhood.
He graduated from Liverpool High School in 1987, where he played football and baseball. He then studied political science at the State University of New York at Oneonta, graduating in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude.
Smith then attended Harvard Law School, from which he graduated cum laude in 1994 with the degree of Juris Doctor.
Career:
After graduating from law school, Smith joined the Manhattan District Attorney's office, serving as assistant district attorney. He was a member of the sex crimes and domestic violence units of the DA's office. He joined the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York in 1999.
As an assistant U.S. attorney at the Brooklyn-based office, he prosecuted the police officers who brutalized and sexually assaulted Abner Louima, and led the case towards the death penalty—which was later overturned—against Ronell Wilson, who murdered two members of the New York Police Department.
From 2008 to 2010, Smith worked as investigation coordinator for the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. In that position, he oversaw cases against government officials and militia members accused of war crimes and genocide.
In 2010, Smith returned to the U.S. to become chief of the U.S. Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section (PIN). Among his first responsibilities was evaluating current investigations, and he recommended closing investigations into several members of Congress.
He spent five years as chief of PIN, where he prosecuted a variety of corruption cases, including those against:
In 2015, Smith became an assistant U.S. attorney in the Middle District of Tennessee, at Nashville. He became the acting U.S. attorney in March 2017 upon the resignation of David Rivera, and resigned effective September 2017 after the nomination of Donald Q. Cochran. Smith became the vice president and head of litigation for Hospital Corporation of America in 2017.
On May 7, 2018, Smith was named to a four-year term as chief prosecutor for the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, investigating war crimes in the Kosovo War. During his time as the chief prosecutor, he brought charges against several individuals, including Salih Mustafa and the sitting President of Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi. He took up the post on September 11, 2018, and was appointed to a second term on May 8, 2022, before stepping down on November 18, 2022.
United States special counsel:
Main article: Smith special counsel investigation
On November 18, 2022, United States Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith special counsel to oversee the criminal investigations into Donald Trump's actions regarding the January 6 U.S. Capitol attack, and Trump's handling and storage of government records, including classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. He worked initially from the Netherlands while recovering from a fractured leg, injured when he was struck by a scooter while cycling. By early January 2023, Smith had returned to the U.S.
On June 8, 2023, a grand jury indicted Trump on seven federal criminal charges related to his handling of classified documents. This marked the first time in American history that a serving or former president has been indicted on a federal criminal charge. On August 1, Trump was indicted by a grand jury on four more federal felony counts relating to his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his conduct during the attack on the Capitol.
Awards
Personal life:
Smith is a competitive triathlete, having taken up swimming when he was in his mid-thirties. He has completed more than 100 triathlons and at least nine Ironman competitions around the world. In July 2011, he married Katy Chevigny, a documentary filmmaker known for Becoming, a 2020 documentary about Michelle Obama. They have a daughter. The couple lived in the Netherlands starting in 2018, before moving to Washington, D.C. in December 2022, shortly after Smith was appointed as special counsel.
See also:
One investigation focuses on the 26 boxes’ worth of classified documents Trump took back to his Mar-a-Lago property; the other seeks to determine whether he unlawfully interfered with the transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election.
Trump has laid into Smith in screeds on Truth Social and in speeches, questioning the authenticity of Smith’s name and calling his work “treasonous.”
Upon Smith’s appointment last year, Trump wrote that he was a “Trump Hating THUG” and a “fully weaponized monster.” This quickly spread, with some of Trump’s biggest supporters in Washington, including Sen. Ted Cruz, Rep. Elise Stefanik, and Rep. Jim Jordan, also arguing that Smith and the Department of Justice were corrupt.
A few months later, Trump began questioning whether Jack Smith was the prosecutor’s real name, and went so far as to call him an “unfair Savage.” The name-questioning got so bad (“What did his name used to be?”) that Smith’s hometown paper felt compelled to track down Smith’s high school yearbook, and now, the whole world can ponder his 1980s borderline-mullet situation. (He is, indeed, identified as Jack Smith, Class of ’87).
But Trump is still going strong. Just a few weeks ago, Trump blasted Smith in a series of Truth Social posts calling him a “TRUMP Hating Special Prosecutor” who is “working overtime on this treasonous quest.” Trump’s lawyers even asked Attorney General Merrick Garland for a meeting to discuss their perceived “unfair” treatment by Smith.
One might wonder about the wisdom of attacking a government-appointed prosecutor who is actively investigating you. What’s Trump’s angle here?
Trump isn’t technically violating any rules or laws by publicly attacking Smith, but he could be hurting his own case, according to frequent Slate contributor Robert Katzberg, a former federal prosecutor who now focuses on white-collar criminal cases for Holland & Knight.
If a grand jury votes to indict Trump on either of Smith’s investigations, his online rhetoric could put a bad taste in the mouth of the judge assigned to his case. “No one likes to be insulted. No one likes to be attacked,” said Katzberg. “It can’t be good. It’s not good for Trump, it’s just more self-inflicted wounds.”
So why do it?
To Katzberg, it’s a simple case of Trump being characteristically impulsive and reacting emotionally. “I just don’t think he’s able to control himself. Any experienced lawyer would have resigned a long time before that.”
Trump has similarly gone after all the other prosecutors currently investigating him. He called Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who recently charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with alleged hush money payments, a “degenerate psychopath that truly hates the USA.”
He’s also attacked New York Attorney General Letitia James and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, calling them “racists in reverse.” Rather than being a reflection of any strategy, Katzberg says, it’s a sign that Trump “has the thinnest skin of any human being in history and is incapable of keeping his mouth closed.”
And it’s an example of Trump doing what he always does—working his audience like a pro wrestler.
Chris Kelly, author of the book The Donald: How Trump Turned Presidential Politics into Pro Wrestling, said this isn’t by accident, either—Trump has had a long relationship with World Wrestling Entertainment, dating back to the ’80s. He’s hosted WrestleMania at Trump Plaza twice and fake “bought” Monday Night Raw.
Once he became president, he even appointed Linda McMahon—wife of the former CEO of WWE—to be head of the Small Business Administration.
The way Trump stirs up his audience by hamming up these attacks mirrors the way villain characters in wrestling—heels—cut promos on their opponents (i.e., build themselves up against whoever they’re feuding with in interviews). Like wrestlers do, Trump has taken the kernel of his real personality and turned the volume dial up to create a larger-than-life character: The Donald.
“I think that’s part of why it’s been so resonant. He’s not out there with charts and facts and figures, he just hits it at an emotional level. He can play this heel and this persona,” Kelly said.
And people tend to love a heel, because the heel gets to do things they can’t do in real life. “Those are always the great wrestlers that fans like,” he said. “They say, ‘Oh I’d love to be the guy that can slam his boss in the ring, or can knock out my enemies.’ ”
Trump’s tendency to create catchy, funny nicknames for people he’s attacking is also reminiscent of wrestlers coming up with epithets for each other. And like a wrestler, Trump plays off the crowd reaction—testing what appeals to his audience. “We’ve seen this before, where he comes up with nicknames and maybe tries it out, it doesn’t resonate, and he changes course,” Kelly said.
In other words, Trump’s attacks on Jack Smith might seem bizarre and legally unwise—but if he keeps doing it, that could be because it resonates with his base. However, Trump aides told the New York Times the bravado may be masking a deeper anxiety, since Smith’s investigations are serious business that, if successful, could land him in prison.
Whether these attacks are an impulsive temper tantrum or a tactic to play on his supporters’ emotions, there is one thing everyone agrees on: Trump isn’t going to stop anytime soon. It’s essential to his magic.
To get your head around this, it’s helpful to understand the wrestling concept of “kayfabe.” Here’s how a sociologist named Nick Rogers described it in relation to Trump in a 2017 New York Times opinion piece:
Although the etymology of the word is a matter of debate, for at least 50 years “kayfabe” has referred to the unspoken contract between wrestlers and spectators: We’ll present you something clearly fake under the insistence that it’s real, and you will experience genuine emotion. Neither party acknowledges the bargain, or else the magic is ruined.
To a wrestling audience, the fake and the real coexist peacefully. If you ask a fan whether a match or backstage brawl was scripted, the question will seem irrelevant. You may as well ask a roller-coaster enthusiast whether he knows he’s not really on a runaway mine car. The artifice is not only understood but appreciated: The performer cares enough about the viewer’s emotions to want to influence them. Kayfabe isn’t about factual verifiability; it’s about emotional fidelity.
Trump spins a narrative about how he’s being unfairly persecuted by elites in the hopes that it hits on real emotions his supporters are feeling about their personal experiences with the government. He plays the heel in various ways, riling up the crowd against perceived enemies, —such as special prosecutor Jack Smith. It’s also the essential tool in Trump’s 2024 campaign for president.
“It’s been very difficult to kind of defeat him at his own game, because very few politicians have taken him up on combating him in the same type of language he uses,” Kelly said. “He’s starting again in the primary. It’s unclear if any of these other competitors can match the same tactic, because it’s been largely a winning one.”
___________________________________________________________________________
Jack Smith (Wikipedia)
John Luman Smith (born June 5, 1969) is an American attorney who has served in the United States Department of Justice as an assistant U.S. attorney, acting U.S. attorney, and head of the department's Public Integrity Section.
He was also the chief prosecutor at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, an international tribunal at The Hague tasked with investigating and prosecuting war crimes in the Kosovo War.
In November 2022, attorney general Merrick Garland appointed Smith an independent special counsel, responsible for overseeing two preexisting Justice Department criminal investigations into former president Donald Trump, three days after Trump announced his 2024 presidential campaign: one regarding Trump's role in the January 6 U.S. Capitol attack, and the other into alleged mishandling of government records, including classified documents. The documents case resulted in a 37-count indictment of Trump in June 2023 to which three counts were later added in July. In August, the January 6 case resulted in an indictment on four charges.
Early life and education:
Smith was born on June 5, 1969. He grew up in Clay, New York, a suburb of Syracuse. His father was a draftsman of air-conditioning systems; his mother was a homemaker for most of Smith's childhood.
He graduated from Liverpool High School in 1987, where he played football and baseball. He then studied political science at the State University of New York at Oneonta, graduating in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude.
Smith then attended Harvard Law School, from which he graduated cum laude in 1994 with the degree of Juris Doctor.
Career:
After graduating from law school, Smith joined the Manhattan District Attorney's office, serving as assistant district attorney. He was a member of the sex crimes and domestic violence units of the DA's office. He joined the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York in 1999.
As an assistant U.S. attorney at the Brooklyn-based office, he prosecuted the police officers who brutalized and sexually assaulted Abner Louima, and led the case towards the death penalty—which was later overturned—against Ronell Wilson, who murdered two members of the New York Police Department.
From 2008 to 2010, Smith worked as investigation coordinator for the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. In that position, he oversaw cases against government officials and militia members accused of war crimes and genocide.
In 2010, Smith returned to the U.S. to become chief of the U.S. Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section (PIN). Among his first responsibilities was evaluating current investigations, and he recommended closing investigations into several members of Congress.
He spent five years as chief of PIN, where he prosecuted a variety of corruption cases, including those against:
- Virginia governor Bob McDonnell,
- U.S. representative Rick Renzi,
- New York State Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver
- and Jeffrey Sterling, a Central Intelligence Agency agent who shared national secrets.
In 2015, Smith became an assistant U.S. attorney in the Middle District of Tennessee, at Nashville. He became the acting U.S. attorney in March 2017 upon the resignation of David Rivera, and resigned effective September 2017 after the nomination of Donald Q. Cochran. Smith became the vice president and head of litigation for Hospital Corporation of America in 2017.
On May 7, 2018, Smith was named to a four-year term as chief prosecutor for the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, investigating war crimes in the Kosovo War. During his time as the chief prosecutor, he brought charges against several individuals, including Salih Mustafa and the sitting President of Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi. He took up the post on September 11, 2018, and was appointed to a second term on May 8, 2022, before stepping down on November 18, 2022.
United States special counsel:
Main article: Smith special counsel investigation
On November 18, 2022, United States Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith special counsel to oversee the criminal investigations into Donald Trump's actions regarding the January 6 U.S. Capitol attack, and Trump's handling and storage of government records, including classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. He worked initially from the Netherlands while recovering from a fractured leg, injured when he was struck by a scooter while cycling. By early January 2023, Smith had returned to the U.S.
On June 8, 2023, a grand jury indicted Trump on seven federal criminal charges related to his handling of classified documents. This marked the first time in American history that a serving or former president has been indicted on a federal criminal charge. On August 1, Trump was indicted by a grand jury on four more federal felony counts relating to his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his conduct during the attack on the Capitol.
Awards
- U.S. Department of Justice Director's Award
- U.S. Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service
- Federal Bar Association's Younger Federal Attorney Award
- Eastern District Association's Charles Rose Award
- Henry L. Stimson Medal of the New York County Bar Association
- Harvard Law School Wasserstein Fellowship
Personal life:
Smith is a competitive triathlete, having taken up swimming when he was in his mid-thirties. He has completed more than 100 triathlons and at least nine Ironman competitions around the world. In July 2011, he married Katy Chevigny, a documentary filmmaker known for Becoming, a 2020 documentary about Michelle Obama. They have a daughter. The couple lived in the Netherlands starting in 2018, before moving to Washington, D.C. in December 2022, shortly after Smith was appointed as special counsel.
See also:
- Special Counsel Jack Smith | Department of Justice
- Appearances on C-SPAN
6 Strongmen Trump Has Praised And The Conflicts It Creates
Below Images with Donald Trump with Dictators whom he has openly admired:
From Left-Right, by Row:
TOP: N. Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un; Chinese President Xi Jinping; . Egypt President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi;
BOTTOM: Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan; Russian President Vladimir Putin;
Rodrigo Duterte, Philippines
See below for what Trump has said about each of these dictators!
- YouTube: Donald Trump's Favorite Dictator
- YouTube Video: 'Top of the line': Trump praises 'brilliant' Xi, Kim Jong-Un, Putin
- YouTube Video: Watch Trump appear to double down on 'dictator' comment
Below Images with Donald Trump with Dictators whom he has openly admired:
From Left-Right, by Row:
TOP: N. Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un; Chinese President Xi Jinping; . Egypt President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi;
BOTTOM: Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan; Russian President Vladimir Putin;
Rodrigo Duterte, Philippines
See below for what Trump has said about each of these dictators!
6 Strongmen Trump Has Praised — And The Conflicts It Creates:
BY: Domenico Montanaro
NPR
MAY 2, 201711:43 AM ET
President Trump just seems to have a thing for strongmen.
He invited the brutal Philippine leader, Rodrigo Duterte, to the White House during a "very friendly" phone call Sunday. On Tuesday, Trump has another call — this one with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump's invitation came despite Duterte's violent crackdown on drugs, that has left more than 7,000 of his countrymen dead since he took power less than a year ago. The White House defended Trump's decision, saying the Philippines is a key partner in dealing with North Korea, but experts say that's a stretch.
The United States and Western allies have long turned a blind eye to totalitarian regimes guilty of a long list of human-rights violations. Often, it was in the name of stability and at the expense of people suffering in those countries. But American leaders have mostly been mindful to choose their words carefully to maintain some semblance of a moral higher ground.
What Trump is doing is different — past American leaders would almost never express admiration for bad actors. Trump, in many cases, has been doing exactly that.
Duterte is hardly the only autocrat Trump has had kind words for. From Saddam Hussein's efficient killing of terrorists to the "smart cookie" in North Korea, Trump has praised strongmen around the world when others wouldn't.
The following list reads like a who's who of totalitarian leaders with dicey human-rights records. And in all of the countries, the American president and real-estate magnate has a raft of potential conflicts of interest, too:
___________________________________________________________________________
Rodrigo Duterte, Philippines
Nickname: "The Punisher" a.k.a. "Duterte Harry"
What he's accused of: More than 7,000 Filipinos killed under his rule in his anti-drug crusade. In a warped comparison, he praised Hitler this way: "Hitler massacred three million Jews. Now, there is three million drug addicts. I'd be happy to slaughter them."
He added that he wants to "finish the problem of my country and save the next generation."
(Fact check: it was six million European Jews who were killed in the Holocaust.) ... He has:
The Philippines is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists to work — 78 journalists have been killed there since 1992, the third most of any country behind Iraq and Syria. (Somalia is behind the Philippines at No. 4.) Though Duterte's praised Trump, he's also said: "He is a bigot and I am not."
Quotable: "Forget the laws on human rights. If I make it to the presidential palace, I will do just what I did as mayor. You drug pushers, hold-up men and do-nothings, you better go out. Because I'd kill you. I'll dump all of you into Manila Bay, and fatten all the fish there."
What Trump has said about him (emphas is ours): The White House issued a readout of their phone call from April 29: It was a very friendly conversation, in which the two leaders discussed the concerns of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regarding regional security, including the threat posed by North Korea. They also discussed the fact that the Philippine government is fighting very hard to rid its country of drugs, a scourge that affects many countries throughout the world.
President Trump enjoyed the conversation and said that he is looking forward to visiting the Philippines in November to participate in the East Asia Summit and the U.S.-ASEAN Summit. President Trump also invited President Duterte to the White House to discuss the importance of the United States-Philippines alliance, which is now heading in a very positive direction."
Duterte now might not even come. "I am tied up," Duterte said Monday. "I cannot make any definite promise. I am supposed to go to Russia, I am supposed to go to Israel."
Potential Trump conflict: His name is on a 57-story, $150 million building in Manila. Duterte named the head of the corporation that developed it as an envoy to the United States.
___________________________________________________________________________
Vladimir Putin, Russia:
Nickname: "Pale Mouth" a.k.a. "Botox" a.k.a. "Pootie-Poot"
What he's accused of:
Quotable:
Potential Trump conflict:
Trump put on the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and has tried for a long time to gain a foothold in the Russian market. In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. said: "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia." (The Washington Post and Time have more on Trump's Russia connections.)
___________________________________________________________________________
Xi Jinping, China
Nickname: "Xi Dada" a.k.a. "Xi Big Big" a.k.a "Big Daddy Xi"
What he's accused of:
Quotable:
"There are a few foreigners, with full bellies, who have nothing better to do than try to point fingers at our country. China does not export revolution, hunger, poverty nor does China cause you any headaches. Just what else do you want?"
What Trump has said about Xi:
"He certainly doesn't want to see turmoil and death. He doesn't want to see it. He is a good man. He is a very good man and I got to know him very well." (April 28, Reuters interview)
Trump's Hotels In China Could Be A Conflict For The President-Elect
Kim Jong Un, North Korea
Nickname: "The Young General" a.k.a. "Fatty Kim the Third" a.k.a. "Kim Fatty III" a.k.a. "Kim the Fat"
What Kim's accused of: Human Rights Watch notes: "A 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry found that abuses in North Korea were without parallel in the contemporary world. They include:
North Korea operates secretive prison camps where perceived opponents of the government are sent to face torture and abuse, starvation rations, and forced labor. Fear of collective punishment is used to silence dissent. There is no independent media, functioning civil society, or religious freedom."
North Korea is ranked at the bottom of the World Press Freedom Index. ... Kim has worked with China to crack down on border crossings to prevent escapees. In some cases, North Korea has tracked down citizens and returned them to the country.
China is complicit as well, labeling those who escape as illegal and returning them. People returned to the country are sent to forced-labor prison camps, known as "kwanliso," which literally means management centers.
Kim does not allow unauthorized outside movies, news, etc., into the country. ... There is no religious freedom or allowed political opposition.
The country has a "songbun" class system in which people are grouped into three categories ranking their loyalty — 1. Loyal, 2. Wavering, 3. Hostile.
Quotable:
"If the American imperialists provoke us a bit, we will not hesitate to slap them with a pre-emptive nuclear strike. The United States must choose! It's up to you whether the nation called the United States exists on this planet or not."
What Trump has said about him:
Potential Trump conflict: See China.
___________________________________________________________________________
Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, Egypt
Nickname: "The Quiet General" a.k.a. "The Pimp"
What he's accused of:
Quotable:
"Please, don't listen to anyone but me. I am dead serious. Be careful, no one should abuse my patience and good manners to bring down the state. I swear by God that anyone who comes near it, I will remove him from the face of the Earth. I am telling you this as the whole of Egypt is listening. What do you think you're doing? Who are you?"
What Trump has said about him (emphasis ours):
"I will tell you, President al-Sisi has been somebody that's been very close to me from the first time I met him. I met during the campaign, and at that point there were two of us, and we both met.
And hopefully you like me a lot more. But it was very long. It was supposed to be just a quick brief meeting, and we were with each other for a long period of time. We agreed on so many things. I just want to let everybody know, in case there was any doubt, that we are very much behind President al-Sisi.
He's done a fantastic job in a very difficult situation. We are very much behind Egypt and the people of Egypt. And the United States has, believe me, backing, and we have strong backing. ... And I just want to say to you, Mr. President, that you have a great friend and ally in the United States and in me." (Bilateral meeting with Egypt's president, April 3)
Potential Trump conflict:
Trump lists two companies in Egpyt on his financial disclosure — Trump Marks Egypt and Trump Marks Egypt LLC.
There is not a lot of information about the companies. They do not appear in the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt's database. Both are, however, registered in Delaware. They are both registered with "National Registered Agents, Inc." out of Dover, Del. and were formed in 2007. (Many companies incorporate in Delaware, because there is no state income tax.)
___________________________________________________________________________
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey
Nickname: "Sultan" a.k.a. "Modern Yazid"
What he's accused of: Attempting to consolidate power in the face of political opposition. A referendum last month "gives him the green light to create a muscular presidency, with powers to personally appoint or dismiss ministers, select judges and rule by decree if he deems it necessary,"
BBC notes. ... He has jailed opponents and critics, including a 16-year-old, who insulted him and a Miss Turkey who shared a poem criticizing him. ... More than 50,000 people have been detained since a thwarted coup.
Accused protesters of being "arm in arm" with terrorists:
Quotable:
"You cannot put women and men on an equal footing. It is against nature. They were created differently. Their nature is different. ... Our religion has defined a position for women: motherhood. ... Some people can understand this, while others can't. You cannot explain this to feminists, because they don't accept the concept of motherhood."
What Trump has said about him (emphasis ours):
The White House issued a readout of Trump calling Erdogan after he won a referendum that expanded his power:
Potential Trump conflict:
Trump licenses his name to two buildings in Istanbul. He got $5 million from the licenses in 2016, according to his financial disclosure. Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn worked as a foreign agent for Turkey in the fall, while a campaign adviser to Trump, pulling in $500,000. It was something he only reported in March. He resigned his White House post three weeks earlier.
BY: Domenico Montanaro
NPR
MAY 2, 201711:43 AM ET
President Trump just seems to have a thing for strongmen.
He invited the brutal Philippine leader, Rodrigo Duterte, to the White House during a "very friendly" phone call Sunday. On Tuesday, Trump has another call — this one with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump's invitation came despite Duterte's violent crackdown on drugs, that has left more than 7,000 of his countrymen dead since he took power less than a year ago. The White House defended Trump's decision, saying the Philippines is a key partner in dealing with North Korea, but experts say that's a stretch.
The United States and Western allies have long turned a blind eye to totalitarian regimes guilty of a long list of human-rights violations. Often, it was in the name of stability and at the expense of people suffering in those countries. But American leaders have mostly been mindful to choose their words carefully to maintain some semblance of a moral higher ground.
What Trump is doing is different — past American leaders would almost never express admiration for bad actors. Trump, in many cases, has been doing exactly that.
Duterte is hardly the only autocrat Trump has had kind words for. From Saddam Hussein's efficient killing of terrorists to the "smart cookie" in North Korea, Trump has praised strongmen around the world when others wouldn't.
The following list reads like a who's who of totalitarian leaders with dicey human-rights records. And in all of the countries, the American president and real-estate magnate has a raft of potential conflicts of interest, too:
___________________________________________________________________________
Rodrigo Duterte, Philippines
Nickname: "The Punisher" a.k.a. "Duterte Harry"
What he's accused of: More than 7,000 Filipinos killed under his rule in his anti-drug crusade. In a warped comparison, he praised Hitler this way: "Hitler massacred three million Jews. Now, there is three million drug addicts. I'd be happy to slaughter them."
He added that he wants to "finish the problem of my country and save the next generation."
(Fact check: it was six million European Jews who were killed in the Holocaust.) ... He has:
- Undermined the judiciary
- Called experts "stupid"
- Threatened to "whack" mayors who stood in the way of his tactics
- Upset about traffic, he called the Pope a "son of a whore"
- "Joked" about a woman who was raped.
- Justified the killing of journalists. "Just because you're a journalist," he said, "you are not exempted from assassination, if you're a son of a bitch."
The Philippines is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists to work — 78 journalists have been killed there since 1992, the third most of any country behind Iraq and Syria. (Somalia is behind the Philippines at No. 4.) Though Duterte's praised Trump, he's also said: "He is a bigot and I am not."
Quotable: "Forget the laws on human rights. If I make it to the presidential palace, I will do just what I did as mayor. You drug pushers, hold-up men and do-nothings, you better go out. Because I'd kill you. I'll dump all of you into Manila Bay, and fatten all the fish there."
What Trump has said about him (emphas is ours): The White House issued a readout of their phone call from April 29: It was a very friendly conversation, in which the two leaders discussed the concerns of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regarding regional security, including the threat posed by North Korea. They also discussed the fact that the Philippine government is fighting very hard to rid its country of drugs, a scourge that affects many countries throughout the world.
President Trump enjoyed the conversation and said that he is looking forward to visiting the Philippines in November to participate in the East Asia Summit and the U.S.-ASEAN Summit. President Trump also invited President Duterte to the White House to discuss the importance of the United States-Philippines alliance, which is now heading in a very positive direction."
Duterte now might not even come. "I am tied up," Duterte said Monday. "I cannot make any definite promise. I am supposed to go to Russia, I am supposed to go to Israel."
Potential Trump conflict: His name is on a 57-story, $150 million building in Manila. Duterte named the head of the corporation that developed it as an envoy to the United States.
___________________________________________________________________________
Vladimir Putin, Russia:
Nickname: "Pale Mouth" a.k.a. "Botox" a.k.a. "Pootie-Poot"
What he's accused of:
- Invaded a sovereign country (Ukraine) and annexed part of it (Crimea).
- Aiding Syrian President Bashar Assad militarily. Assad is accused by the West of using chemical weapons against his own people.
- Meddled in elections, including in the U.S.
- Allowed hackings of Western bank accounts without prosecution
- Some 100 men suspected of being gay have been swept up in Chechnya, including three who were killed last month. ... People with disabilities face discrimination, including not studying in mainstream schools
- Cracked down on freedom of information, including shutting down websites
- Persecuted critics, political opponents and journalists who have been jailed and killed. (It's the seventh-most dangerous country for journalists to work in.)
- Some human-rights NGOs have been labeled "foreign agents" and "undesirable foreign organizations." They've been banned and a new law means they could face up to six years in prison.
- Russian Olympians have been accused of doping through a government program.
- Russia won the rights to host the 2018 soccer World Cup, but there are questions as to how. Former FIFA head Sepp Blatter was ousted in 2015 and banned for eight years after soccer's world governing body was found to be rife with corruption and kickbacks. Still, Putin said Blatter "deserves a Nobel Peace Prize."
Quotable:
- "Hitler also failed when, with his hateful ideas, he was going to destroy Russia, throw us back behind the Urals. Everyone should remember how it ended."
- What Trump has said about him: "If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him. I've already said, he is really very much of a leader. I mean, you can say, oh, isn't that a terrible thing — the man has very strong control over a country. Now, it's a very different system, and I don't happen to like the system. But certainly, in that system, he's been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader. ... he does have an 82 percent approval rating, according to the different pollsters...." (Sept. 7, 2016, NBC Commander-in-Chief Forum)
Potential Trump conflict:
Trump put on the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and has tried for a long time to gain a foothold in the Russian market. In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. said: "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia." (The Washington Post and Time have more on Trump's Russia connections.)
___________________________________________________________________________
Xi Jinping, China
Nickname: "Xi Dada" a.k.a. "Xi Big Big" a.k.a "Big Daddy Xi"
What he's accused of:
- Extra-judicial detention, where detainees are tortured and mistreated, including as a tactic against political opponents and activists
- Leading the world in executions
- "Enforced disappearance of critics"
- Using strong-arm tactics to maintain Communist Party power. For example, launching an "anti-corruption campaign" against political opponents and shutting down groups seen as a threat – even ones as seemingly benign as advocating for women's legal counsel against domestic abuse. ...
- Identified as "the world's worst jailer of journalists" in 2014 and 2015. China was holding 49 journalists in 2015; that number was down to 38 last year and eclipsed only by Turkey (81), as Erdogan moved to consolidate power and repress opposition.
- China is ranked near the bottom (176 out of 180) in the World Press Freedom Index, beat out only by Syria, Turkmenistan, Eritrea and North Korea
- Clamping down on access to the Internet and censoring it. Google left the country last year despite the huge potential market because of it
- Lack of religious freedom. For example:
- Uighur Muslims, are labeled extremists and terrorists;
- families of Tibetan self-immolators have been punished;
- 1,500 crosses have been torn down from church steeples;
- a small Chinese Jewish community has been harassed and prevented from worshiping together.
- China only has five "licensed" religions: Buddhism, Catholicism, Islam, Protestantism and Taoism.
Quotable:
"There are a few foreigners, with full bellies, who have nothing better to do than try to point fingers at our country. China does not export revolution, hunger, poverty nor does China cause you any headaches. Just what else do you want?"
What Trump has said about Xi:
"He certainly doesn't want to see turmoil and death. He doesn't want to see it. He is a good man. He is a very good man and I got to know him very well." (April 28, Reuters interview)
Trump's Hotels In China Could Be A Conflict For The President-Elect
- Potential Trump conflict:
- Trump has strong business ties to China. He has tried to get into the Chinese market since 2008. He signed onto two multi-million-dollar deals that fell apart, including one with State Grid, the state-owned power company.
- In October, the Trump Organization announced new plans for 20 to 30 new hotels in cities all over China. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. is a tenant in Trump Tower. Bank of China, also state-owned, is a debt holder for at least part of a $950 million loan for a building in New York in which Trump is part-owner.
- Trump and his daughter Ivanka were granted hard-to-come-by trademarks in China earlier this year.
- Ivanka's husband, Jared Kushner, a key (maybe top) adviser to the president owns a skyscraper in New York and was set to get a $400 million investment from a Chinese firm in the tower. But that deal was killed because of conflict-of-interest concerns.
Kim Jong Un, North Korea
Nickname: "The Young General" a.k.a. "Fatty Kim the Third" a.k.a. "Kim Fatty III" a.k.a. "Kim the Fat"
What Kim's accused of: Human Rights Watch notes: "A 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry found that abuses in North Korea were without parallel in the contemporary world. They include:
- extermination,
- murder,
- enslavement,
- torture,
- imprisonment,
- rape,
- forced abortions,
- and other sexual violence.
North Korea operates secretive prison camps where perceived opponents of the government are sent to face torture and abuse, starvation rations, and forced labor. Fear of collective punishment is used to silence dissent. There is no independent media, functioning civil society, or religious freedom."
North Korea is ranked at the bottom of the World Press Freedom Index. ... Kim has worked with China to crack down on border crossings to prevent escapees. In some cases, North Korea has tracked down citizens and returned them to the country.
China is complicit as well, labeling those who escape as illegal and returning them. People returned to the country are sent to forced-labor prison camps, known as "kwanliso," which literally means management centers.
Kim does not allow unauthorized outside movies, news, etc., into the country. ... There is no religious freedom or allowed political opposition.
The country has a "songbun" class system in which people are grouped into three categories ranking their loyalty — 1. Loyal, 2. Wavering, 3. Hostile.
Quotable:
"If the American imperialists provoke us a bit, we will not hesitate to slap them with a pre-emptive nuclear strike. The United States must choose! It's up to you whether the nation called the United States exists on this planet or not."
What Trump has said about him:
- "At a very young age, he was able to assume power. A lot of people, I'm sure, tried to take that power away, whether it was his uncle or anybody else. And he was able to do it. So obviously, he's a pretty smart cookie." (April 30, CBS)
- "If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be honored to do it. If it's under the, again, under the right circumstances. But I would do that. Most political people would never say that, but I'm telling you under the right circumstances I would meet with him. We have breaking news." (May 1, Bloomberg)
Potential Trump conflict: See China.
___________________________________________________________________________
Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, Egypt
Nickname: "The Quiet General" a.k.a. "The Pimp"
What he's accused of:
- A long-time general in the country's military, he rose to power in a bloody coup.
- Some 800 protesters were killed in a single day
- Public criticism of the government is squashed
- Anti-government protests are banned
- Scores of people have been arrested
- Privacy rights are routinely violated
- Some independent human-rights organizations have been banned
- NGO workers could face up to 25 years in prison if they are believed to be working against Egypt's national interest
- Charges were brought against the country's top anti-corruption official
- Forced disappearances
- Detainees tortured
- Thousands of trials with flimsy evidence
- Overcrowding in prisons that have seen forced feedings and isolation
- Freedom of speech is repressed: the head of the Press Syndicate was charged with "publishing false news, which threatens public peace."
- Religious freedom is almost nonexistent:
- Christians are routinely discriminated against;
- churches are limited and speaking out against Islam, even ISIS, can land you in prison.
- Four Christian children, in fact, were sentenced to five years in prison for putting up a video that mocked ISIS
- The government has undertaken some perfunctory steps to curb violence against women, but Human Rights Watch says, "Sexual harassment and violence against women remained endemic." The new Interior Minister, a woman, has put the onus on women, telling them to avoid speaking loudly and to be cautious about how they dress. Women are also routinely discriminated against in family law cases.
- Sexually repressive society that criminalizes sex outside marriage:
- Tracks down and prosecutes alleged gays, who are often sodomized by police. ...
- Egypt is one of the worst countries for journalists, ranked 161 of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index. Ten journalists have been killed since 2011; some have faced years in detention without charges, others have seen long prison terms, as the Sissi government undergoes a "Sisification" of the media.
Quotable:
"Please, don't listen to anyone but me. I am dead serious. Be careful, no one should abuse my patience and good manners to bring down the state. I swear by God that anyone who comes near it, I will remove him from the face of the Earth. I am telling you this as the whole of Egypt is listening. What do you think you're doing? Who are you?"
What Trump has said about him (emphasis ours):
"I will tell you, President al-Sisi has been somebody that's been very close to me from the first time I met him. I met during the campaign, and at that point there were two of us, and we both met.
And hopefully you like me a lot more. But it was very long. It was supposed to be just a quick brief meeting, and we were with each other for a long period of time. We agreed on so many things. I just want to let everybody know, in case there was any doubt, that we are very much behind President al-Sisi.
He's done a fantastic job in a very difficult situation. We are very much behind Egypt and the people of Egypt. And the United States has, believe me, backing, and we have strong backing. ... And I just want to say to you, Mr. President, that you have a great friend and ally in the United States and in me." (Bilateral meeting with Egypt's president, April 3)
Potential Trump conflict:
Trump lists two companies in Egpyt on his financial disclosure — Trump Marks Egypt and Trump Marks Egypt LLC.
There is not a lot of information about the companies. They do not appear in the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt's database. Both are, however, registered in Delaware. They are both registered with "National Registered Agents, Inc." out of Dover, Del. and were formed in 2007. (Many companies incorporate in Delaware, because there is no state income tax.)
___________________________________________________________________________
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey
Nickname: "Sultan" a.k.a. "Modern Yazid"
What he's accused of: Attempting to consolidate power in the face of political opposition. A referendum last month "gives him the green light to create a muscular presidency, with powers to personally appoint or dismiss ministers, select judges and rule by decree if he deems it necessary,"
BBC notes. ... He has jailed opponents and critics, including a 16-year-old, who insulted him and a Miss Turkey who shared a poem criticizing him. ... More than 50,000 people have been detained since a thwarted coup.
Accused protesters of being "arm in arm" with terrorists:
- Turkey has the most jailed journalists of any country in the world. Fourteen were imprisoned in 2015, but that number jumped to 81 in 2016, more than double the number of journalists behind bars in China (No. 2 on the list).
- Some 120,000 public servants have been fired.
- Repressing religious freedom and women's rights.
- Attempted to criminalize adultery and create "alcohol-free zones."
Quotable:
"You cannot put women and men on an equal footing. It is against nature. They were created differently. Their nature is different. ... Our religion has defined a position for women: motherhood. ... Some people can understand this, while others can't. You cannot explain this to feminists, because they don't accept the concept of motherhood."
What Trump has said about him (emphasis ours):
The White House issued a readout of Trump calling Erdogan after he won a referendum that expanded his power:
- "President Donald J. Trump spoke today with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey to congratulate him on his recent referendum victory and to discuss the United States' action in response to the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons on April 4th.
- President Trump thanked President Erdogan for supporting this action by the United States, and the leaders agreed on the importance of holding Syrian President Bashar al-Assad accountable. President Trump and President Erdogan also discussed the counter-ISIS campaign and the need to cooperate against all groups that use terrorism to achieve their ends."
Potential Trump conflict:
Trump licenses his name to two buildings in Istanbul. He got $5 million from the licenses in 2016, according to his financial disclosure. Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn worked as a foreign agent for Turkey in the fall, while a campaign adviser to Trump, pulling in $500,000. It was something he only reported in March. He resigned his White House post three weeks earlier.
Federal prosecution of Donald Trump
(for election obstruction case)
(for election obstruction case)
- YouTube Video: Trump election probe indictment focuses on obstruction charges (NBC News)
- YouTube Video: Trump now facing 2 new obstruction charges | Nightline
- YouTube Video: Supreme Court to hear Jan. 6 obstruction case | Donald Trump Latest
Federal prosecution of Donald Trump (election obstruction case)
United States of America v. Donald J. Trump is a pending federal criminal case against Donald Trump, the president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, regarding his alleged participation in attempts to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election including his involvement in the January 6 Capitol attack.
Trump questioned the results of the 2020 presidential election, claiming that election fraud had occurred through mail-in ballots, voting machine irregularities, "dead voters", and other irregularities. He also directly attempted to overturn the results of the election through a plot in which pro-Trump slates of fake electors would be created.
Trump pressured then-vice president Mike Pence to count the fake electors instead of the electors certified by state legislators. The Department of Justice opened an investigation in January 2022 into the plot, expanding it to encompass January 6. In November 2022, attorney general Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith to lead a special counsel investigation encompassing the investigations into attempts to overturn the election and Trump's handling of government documents.
On August 1, 2023, a grand jury indicted Trump in the District of Columbia U.S. District Court on four charges for his conduct following the 2020 presidential election through the January 6 Capitol attack: conspiracy to defraud the United States under Title 18 of the United States Code, obstructing an official proceeding and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding under the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002, and conspiracy against rights under the Enforcement Act of 1870. The indictment mentioned six unnamed co-conspirators.
It is Trump's third indictment and the first indictment against a U.S. president concerning actions while in office. Trump appeared at an arraignment on August 3, where he pleaded not guilty. The charge with the longest sentence carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.
As of December 2023, the trial is scheduled for March 4, 2024.
Background
Further information: Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election § Background
Accusations of electoral fraud and attempts to overturn the election:
Throughout his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly sowed doubt on the election certification process. Campaigning in Colorado, Trump claimed without evidence that the Democratic Party "[rigged] the election at polling booths".
In October 2016, Trump claimed through a series of tweets that widespread voter fraud would occur in the 2016 presidential election. These statements were echoed by Rudy Giuliani, Trump's legal advisor.
Trump continued expressing these sentiments into the 2020 presidential election; for months, he prepared arguments in the event of his loss, primarily relating to mail-in ballots.
As early as August 2020, he enlisted conservative activist and lawyer Cleta Mitchell to help overturn the election.
The Department of Homeland Security warned that Russia was amplifying claims of fraud occurring in mail-in voting to intentionally sow distrust in the voting process as a whole. Two days before Election Day, Trump told reporters that he would be "going in with [his] lawyers" as soon as the election was over.
Bolstered by pro-Trump pundits and perceived strong turnouts at rallies, the Trump campaign was confident that they were going to win the election. On Election Day, preliminary surveys at polling places showed Trump in the lead as his supporters were more likely to turn out in person amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but his lead diminished as mail-in ballots were counted.
Following Trump's final campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump's son Eric wagered that he would win at least 322 electoral votes. At the behest of Giuliani, Trump declared in a 2 a.m. election night speech in the East Room that he had won the election and that the counts being reported were fraudulent.
As ballots were being counted, campaign data expert Matt Oczkowski bluntly informed Trump that he was going to lose the election. White House Counsel Pat Cipollone told him that invalidating the results of the election would be a "murder-suicide pact".
Under then-attorney general William Barr, the Department of Justice failed to find widespread voter fraud in the election. Former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich predicted that Trump voters would erupt in "rage", a sentiment shared by House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who told Laura Ingraham on The Ingraham Angle that Republicans should not "be silent about this".
Trump and several co-conspirators repeatedly sought to overturn the results of the election. The Department of Justice investigation into these attempts focused on the implementation of the Trump fake electors plot, in which Trump and his allies would draft allegedly fraudulent certificates of ascertainment affirming Trump as the winner.
The effort to write these documents and persuade Republican officials to sign them was performed by Trump's lawyers, including Giuliani and John Eastman, who claimed that irregularities in the election had occurred and proposed that an "alternate" slate of electors should be established while they gathered evidence.
Even though dozens of these electors were installed and affirmed Trump as the winner, the seven state legislatures targeted in the plot--Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—certified Biden's victory, although Pennsylvania and New Mexico agreed to consider Trump the winner if he succeeded in the many lawsuits challenging the election.
The scheme involved sending the fake electoral slates to vice president Mike Pence, pressuring him to count the fake votes. Alternatively, Trump allies posited that Pence could consider the election "defective" under the Electoral Count Act and allow the House of Representatives to decide the outcome.
During the two months following the election, Trump made multiple phone calls to Republican officials in states that had narrowly been won by Biden, asking them to reverse the results and give the victory to him.
One such call was to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, asking him to "find 11,780 votes". Raffensperger recorded the call and subsequently released it to the public.
Both Trump and Giuliani called Rusty Bowers, the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, asking him to look into claims of fraud, but he declined to do so without evidence. John Eastman also called Bowers on January 4 asking him to undo the state's certification of Biden's win, but he refused.
Trump and his attorneys, as well as Republican members of Congress, also called or met with state officials in Michigan and Pennsylvania, urging them to report that Trump had actually won their states.
January 6 Capitol attack and investigations:
Main article: January 6 United States Capitol attack
See also: Criminal proceedings in the January 6 United States Capitol attack
On December 19, 2020, six weeks following his election loss, Trump urged his followers on Twitter to protest in Washington, D.C., on January 6, the day Congress was set to certify the results of the election, writing, "Be there, will be wild!"
Over the course of the following weeks, Trump would repeat the January 6 date. Militant organizations such as the Proud Boys and groups affiliated with the conspiracy theory QAnon formulated logistical plans to gather at the United States Capitol.
The Red-State Secession Facebook page encouraged its followers to post the addresses of its "enemies". Trump continued to repeat false claims about the election in multiple states leading up to January 6, including Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona.
On the morning of January 6, Trump gave a speech in the Ellipse, an elliptical park near the White House, and encouraged his followers to walk down to Pennsylvania Avenue to incite within Republicans lawmakers the "kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country". Provoked by Trump, the mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.
The January 6 Capitol attack resulted in hundreds of criminal proceedings. The House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump for a second time on January 13. He was acquitted by the Senate on February 13. The House of Representatives voted to create a select committee to investigate the attack in June 2021. Ahead of its final report, the committee voted to accuse Trump of the four charges later brought against him in the indictment and referred him to the Department of Justice.
In a CNN interview in January 2022, deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco stated that the Department of Justice would investigate the Trump fake electors plot. By March 2022, the Department of Justice had opened an investigation into the events of January 6 and Trump's attempts to overturn the election.
The Department of Justice began obtaining White House phone records in April in connection with the January 6 investigation, and a federal grand jury issued subpoenas to Trump's lawyers in connection with the fake electors plot in May. The Washington Post reported in July that the Department of Justice was investigating Trump's actions on January 6.
The January 6 investigation was overseen by Thomas Windom, an obscure federal prosecutor. On November 18, 2022, attorney general Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith to serve as special counsel for the January 6 investigation and the FBI investigation into Donald Trump's handling of government documents.
Smith intensified both investigations ahead of increased efforts by Trump to focus on his 2024 presidential campaign. In June 2023, Trump was indicted in connection with the classified documents investigation. Leading up to Trump's indictment in the January 6 investigation, prosecutors continued investigating several strands, including through hundreds of documents provided by former New York Police Department commissioner Bernard Kerik.
On July 18, Trump was given a target letter. The following week, his lawyers met with prosecutors, signaling the investigation was nearly complete.
Proceedings
Indictment
The indictment was unsealed on August 1, 2023. A grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia indicted Trump on four charges:
D.C. district judge Tanya S. Chutkan was randomly assigned to hear the case.
According to the indictment, on December 8, 2020, a senior campaign advisor admitted that "our research and campaign legal team can't back up any of the claims ... It's tough to own any of this when it's all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership."
On January 1, Trump learned that Mike Pence did not believe the vice president could reject electoral votes. Trump called Pence and told him, "You're too honest."
On January 3, it is alleged that White House deputy counsel Patrick F. Philbin privately said that if Trump held onto power, there would be "riots in every major city in the United States", to which "Co-conspirator No. 4" (likely Jeffrey Clark) replied "That's why there's an Insurrection Act", implying that Trump could command the military to keep himself in power.
The indictment also described a previously unreported discussion between Trump and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, in which Cipollone advised Trump, hours after the Capitol riot started, to drop his objections to the election. Trump refused.
Co-conspirators:
The indictment references six co-conspirators. Although they were not named in the indictment, news agencies reported their likely identities based on public information. The indictment does not charge them.
Arraignment:
Trump appeared before magistrate judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya at the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse in Washington, D.C., on August 3. Smith was present at the arraignment, as were Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran and chief judge James Boasberg.
In the courtroom, Trump was joined by lawyers Todd Blanche and John Lauro; prosecutors Thomas Windom and Molly Gaston were joined by a special agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Trump pleaded not guilty to each count, and prosecutors confirmed they would not seek pre-trial detention.
Post-arraignment:
Timetable:
Federal prosecutors requested a trial date of January 2, 2024. Trump's team countered with a request for April 2026. Chutkan set trial for March 4, 2024. Originally, all pre-trial motions were due by October 9.
On September 28, Trump's attorneys requested a 60-day extension.
On October 6, Chutkan extended the filing deadline for motions to dismiss and other dispositive motions (except motions in limine and motions to suppress) until October 23.
Protective orders and security measures:
On August 4 and 5, the special counsel filed motions asking the court to restrict Trump from making public statements about the case and to impose a protective order on Trump and his attorneys to prevent them from revealing evidence (as they noted Trump has done in other cases).
In particular, they cited social media posts on August 4 and 5 in which Trump threatened to retaliate against anyone who "comes after" him and called Pence "delusional". The Trump campaign characterized this as political speech that should be allowable.
When Chutkan would not grant the Trump team's request for an extra three days to respond, Trump attacked her on social media, demanding that she be removed from the case and that the case be moved out of the District of Columbia.
On August 7, Trump's attorneys requested a less restrictive order that would "shield only genuinely sensitive materials from public view," to which prosecutors replied that Trump sought "to try this case in the media rather than in the courtroom." Chutkan scheduled a hearing for August 11.
On August 8, Trump insisted he would continue to speak publicly about the case.
On August 10, Chutkan was spotted with the protection of U.S. Marshals, revealing an apparently increased level of security.
A Texas woman was charged the next week with leaving Chutkan a voicemail with racial and gender slurs in which she threatened: "Hey you stupid slave nigger ... If Trump doesn't get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, bitch ... You will be targeted personally, publicly, your family, all of it."
At the August 11 hearing, Chutkan issued a less broad protective order than what was sought by prosecutors, who wanted to lock down all evidence turned over in discovery. The protective order allowed Trump to access certain non-sensitive information.
She admonished Trump's attorneys that inflammatory public remarks by the former president would cause her to take measures to expedite the trial and prevent potential witness tampering and jury pool tainting. She emphasized that Trump's status as a criminal defendant had priority over his free speech as a political candidate.
Chutkan ruled Trump could review materials alone, but only if his attorneys ensured he did not have any device that could copy them. A prosecutor told the court that once the protective order was in place, the special counsel expected to provide the defense about 11.6 million pages or files of materials by the end of August.
Court documents released on September 15 showed the special counsel previously asked Judge Chutkan in sealed briefs to impose a "narrowly tailored" gag order on Trump, asserting that since his indictment he "has spread disparaging and inflammatory public posts on Truth Social on a near-daily basis regarding the citizens of the District of Columbia, the court, prosecutors and prospective witnesses."
Smith filed another brief on September 29 regarding more recent derogatory remarks Trump had made about Brad Raffensberger, William Barr, and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, all of whom were identified as witnesses in the Trump indictment.
Trump had on September 22 suggested that Milley should be executed for treason. The brief asserted, "No other criminal defendant would be permitted to issue public statements insinuating that a known witness in his case should be executed. This defendant should not be, either."
On October 16, following a hearing, Chutkan granted a limited gag order. The gag order prohibits all parties from making public statements targeting Jack Smith or his staff, the defense counsel or their staff, the judge or court personnel, and any potential witnesses or the substance of witness testimony with smears, intimidation, or harassment.
The gag order does not prohibit Trump from making statements criticizing the Biden administration, the Justice Department, the District of Columbia, other presidential candidates and their political platforms, and the conduct of the trial as being unfair or politically motivated.
Trump's attorneys filed an appeal of the gag order the next day that claimed that the order violated the Freedom of Speech Clause of the 1st Amendment, and Chutkan issued a stay of the order on October 20. On October 25, the prosecution filed a reply to the stay order that urged that the gag order be reinstated.
On the same day, the American Civil Liberties Union filed an amicus brief against the gag order that argued that it violated the 1st Amendment.
Chutkan granted the prosecution's request on October 29, stating in her ruling that "First Amendment rights of participants in criminal proceedings ... yield, when necessary, to the orderly administration of justice—a principle reflected in Supreme Court precedent", and citing Gentile v. State Bar of Nevada (1991), that "contrary to Defendant's argument, the right to a fair trial is not his alone, but belongs also to the government and the public."
On November 2, Trump's attorneys filed an appeal of Chutkan's reinstatement of the gag order with the U.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals requesting that a stay be restored while the appeal is pursued and to issue a ruling on the appeal by November 10, and also requested that if the Circuit Court of Appeals rejects the appeal that it stay the reinstatement for 7 days while an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is pursued.
On November 3, the Circuit Court of Appeals granted the pause and scheduled a hearing for oral arguments on November 20.
On November 14, the prosecution submitted a filing with the Circuit Court of Appeals urging that the gag order be upheld.
On November 20, the Circuit Court of Appeals three-judge panel (with Brad Garcia, Patricia Millett, and Cornelia Pillard presiding) suggested at the gag order appeal hearing that while it may limit the order's scope, Supreme Court precedent suggests that in balancing the right to freedom of speech and the right to a fair trial that protecting the integrity of criminal procedure outweighs free speech rights.
On November 23, the prosecution submitted a filing with the Circuit Court of Appeals urging reinstatement of the gag order citing a document that compiled hundreds of voicemail messages containing threats and harassment of presiding New York State Unified Court System Judge Arthur Engoron in the New York civil investigation of The Trump Organization, while the defense submitted a filing in reply the next day claiming that the evidence the prosecution cited was irrelevant.
On December 8, the appeals court mostly upheld the gag order. The court ruled that Trump cannot speak about prosecutors, court staff or their families. However, Trump may speak about witnesses as long as he doesn't speak specifically about their participation in the court case.
He's also free to speak about special counsel Jack Smith, President Joe Biden, and the Justice Department, and he's allowed to say that the charges are "politically motivated".
On December 18, Trump asked the court to reconsider its decision.
Jury selection and witnesses:
On October 10, prosecutors recommended that the screening of potential jurors begin in early February. Acknowledging that this process will involve revealing jurors' identities to the legal teams, prosecutors recommended prohibiting attorneys from "friending" or "following" the social media accounts of potential jurors.
On October 24, ABC News and The Guardian reported that anonymous sources have stated that Trump administration White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has received legal immunity from Jack Smith in exchange for testimony under oath and has testified before the grand jury.
The next day, CBS News reported that anonymous sources have stated that Meadows is cooperating with prosecutors and has testified before the grand jury but did not state that Meadows has received legal immunity, while Meadows' attorney stated to CBS News that the ABC News report was "largely inaccurate".
In their October 25 reply to the gag order stay ruling, the prosecution did not address the veracity of the ABC News report and referred to Trump's October 24 Truth Social post about the news report as "an unmistakable and threatening message to a foreseeable witness in this case".
On November 2, Chutkan ruled that jury selection would begin on February 9 and ordered that the parties not share any jury pool research with any other legal entity (such as Trump's presidential campaign) or publicly disclose the identities of prospective jurors.
Evidence:
On December 5, 2023, the government alleged in a court filing that Trump had "sent" his supporters to the Capitol. The government said it would submit evidence to demonstrate Trump's "post-conspiracy embrace of particularly violent and notorious rioters", indicating his "motive and intent".
Immunity dispute:
On October 5, Trump's attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the indictment citing presidential immunity under Nixon v. Fitzgerald (1982).
In allowing lawsuits filed by U.S. Representatives Bennie Thompson and Eric Swalwell and two U.S. Capitol Police officers against Trump to proceed for incitement of the January 6 Capitol attack, District of Columbia U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled in February 2022 that presidential immunity did not shield Trump from the lawsuits.
Mehta's ruling was appealed to the U.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals. On December 1, the Circuit Court of Appeals panel (with Judges Gregory G. Katsas, Judith W. Rogers, and Sri Srinivasan presiding) upheld Amit Mehta's ruling that Trump was not immune from the civil lawsuits filed by Bennie Thompson, Eric Swalwell, and the U.S. Capitol Police officers because Trump was acting "as an office-seeker not office-holder" due to his speech on January 6 being a campaign event, and as such, did not fall within the "outer perimeter" standard established in Nixon v. Fitzgerald.
An appeals court is due to hear the immunity dispute on January 9, 2024.
On December 11, the special counsel petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to skip the appeals court and resolve the immunity dispute on an expedited basis. The rare step was an effort to keep the trial on schedule. Within hours, the court said it would consider whether to accept the case on an expedited timeline.
On December 13, Chutkan paused all deadlines in the case, including the upcoming trial itself, so the immunity dispute could be resolved first. The gag order remained in effect.
On December 20, Trump's deadline to file a response with the Supreme Court, his lawyers complained that the special counsel was asking to "bypass ... ordinary procedures...and rush to decide the issues with reckless abandon."
Trump's team asked the Supreme Court to reject the expedited timeline and allow the appeals court to consider the case first. On December 22, the Supreme Court denied the special counsel's request, leaving the case to the appeals court.
Pre-trial motions:
See also: Thompson v. Trump
During "full Ginsburg" interviews on August 7, new Trump attorney John Lauro asserted "a technical violation of the Constitution is not a violation of criminal law" so it was "just plain wrong" that Trump had pressured Pence to violate the law.
Pence had said four days earlier that Trump and his advisers had pressured him "essentially to overturn the election." On September 11, Trump asked Chutkan to recuse herself accusing her of "prejudging the facts pertinent to the case and his culpability".
On September 17, he repeated the request. Chutkan denied the request ten days later.
Also on October 5, a consortium of media organizations filed a request with Chutkan to allow live broadcasting of the trial's proceedings.
In an October 10 court filing, prosecutors said that Trump and his legal team had "repeatedly and publicly announced" that they would employ an "advice of counsel" defense, i.e., shifting blame to certain lawyers for advising Trump wrongly.
Prosecutors asked Chutkan to order Trump to disclose by December 18 whether he intended to use this defense. This defense would require Trump to reveal communications and evidence related to his current and former attorneys, and he would thereby forfeit his assertions of attorney-client privilege. Prosecutors noted in the motion that at least 25 witnesses had asserted attorney-client privilege during the course of their investigation.
On October 11, Trump's attorneys filed a motion for discovery based on claims made by U.S. Representative Barry Loudermilk that the House January 6 Committee did not turn over all of its evidence while the committee was under investigation by the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee.
The motion requested subpoenas be issued to:
On October 23, Trump's attorneys filed three motions to dismiss the indictment on the following grounds:
On November 3, the prosecution filed a reply to the October 5 media consortium request urging that Chutkan reject it in accordance with Rule 53 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.
On November 6, the prosecution filed a reply to the October 23 motions to dismiss arguing that they were without merit.
On November 10, Trump's attorneys filed a reply in support of the October 5 media consortium request, to which the prosecution replied in opposition on November 13.
On November 17, Chutkan ruled that the defense had failed to demonstrate that the language in the indictment was prejudicial or inflammatory in rejection of the October 23 motion to strike.
On November 27, Chutkan rejected the October 11 motion for discovery filed by Trump's attorneys.
On November 28, Trump's attorneys submitted a motion to compel discovery in two separate filings with 59 separate requests for evidence from the prosecution related to:
On December 1 (the day the Circuit Court of Appeals panel upheld a ruling that Trump was not immune from civil lawsuits), Chutkan rejected the October 5 motion to dismiss under presidential immunity and the October 23 motion to dismiss under the Freedom of Speech Clause, the Double Jeopardy Clause, and the Due Process Clause.
On December 7, Trump filed notice that he planned to appeal Chutkan's ruling. An appeal could delay the trial that had been scheduled to start in March 2024.
Also on December 11, the special counsel filed a brief indicating he would present an expert witness at trial who had extracted and examined data from Trump's phone from the weeks while he attempted to subvert the election. The data had been obtained from Twitter under a January 2023 search warrant.
Reactions:
Defendant:
The Trump campaign responded to the indictment with a press release, accusing President Joe Biden of political persecution and claiming that it was election interference.
The Trump campaign issued a statement calling the indictment "reminiscent of Nazi Germany".
Republicans in support of the indictment:
Republicans opposed to the indictment:
Democrats in support of the indictment:
See also:
United States of America v. Donald J. Trump is a pending federal criminal case against Donald Trump, the president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, regarding his alleged participation in attempts to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election including his involvement in the January 6 Capitol attack.
Trump questioned the results of the 2020 presidential election, claiming that election fraud had occurred through mail-in ballots, voting machine irregularities, "dead voters", and other irregularities. He also directly attempted to overturn the results of the election through a plot in which pro-Trump slates of fake electors would be created.
Trump pressured then-vice president Mike Pence to count the fake electors instead of the electors certified by state legislators. The Department of Justice opened an investigation in January 2022 into the plot, expanding it to encompass January 6. In November 2022, attorney general Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith to lead a special counsel investigation encompassing the investigations into attempts to overturn the election and Trump's handling of government documents.
On August 1, 2023, a grand jury indicted Trump in the District of Columbia U.S. District Court on four charges for his conduct following the 2020 presidential election through the January 6 Capitol attack: conspiracy to defraud the United States under Title 18 of the United States Code, obstructing an official proceeding and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding under the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002, and conspiracy against rights under the Enforcement Act of 1870. The indictment mentioned six unnamed co-conspirators.
It is Trump's third indictment and the first indictment against a U.S. president concerning actions while in office. Trump appeared at an arraignment on August 3, where he pleaded not guilty. The charge with the longest sentence carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.
As of December 2023, the trial is scheduled for March 4, 2024.
Background
Further information: Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election § Background
Accusations of electoral fraud and attempts to overturn the election:
Throughout his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly sowed doubt on the election certification process. Campaigning in Colorado, Trump claimed without evidence that the Democratic Party "[rigged] the election at polling booths".
In October 2016, Trump claimed through a series of tweets that widespread voter fraud would occur in the 2016 presidential election. These statements were echoed by Rudy Giuliani, Trump's legal advisor.
Trump continued expressing these sentiments into the 2020 presidential election; for months, he prepared arguments in the event of his loss, primarily relating to mail-in ballots.
As early as August 2020, he enlisted conservative activist and lawyer Cleta Mitchell to help overturn the election.
The Department of Homeland Security warned that Russia was amplifying claims of fraud occurring in mail-in voting to intentionally sow distrust in the voting process as a whole. Two days before Election Day, Trump told reporters that he would be "going in with [his] lawyers" as soon as the election was over.
Bolstered by pro-Trump pundits and perceived strong turnouts at rallies, the Trump campaign was confident that they were going to win the election. On Election Day, preliminary surveys at polling places showed Trump in the lead as his supporters were more likely to turn out in person amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but his lead diminished as mail-in ballots were counted.
Following Trump's final campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump's son Eric wagered that he would win at least 322 electoral votes. At the behest of Giuliani, Trump declared in a 2 a.m. election night speech in the East Room that he had won the election and that the counts being reported were fraudulent.
As ballots were being counted, campaign data expert Matt Oczkowski bluntly informed Trump that he was going to lose the election. White House Counsel Pat Cipollone told him that invalidating the results of the election would be a "murder-suicide pact".
Under then-attorney general William Barr, the Department of Justice failed to find widespread voter fraud in the election. Former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich predicted that Trump voters would erupt in "rage", a sentiment shared by House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who told Laura Ingraham on The Ingraham Angle that Republicans should not "be silent about this".
Trump and several co-conspirators repeatedly sought to overturn the results of the election. The Department of Justice investigation into these attempts focused on the implementation of the Trump fake electors plot, in which Trump and his allies would draft allegedly fraudulent certificates of ascertainment affirming Trump as the winner.
The effort to write these documents and persuade Republican officials to sign them was performed by Trump's lawyers, including Giuliani and John Eastman, who claimed that irregularities in the election had occurred and proposed that an "alternate" slate of electors should be established while they gathered evidence.
Even though dozens of these electors were installed and affirmed Trump as the winner, the seven state legislatures targeted in the plot--Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—certified Biden's victory, although Pennsylvania and New Mexico agreed to consider Trump the winner if he succeeded in the many lawsuits challenging the election.
The scheme involved sending the fake electoral slates to vice president Mike Pence, pressuring him to count the fake votes. Alternatively, Trump allies posited that Pence could consider the election "defective" under the Electoral Count Act and allow the House of Representatives to decide the outcome.
During the two months following the election, Trump made multiple phone calls to Republican officials in states that had narrowly been won by Biden, asking them to reverse the results and give the victory to him.
One such call was to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, asking him to "find 11,780 votes". Raffensperger recorded the call and subsequently released it to the public.
Both Trump and Giuliani called Rusty Bowers, the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, asking him to look into claims of fraud, but he declined to do so without evidence. John Eastman also called Bowers on January 4 asking him to undo the state's certification of Biden's win, but he refused.
Trump and his attorneys, as well as Republican members of Congress, also called or met with state officials in Michigan and Pennsylvania, urging them to report that Trump had actually won their states.
January 6 Capitol attack and investigations:
Main article: January 6 United States Capitol attack
See also: Criminal proceedings in the January 6 United States Capitol attack
On December 19, 2020, six weeks following his election loss, Trump urged his followers on Twitter to protest in Washington, D.C., on January 6, the day Congress was set to certify the results of the election, writing, "Be there, will be wild!"
Over the course of the following weeks, Trump would repeat the January 6 date. Militant organizations such as the Proud Boys and groups affiliated with the conspiracy theory QAnon formulated logistical plans to gather at the United States Capitol.
The Red-State Secession Facebook page encouraged its followers to post the addresses of its "enemies". Trump continued to repeat false claims about the election in multiple states leading up to January 6, including Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona.
On the morning of January 6, Trump gave a speech in the Ellipse, an elliptical park near the White House, and encouraged his followers to walk down to Pennsylvania Avenue to incite within Republicans lawmakers the "kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country". Provoked by Trump, the mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.
The January 6 Capitol attack resulted in hundreds of criminal proceedings. The House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump for a second time on January 13. He was acquitted by the Senate on February 13. The House of Representatives voted to create a select committee to investigate the attack in June 2021. Ahead of its final report, the committee voted to accuse Trump of the four charges later brought against him in the indictment and referred him to the Department of Justice.
In a CNN interview in January 2022, deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco stated that the Department of Justice would investigate the Trump fake electors plot. By March 2022, the Department of Justice had opened an investigation into the events of January 6 and Trump's attempts to overturn the election.
The Department of Justice began obtaining White House phone records in April in connection with the January 6 investigation, and a federal grand jury issued subpoenas to Trump's lawyers in connection with the fake electors plot in May. The Washington Post reported in July that the Department of Justice was investigating Trump's actions on January 6.
The January 6 investigation was overseen by Thomas Windom, an obscure federal prosecutor. On November 18, 2022, attorney general Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith to serve as special counsel for the January 6 investigation and the FBI investigation into Donald Trump's handling of government documents.
Smith intensified both investigations ahead of increased efforts by Trump to focus on his 2024 presidential campaign. In June 2023, Trump was indicted in connection with the classified documents investigation. Leading up to Trump's indictment in the January 6 investigation, prosecutors continued investigating several strands, including through hundreds of documents provided by former New York Police Department commissioner Bernard Kerik.
On July 18, Trump was given a target letter. The following week, his lawyers met with prosecutors, signaling the investigation was nearly complete.
Proceedings
Indictment
The indictment was unsealed on August 1, 2023. A grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia indicted Trump on four charges:
- conspiracy to defraud the United States,
- obstructing an official proceeding,
- conspiring to do so,
- and conspiracy against rights.
D.C. district judge Tanya S. Chutkan was randomly assigned to hear the case.
According to the indictment, on December 8, 2020, a senior campaign advisor admitted that "our research and campaign legal team can't back up any of the claims ... It's tough to own any of this when it's all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership."
On January 1, Trump learned that Mike Pence did not believe the vice president could reject electoral votes. Trump called Pence and told him, "You're too honest."
On January 3, it is alleged that White House deputy counsel Patrick F. Philbin privately said that if Trump held onto power, there would be "riots in every major city in the United States", to which "Co-conspirator No. 4" (likely Jeffrey Clark) replied "That's why there's an Insurrection Act", implying that Trump could command the military to keep himself in power.
The indictment also described a previously unreported discussion between Trump and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, in which Cipollone advised Trump, hours after the Capitol riot started, to drop his objections to the election. Trump refused.
Co-conspirators:
The indictment references six co-conspirators. Although they were not named in the indictment, news agencies reported their likely identities based on public information. The indictment does not charge them.
- Co-conspirator No. 1: Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, as confirmed by his lawyer, Robert Costello, who claimed the indictment "eviscerates the First Amendment".
- Co-conspirator No. 2: Trump lawyer John Eastman, as confirmed by his lawyer, Harvey Silverglate, who claimed Eastman would be exonerated.
- Co-conspirator No. 3: Trump lawyer Sidney Powell. CNN noted that the dates of a "lawsuit against the Governor of Georgia" mentioned in the indictment align with a lawsuit filed by Powell. On October 19, Powell pleaded guilty in the Georgia election racketeering prosecution (in which Trump is named as a co-defendant) in an agreement with prosecutors to testify against other defendants in future trials.
- Co-conspirator No. 4: Trump lawyer Jeffrey Clark. CNN matched quotes of an email in the indictment with quotes from a Senate report.
- Co-conspirator No. 5: Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro. CNN referred to information released by the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack On October 20, Chesebro pleaded guilty in the Georgia election racketeering prosecution in exchange for testimony at future trials.
- Co-conspirator No. 6: A "political consultant" who allegedly named attorneys in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin "who could assist in the fraudulent elector effort". On December 13, 2020, this person joined a phone call with Rudy Giuliani and a senior campaign advisor for Trump.
Arraignment:
Trump appeared before magistrate judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya at the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse in Washington, D.C., on August 3. Smith was present at the arraignment, as were Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran and chief judge James Boasberg.
In the courtroom, Trump was joined by lawyers Todd Blanche and John Lauro; prosecutors Thomas Windom and Molly Gaston were joined by a special agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Trump pleaded not guilty to each count, and prosecutors confirmed they would not seek pre-trial detention.
Post-arraignment:
Timetable:
Federal prosecutors requested a trial date of January 2, 2024. Trump's team countered with a request for April 2026. Chutkan set trial for March 4, 2024. Originally, all pre-trial motions were due by October 9.
On September 28, Trump's attorneys requested a 60-day extension.
On October 6, Chutkan extended the filing deadline for motions to dismiss and other dispositive motions (except motions in limine and motions to suppress) until October 23.
Protective orders and security measures:
On August 4 and 5, the special counsel filed motions asking the court to restrict Trump from making public statements about the case and to impose a protective order on Trump and his attorneys to prevent them from revealing evidence (as they noted Trump has done in other cases).
In particular, they cited social media posts on August 4 and 5 in which Trump threatened to retaliate against anyone who "comes after" him and called Pence "delusional". The Trump campaign characterized this as political speech that should be allowable.
When Chutkan would not grant the Trump team's request for an extra three days to respond, Trump attacked her on social media, demanding that she be removed from the case and that the case be moved out of the District of Columbia.
On August 7, Trump's attorneys requested a less restrictive order that would "shield only genuinely sensitive materials from public view," to which prosecutors replied that Trump sought "to try this case in the media rather than in the courtroom." Chutkan scheduled a hearing for August 11.
On August 8, Trump insisted he would continue to speak publicly about the case.
On August 10, Chutkan was spotted with the protection of U.S. Marshals, revealing an apparently increased level of security.
A Texas woman was charged the next week with leaving Chutkan a voicemail with racial and gender slurs in which she threatened: "Hey you stupid slave nigger ... If Trump doesn't get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, bitch ... You will be targeted personally, publicly, your family, all of it."
At the August 11 hearing, Chutkan issued a less broad protective order than what was sought by prosecutors, who wanted to lock down all evidence turned over in discovery. The protective order allowed Trump to access certain non-sensitive information.
She admonished Trump's attorneys that inflammatory public remarks by the former president would cause her to take measures to expedite the trial and prevent potential witness tampering and jury pool tainting. She emphasized that Trump's status as a criminal defendant had priority over his free speech as a political candidate.
Chutkan ruled Trump could review materials alone, but only if his attorneys ensured he did not have any device that could copy them. A prosecutor told the court that once the protective order was in place, the special counsel expected to provide the defense about 11.6 million pages or files of materials by the end of August.
Court documents released on September 15 showed the special counsel previously asked Judge Chutkan in sealed briefs to impose a "narrowly tailored" gag order on Trump, asserting that since his indictment he "has spread disparaging and inflammatory public posts on Truth Social on a near-daily basis regarding the citizens of the District of Columbia, the court, prosecutors and prospective witnesses."
Smith filed another brief on September 29 regarding more recent derogatory remarks Trump had made about Brad Raffensberger, William Barr, and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, all of whom were identified as witnesses in the Trump indictment.
Trump had on September 22 suggested that Milley should be executed for treason. The brief asserted, "No other criminal defendant would be permitted to issue public statements insinuating that a known witness in his case should be executed. This defendant should not be, either."
On October 16, following a hearing, Chutkan granted a limited gag order. The gag order prohibits all parties from making public statements targeting Jack Smith or his staff, the defense counsel or their staff, the judge or court personnel, and any potential witnesses or the substance of witness testimony with smears, intimidation, or harassment.
The gag order does not prohibit Trump from making statements criticizing the Biden administration, the Justice Department, the District of Columbia, other presidential candidates and their political platforms, and the conduct of the trial as being unfair or politically motivated.
Trump's attorneys filed an appeal of the gag order the next day that claimed that the order violated the Freedom of Speech Clause of the 1st Amendment, and Chutkan issued a stay of the order on October 20. On October 25, the prosecution filed a reply to the stay order that urged that the gag order be reinstated.
On the same day, the American Civil Liberties Union filed an amicus brief against the gag order that argued that it violated the 1st Amendment.
Chutkan granted the prosecution's request on October 29, stating in her ruling that "First Amendment rights of participants in criminal proceedings ... yield, when necessary, to the orderly administration of justice—a principle reflected in Supreme Court precedent", and citing Gentile v. State Bar of Nevada (1991), that "contrary to Defendant's argument, the right to a fair trial is not his alone, but belongs also to the government and the public."
On November 2, Trump's attorneys filed an appeal of Chutkan's reinstatement of the gag order with the U.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals requesting that a stay be restored while the appeal is pursued and to issue a ruling on the appeal by November 10, and also requested that if the Circuit Court of Appeals rejects the appeal that it stay the reinstatement for 7 days while an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is pursued.
On November 3, the Circuit Court of Appeals granted the pause and scheduled a hearing for oral arguments on November 20.
On November 14, the prosecution submitted a filing with the Circuit Court of Appeals urging that the gag order be upheld.
On November 20, the Circuit Court of Appeals three-judge panel (with Brad Garcia, Patricia Millett, and Cornelia Pillard presiding) suggested at the gag order appeal hearing that while it may limit the order's scope, Supreme Court precedent suggests that in balancing the right to freedom of speech and the right to a fair trial that protecting the integrity of criminal procedure outweighs free speech rights.
On November 23, the prosecution submitted a filing with the Circuit Court of Appeals urging reinstatement of the gag order citing a document that compiled hundreds of voicemail messages containing threats and harassment of presiding New York State Unified Court System Judge Arthur Engoron in the New York civil investigation of The Trump Organization, while the defense submitted a filing in reply the next day claiming that the evidence the prosecution cited was irrelevant.
On December 8, the appeals court mostly upheld the gag order. The court ruled that Trump cannot speak about prosecutors, court staff or their families. However, Trump may speak about witnesses as long as he doesn't speak specifically about their participation in the court case.
He's also free to speak about special counsel Jack Smith, President Joe Biden, and the Justice Department, and he's allowed to say that the charges are "politically motivated".
On December 18, Trump asked the court to reconsider its decision.
Jury selection and witnesses:
On October 10, prosecutors recommended that the screening of potential jurors begin in early February. Acknowledging that this process will involve revealing jurors' identities to the legal teams, prosecutors recommended prohibiting attorneys from "friending" or "following" the social media accounts of potential jurors.
On October 24, ABC News and The Guardian reported that anonymous sources have stated that Trump administration White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has received legal immunity from Jack Smith in exchange for testimony under oath and has testified before the grand jury.
The next day, CBS News reported that anonymous sources have stated that Meadows is cooperating with prosecutors and has testified before the grand jury but did not state that Meadows has received legal immunity, while Meadows' attorney stated to CBS News that the ABC News report was "largely inaccurate".
In their October 25 reply to the gag order stay ruling, the prosecution did not address the veracity of the ABC News report and referred to Trump's October 24 Truth Social post about the news report as "an unmistakable and threatening message to a foreseeable witness in this case".
On November 2, Chutkan ruled that jury selection would begin on February 9 and ordered that the parties not share any jury pool research with any other legal entity (such as Trump's presidential campaign) or publicly disclose the identities of prospective jurors.
Evidence:
On December 5, 2023, the government alleged in a court filing that Trump had "sent" his supporters to the Capitol. The government said it would submit evidence to demonstrate Trump's "post-conspiracy embrace of particularly violent and notorious rioters", indicating his "motive and intent".
Immunity dispute:
On October 5, Trump's attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the indictment citing presidential immunity under Nixon v. Fitzgerald (1982).
In allowing lawsuits filed by U.S. Representatives Bennie Thompson and Eric Swalwell and two U.S. Capitol Police officers against Trump to proceed for incitement of the January 6 Capitol attack, District of Columbia U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled in February 2022 that presidential immunity did not shield Trump from the lawsuits.
Mehta's ruling was appealed to the U.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals. On December 1, the Circuit Court of Appeals panel (with Judges Gregory G. Katsas, Judith W. Rogers, and Sri Srinivasan presiding) upheld Amit Mehta's ruling that Trump was not immune from the civil lawsuits filed by Bennie Thompson, Eric Swalwell, and the U.S. Capitol Police officers because Trump was acting "as an office-seeker not office-holder" due to his speech on January 6 being a campaign event, and as such, did not fall within the "outer perimeter" standard established in Nixon v. Fitzgerald.
An appeals court is due to hear the immunity dispute on January 9, 2024.
On December 11, the special counsel petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to skip the appeals court and resolve the immunity dispute on an expedited basis. The rare step was an effort to keep the trial on schedule. Within hours, the court said it would consider whether to accept the case on an expedited timeline.
On December 13, Chutkan paused all deadlines in the case, including the upcoming trial itself, so the immunity dispute could be resolved first. The gag order remained in effect.
On December 20, Trump's deadline to file a response with the Supreme Court, his lawyers complained that the special counsel was asking to "bypass ... ordinary procedures...and rush to decide the issues with reckless abandon."
Trump's team asked the Supreme Court to reject the expedited timeline and allow the appeals court to consider the case first. On December 22, the Supreme Court denied the special counsel's request, leaving the case to the appeals court.
Pre-trial motions:
See also: Thompson v. Trump
During "full Ginsburg" interviews on August 7, new Trump attorney John Lauro asserted "a technical violation of the Constitution is not a violation of criminal law" so it was "just plain wrong" that Trump had pressured Pence to violate the law.
Pence had said four days earlier that Trump and his advisers had pressured him "essentially to overturn the election." On September 11, Trump asked Chutkan to recuse herself accusing her of "prejudging the facts pertinent to the case and his culpability".
On September 17, he repeated the request. Chutkan denied the request ten days later.
Also on October 5, a consortium of media organizations filed a request with Chutkan to allow live broadcasting of the trial's proceedings.
In an October 10 court filing, prosecutors said that Trump and his legal team had "repeatedly and publicly announced" that they would employ an "advice of counsel" defense, i.e., shifting blame to certain lawyers for advising Trump wrongly.
Prosecutors asked Chutkan to order Trump to disclose by December 18 whether he intended to use this defense. This defense would require Trump to reveal communications and evidence related to his current and former attorneys, and he would thereby forfeit his assertions of attorney-client privilege. Prosecutors noted in the motion that at least 25 witnesses had asserted attorney-client privilege during the course of their investigation.
On October 11, Trump's attorneys filed a motion for discovery based on claims made by U.S. Representative Barry Loudermilk that the House January 6 Committee did not turn over all of its evidence while the committee was under investigation by the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee.
The motion requested subpoenas be issued to:
- Bennie Thompson (who chaired the January 6 House committee),
- Loudermilk,
- the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee,
- the Clerk of the House of Representatives,
- the Archivist of the United States,
- and White House and Department of Homeland Security attorneys.
On October 23, Trump's attorneys filed three motions to dismiss the indictment on the following grounds:
- it violates the Freedom of Speech Clause,
- it violates the Double Jeopardy Clause and the Due Process Clause of the 5th Amendment (with the former being cited due to Trump's acquittal in his second impeachment trial),
- that the indictment fails to state an offense,
- and that the indictment is a selective prosecution,
- as well as a motion to strike the allegations related to the January 6 Capitol attack as prejudicial and inflammatory.
On November 3, the prosecution filed a reply to the October 5 media consortium request urging that Chutkan reject it in accordance with Rule 53 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.
On November 6, the prosecution filed a reply to the October 23 motions to dismiss arguing that they were without merit.
On November 10, Trump's attorneys filed a reply in support of the October 5 media consortium request, to which the prosecution replied in opposition on November 13.
On November 17, Chutkan ruled that the defense had failed to demonstrate that the language in the indictment was prejudicial or inflammatory in rejection of the October 23 motion to strike.
On November 27, Chutkan rejected the October 11 motion for discovery filed by Trump's attorneys.
On November 28, Trump's attorneys submitted a motion to compel discovery in two separate filings with 59 separate requests for evidence from the prosecution related to:
- vote fraud in the election,
- actual or attempted foreign interference with election infrastructure during the election,
- political bias in U.S. Intelligence Community assessments of foreign interference,
- the existence of any potential undercover government operatives or informants at the January 6 Capitol attack,
- and communications or coordination between the Justice Department with the Biden administration or Biden family (including Hunter Biden).
On December 1 (the day the Circuit Court of Appeals panel upheld a ruling that Trump was not immune from civil lawsuits), Chutkan rejected the October 5 motion to dismiss under presidential immunity and the October 23 motion to dismiss under the Freedom of Speech Clause, the Double Jeopardy Clause, and the Due Process Clause.
On December 7, Trump filed notice that he planned to appeal Chutkan's ruling. An appeal could delay the trial that had been scheduled to start in March 2024.
Also on December 11, the special counsel filed a brief indicating he would present an expert witness at trial who had extracted and examined data from Trump's phone from the weeks while he attempted to subvert the election. The data had been obtained from Twitter under a January 2023 search warrant.
Reactions:
Defendant:
The Trump campaign responded to the indictment with a press release, accusing President Joe Biden of political persecution and claiming that it was election interference.
The Trump campaign issued a statement calling the indictment "reminiscent of Nazi Germany".
Republicans in support of the indictment:
- Mike Pence, who was Trump's vice president and, at the time, was also running for the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential election, issued a statement strongly condemning Trump, stating that this indictment was "an important reminder [that] anyone who puts himself over the constitution should never be president of the United States". In an interview with reporters at the Indiana State Fair the next day, he expanded on his comments, stating that he could not have overturned the election results as vice president.
- Former U.S. attorney general William Barr said the case against Trump was legitimate and that he will testify if he is called.
- Adam Kinzinger, a member of the January 6 Committee and a former Illinois representative, tweeted that "Today is the beginning of justice" and added that Trump is "a cancer on our democracy".
- Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is running for the 2024 presidential Republican nomination, said Trump "swore an oath to the Constitution, violated his oath & brought shame to his presidency."
- Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, who is running for the 2024 presidential Republican nomination, said "Trump has disqualified himself from ever holding our nation's highest office again."
- On August 14, 2023, nearly a dozen former judges and federal legal officials, all appointed by Republicans, submitted an amicus brief saying they agreed with Jack Smith's proposed trial date of January 2, 2024. The brief states "There is no more important issue facing America and the American people—and to the very functioning of democracy—than whether the former president is guilty of criminally undermining America’s elections and American democracy in order to remain in power".
Republicans opposed to the indictment:
- Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida who is also running for the 2024 presidential Republican nomination, tweeted that he would "end the weaponization of government, replace the FBI director, and ensure a single standard of justice for all Americans" if elected. He also voiced agreement with the defendant's claim that the charges were politically motivated. In addition, DeSantis has previously expressed his intention to pardon Trump if he were to win the presidency.
- Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy wrote on Twitter that House Republicans would "continue to uncover the truth about Biden Inc. and the two-tiered system of justice."
- With a looming September 30 deadline to fund the government for the coming fiscal year starting October 1, some House Republicans had proposed leveraging their power of the purse to try to stop the federal and state prosecutions of Trump, though a federal shutdown would not affect the prosecutions.
Democrats in support of the indictment:
- Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a joint statement with House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said "No one is above the law – including Donald Trump".
- House members Nancy Pelosi, Joaquin Castro and Rashida Tlaib also came out in support of the indictment.
See also:
- 2024 presidential eligibility of Donald Trump
- Anderson v. Griswold
- Federal prosecution of Donald Trump (classified documents case)
- Prosecution of Donald Trump in Georgia
- Prosecution of Donald Trump in New York
- Trump fake electors plot
- "United States of America v. Donald J. Trump" (PDF). United States Department of Justice. August 1, 2023. Retrieved August 1, 2023 – via The Washington Post.
- Savage, Charlie; Goldman, Adam (August 1, 2023). "The Trump Jan. 6 Indictment, Annotated". The New York Times. Retrieved August 1, 2023.
- Jack Smith (August 1, 2023). Complete statement from Special Counsel Jack Smith on Trump Indictment (News conference). C-SPAN. Retrieved August 3, 2023 – via YouTube.
- Case docket for United States v. Trump, 1:23-cr-00257 (main case), (D.D.C.) at CourtListener.
- Case docket for United States v. Donald Trump, 23-3190 (gag order appeal), (D.C. Cir.) at CourtListener.
- Case docket for United States v. Donald Trump, 23-3228 (presidential immunity appeal), (D.C. Cir.) at CourtListener.
How America Changed During Donald Trump’s Presidency
(Pew Research Center January 29, 2021)
Pictured below: Facebook launched a “war room” at its headquarters ahead of the November 2018 midterm elections to combat the growing spread of misinformation on its platform. (Noah Berger/AFP via Getty Images)
(Pew Research Center January 29, 2021)
- YouTube Video Four years of Trump falsehoods | Fact Checker*
- YouTube Video: 2024 -- Trump threatens political retribution if reelected
- YouTube Video: Why Trump is running away with the GOP 2024 race (CBS News)
Pictured below: Facebook launched a “war room” at its headquarters ahead of the November 2018 midterm elections to combat the growing spread of misinformation on its platform. (Noah Berger/AFP via Getty Images)
Donald Trump stunned the political world in 2016 when he became the first person without government or military experience ever to be elected president of the United States. His four-year tenure in the White House revealed extraordinary fissures in American society but left little doubt that he is a figure unlike any other in the nation’s history.
Trump, the New York businessman and former reality TV show star, won the 2016 election after a campaign that defied norms and commanded public attention from the moment it began. His approach to governing was equally unconventional.
Other presidents tried to unify the nation after turning from the campaign trail to the White House. From his first days in Washington to his last, Trump seemed to revel in the political fight. He used his presidential megaphone to criticize a long list of perceived adversaries, from the news media to members of his own administration, elected officials in both political parties and foreign heads of state.
The more than 26,000 tweets he sent as president provided an unvarnished, real-time account of his thinking on a broad spectrum of issues and eventually proved so provocative that Twitter permanently banned him from its platform.
In his final days in office, Trump became the first president ever to be impeached twice – the second time for inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol during the certification of the election he lost – and the nation’s first chief executive in more than 150 years to refuse to attend his successor’s inauguration.
Trump’s policy record included major changes at home and abroad. He achieved a string of long-sought conservative victories domestically, including the biggest corporate tax cuts on record, the elimination of scores of environmental regulations and a reshaping of the federal judiciary.
In the international arena, he:
Many questions about Trump’s legacy and his role in the nation’s political future will take time to answer. But some takeaways from his presidency are already clear from Pew Research Center’s studies in recent years.
In this essay, we take a closer look at a few of the key societal shifts that accelerated – or emerged for the first time – during the tenure of the 45th president.
Related: How America Changed During Barack Obama’s Presidency
How we did this Deeply partisan and personal dividesTrump’s status as a political outsider, his outspoken nature and his willingness to upend past customs and expectations of presidential behavior made him a constant focus of public attention, as well as a source of deep partisan divisions.
Even before he took office, Trump divided Republicans and Democrats more than any incoming chief executive in the prior three decades:
1 The gap only grew more pronounced after he became president. An average of 86% of Republicans approved of Trump’s handling of the job over the course of his tenure, compared with an average of just 6% of Democrats – the widest partisan gap in approval for any president in the modern era of polling.
2 Trump’s overall approval rating never exceeded 50% and fell to a low of just 29% in his final weeks in office, shortly after a mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol.
Trump, the New York businessman and former reality TV show star, won the 2016 election after a campaign that defied norms and commanded public attention from the moment it began. His approach to governing was equally unconventional.
Other presidents tried to unify the nation after turning from the campaign trail to the White House. From his first days in Washington to his last, Trump seemed to revel in the political fight. He used his presidential megaphone to criticize a long list of perceived adversaries, from the news media to members of his own administration, elected officials in both political parties and foreign heads of state.
The more than 26,000 tweets he sent as president provided an unvarnished, real-time account of his thinking on a broad spectrum of issues and eventually proved so provocative that Twitter permanently banned him from its platform.
In his final days in office, Trump became the first president ever to be impeached twice – the second time for inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol during the certification of the election he lost – and the nation’s first chief executive in more than 150 years to refuse to attend his successor’s inauguration.
Trump’s policy record included major changes at home and abroad. He achieved a string of long-sought conservative victories domestically, including the biggest corporate tax cuts on record, the elimination of scores of environmental regulations and a reshaping of the federal judiciary.
In the international arena, he:
- imposed tough new immigration restrictions,
- withdrew from several multilateral agreements,
- forged closer ties with Israel
- and launched a tit-for-tat trade dispute with China as part of a wider effort to address what he saw as glaring imbalances in America’s economic relationship with other countries.
Many questions about Trump’s legacy and his role in the nation’s political future will take time to answer. But some takeaways from his presidency are already clear from Pew Research Center’s studies in recent years.
In this essay, we take a closer look at a few of the key societal shifts that accelerated – or emerged for the first time – during the tenure of the 45th president.
Related: How America Changed During Barack Obama’s Presidency
How we did this Deeply partisan and personal dividesTrump’s status as a political outsider, his outspoken nature and his willingness to upend past customs and expectations of presidential behavior made him a constant focus of public attention, as well as a source of deep partisan divisions.
Even before he took office, Trump divided Republicans and Democrats more than any incoming chief executive in the prior three decades:
1 The gap only grew more pronounced after he became president. An average of 86% of Republicans approved of Trump’s handling of the job over the course of his tenure, compared with an average of just 6% of Democrats – the widest partisan gap in approval for any president in the modern era of polling.
2 Trump’s overall approval rating never exceeded 50% and fell to a low of just 29% in his final weeks in office, shortly after a mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol.
Republicans and Democrats weren’t just divided over Trump’s handling of the job. They also interpreted many aspects of his character and personality in fundamentally opposite ways.
In a 2019 survey, at least three-quarters of Republicans said the president’s words sometimes or often made them feel hopeful, entertained, informed, happy and proud. Even larger shares of Democrats said his words sometimes or often made them feel concerned, exhausted, angry, insulted and confused.
The strong reactions that Trump provoked appeared in highly personal contexts, too. In a 2019 survey, 71% of Democrats who were single and looking for a relationship said they would definitely or probably not consider being in a committed relationship with someone who had voted for Trump in 2016. That far exceeded the 47% of single-and-looking Republicans who said they would not consider being in a serious relationship with a Hillary Clinton voter.
Many Americans opted not to talk about Trump or politics at all. In 2019, almost half of U.S. adults (44%) said they wouldn’t feel comfortable talking about Trump with someone they didn’t know well.
A similar share (45%) said later that year that they had stopped talking politics with someone because of something that person had said.
In addition to the intense divisions that emerged over Trump personally, his tenure saw a further widening of the gulf between Republicans and Democrats over core political values and issues, including in areas that weren’t especially partisan before his arrival.
In 1994, when Pew Research Center began asking Americans a series of 10 “values questions” on subjects including the role of government, environmental protection and national security, the average gap between Republicans and Democrats was 15 percentage points.
By 2017, the first year of Trump’s presidency, the average partisan gap on those same questions had more than doubled to 36 points, the result of a steady, decades-long increase in polarization.
On some issues, there were bigger changes in thinking among Democrats than among Republicans during Trump’s presidency. That was especially the case on topics such as race and gender, which gained new attention amid the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements.
In a 2020 survey that followed months of racial justice protests in the U.S., for instance, 70% of Democrats said it is “a lot more difficult” to be a Black person than to be a White person in the U.S. today, up from 53% who said the same thing just four years earlier. Republican attitudes on the same question changed little during that span, with only a small share agreeing with the Democratic view.
On other issues, attitudes changed more among Republicans than among Democrats. One notable example related to views of higher education: Between 2015 and 2017, the share of Republicans who said colleges and universities were having a negative effect on the way things were going in the U.S. rose from 37% to 58%, even as around seven-in-ten Democrats continued to say these institutions were having a positive effect.
Related: From #MAGA to #MeToo: A Look at U.S. Public Opinion in 2017
A dearth of shared facts and information:
One of the few things that Republicans and Democrats could agree on during Trump’s tenure is that they didn’t share the same set of facts. In a 2019 survey, around three-quarters of Americans (73%) said most Republican and Democratic voters disagreed not just over political plans and policies, but over “basic facts.”
Much of the disconnect between the parties involved the news media, which Trump routinely disparaged as “fake news” and the “enemy of the people.” Republicans, in particular, expressed widespread and growing distrust of the press.
In a 2019 survey, Republicans voiced more distrust than trust in 20 of the 30 specific news outlets they were asked about, even as Democrats expressed more trust than distrust in 22 of those same outlets.
Republicans overwhelmingly turned to and trusted one outlet included in the study – Fox News – even as Democrats used and expressed trust in a wider range of sources. The study concluded that the two sides placed their trust in “two nearly inverse media environments.”
Some of the media organizations Trump criticized most vocally saw the biggest increases in GOP distrust over time:
In addition to their criticisms of specific news outlets, Republicans also questioned the broader motives of the media. In surveys fielded over the course of 2018 and 2019,
Republicans were far less likely than Democrats to say that journalists act in the best interests of the public, have high ethical standards, prevent political leaders from doing things they shouldn’t and deal fairly with all sides.
Trump’s staunchest GOP supporters often had the most negative views: Republicans who strongly approved of Trump, for example, were much more likely than those who only somewhat approved or disapproved of him to say journalists have very low ethical standards.
Apart from the growing partisan polarization over the news media, Trump’s time in office also saw the emergence of misinformation as a concerning new reality for many Americans:
In a 2019 survey, at least three-quarters of Republicans said the president’s words sometimes or often made them feel hopeful, entertained, informed, happy and proud. Even larger shares of Democrats said his words sometimes or often made them feel concerned, exhausted, angry, insulted and confused.
The strong reactions that Trump provoked appeared in highly personal contexts, too. In a 2019 survey, 71% of Democrats who were single and looking for a relationship said they would definitely or probably not consider being in a committed relationship with someone who had voted for Trump in 2016. That far exceeded the 47% of single-and-looking Republicans who said they would not consider being in a serious relationship with a Hillary Clinton voter.
Many Americans opted not to talk about Trump or politics at all. In 2019, almost half of U.S. adults (44%) said they wouldn’t feel comfortable talking about Trump with someone they didn’t know well.
A similar share (45%) said later that year that they had stopped talking politics with someone because of something that person had said.
In addition to the intense divisions that emerged over Trump personally, his tenure saw a further widening of the gulf between Republicans and Democrats over core political values and issues, including in areas that weren’t especially partisan before his arrival.
In 1994, when Pew Research Center began asking Americans a series of 10 “values questions” on subjects including the role of government, environmental protection and national security, the average gap between Republicans and Democrats was 15 percentage points.
By 2017, the first year of Trump’s presidency, the average partisan gap on those same questions had more than doubled to 36 points, the result of a steady, decades-long increase in polarization.
On some issues, there were bigger changes in thinking among Democrats than among Republicans during Trump’s presidency. That was especially the case on topics such as race and gender, which gained new attention amid the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements.
In a 2020 survey that followed months of racial justice protests in the U.S., for instance, 70% of Democrats said it is “a lot more difficult” to be a Black person than to be a White person in the U.S. today, up from 53% who said the same thing just four years earlier. Republican attitudes on the same question changed little during that span, with only a small share agreeing with the Democratic view.
On other issues, attitudes changed more among Republicans than among Democrats. One notable example related to views of higher education: Between 2015 and 2017, the share of Republicans who said colleges and universities were having a negative effect on the way things were going in the U.S. rose from 37% to 58%, even as around seven-in-ten Democrats continued to say these institutions were having a positive effect.
Related: From #MAGA to #MeToo: A Look at U.S. Public Opinion in 2017
A dearth of shared facts and information:
One of the few things that Republicans and Democrats could agree on during Trump’s tenure is that they didn’t share the same set of facts. In a 2019 survey, around three-quarters of Americans (73%) said most Republican and Democratic voters disagreed not just over political plans and policies, but over “basic facts.”
Much of the disconnect between the parties involved the news media, which Trump routinely disparaged as “fake news” and the “enemy of the people.” Republicans, in particular, expressed widespread and growing distrust of the press.
In a 2019 survey, Republicans voiced more distrust than trust in 20 of the 30 specific news outlets they were asked about, even as Democrats expressed more trust than distrust in 22 of those same outlets.
Republicans overwhelmingly turned to and trusted one outlet included in the study – Fox News – even as Democrats used and expressed trust in a wider range of sources. The study concluded that the two sides placed their trust in “two nearly inverse media environments.”
Some of the media organizations Trump criticized most vocally saw the biggest increases in GOP distrust over time:
- The share of Republicans who said they distrusted CNN rose from 33% in a 2014 survey to 58% by 2019.
- The proportion of Republicans who said they distrusted The Washington Post and The New York Times rose 17 and 12 percentage points, respectively, during that span.3
In addition to their criticisms of specific news outlets, Republicans also questioned the broader motives of the media. In surveys fielded over the course of 2018 and 2019,
Republicans were far less likely than Democrats to say that journalists act in the best interests of the public, have high ethical standards, prevent political leaders from doing things they shouldn’t and deal fairly with all sides.
Trump’s staunchest GOP supporters often had the most negative views: Republicans who strongly approved of Trump, for example, were much more likely than those who only somewhat approved or disapproved of him to say journalists have very low ethical standards.
Apart from the growing partisan polarization over the news media, Trump’s time in office also saw the emergence of misinformation as a concerning new reality for many Americans:
- Half of U.S. adults said in 2019 that made-up news and information was a very big problem in the country, exceeding the shares who said the same thing about racism, illegal immigration, terrorism and sexism.
- Around two-thirds said made-up news and information had a big impact on public confidence in the government (68%), while half or more said it had a major effect on Americans’ confidence in each other (54%) and political leaders’ ability to get work done (51%).
Misinformation played an important role in both the coronavirus pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.
Almost two-thirds of U.S. adults (64%) said in April 2020 that they had seen at least some made-up news and information about the pandemic, with around half (49%) saying this kind of misinformation had caused a great deal of confusion over the basic facts of the outbreak. In a survey in mid-November 2020, six-in-ten adults said made-up news and information had played a major role in the just-concluded election.
Conspiracy theories were an especially salient form of misinformation during Trump’s tenure, in many cases amplified by the president himself.
For example, nearly half of Americans (47%) said in September 2020 that they had heard or read a lot or a little about the collection of conspiracy theories known as QAnon, up from 23% earlier in the year. Most of those aware of QAnon said Trump seemed to support the theory’s promoters.
Trump frequently made disproven or questionable claims as president:
News and fact-checking organizations documented thousands of his false statements over four years, on subjects ranging from the coronavirus to the economy.
Perhaps none were more consequential than his repeated assertion of widespread fraud in the 2020 election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Even after courts around the country had rejected the claim and all 50 states had certified their results, Trump continued to say he had won a “landslide” victory. The false claim gained widespread currency among his voters: In a January 2021 survey, three-quarters of Trump supporters incorrectly said he was definitely or probably the rightful winner of the election.
New concerns over American democracy:
Throughout his tenure, Donald Trump questioned the legitimacy of democratic institutions, from the free press to the federal judiciary and the electoral process itself.
In surveys conducted between 2016 and 2019, more than half of Americans said Trump had little or no respect for the nation’s democratic institutions and traditions, though these views, too, split sharply along partisan lines.
The 2020 election brought concerns about democracy into much starker relief. Even before the election, Trump had cast doubt on the security of mail-in voting and refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power in the event that he lost. When he did lose, he refused to publicly concede defeat, his campaign and allies filed dozens of unsuccessful lawsuits to challenge the results and Trump personally pressured state government officials to retroactively tilt the outcome in his favor.
The weeks of legal and political challenges culminated on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump addressed a crowd of supporters at a rally outside the White House and again falsely claimed the election had been “stolen.” With Congress meeting the same day to certify Biden’s win,
Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attack that left five people dead and forced lawmakers to be evacuated until order could be restored and the certification could be completed. The House of Representatives impeached Trump a week later on a charge of inciting the violence, with 10 Republicans joining 222 Democrats in support of the decision.
Picture below: Police clash with a mob of Trump supporters who breached security and stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. (Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Almost two-thirds of U.S. adults (64%) said in April 2020 that they had seen at least some made-up news and information about the pandemic, with around half (49%) saying this kind of misinformation had caused a great deal of confusion over the basic facts of the outbreak. In a survey in mid-November 2020, six-in-ten adults said made-up news and information had played a major role in the just-concluded election.
Conspiracy theories were an especially salient form of misinformation during Trump’s tenure, in many cases amplified by the president himself.
For example, nearly half of Americans (47%) said in September 2020 that they had heard or read a lot or a little about the collection of conspiracy theories known as QAnon, up from 23% earlier in the year. Most of those aware of QAnon said Trump seemed to support the theory’s promoters.
Trump frequently made disproven or questionable claims as president:
News and fact-checking organizations documented thousands of his false statements over four years, on subjects ranging from the coronavirus to the economy.
Perhaps none were more consequential than his repeated assertion of widespread fraud in the 2020 election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Even after courts around the country had rejected the claim and all 50 states had certified their results, Trump continued to say he had won a “landslide” victory. The false claim gained widespread currency among his voters: In a January 2021 survey, three-quarters of Trump supporters incorrectly said he was definitely or probably the rightful winner of the election.
New concerns over American democracy:
Throughout his tenure, Donald Trump questioned the legitimacy of democratic institutions, from the free press to the federal judiciary and the electoral process itself.
In surveys conducted between 2016 and 2019, more than half of Americans said Trump had little or no respect for the nation’s democratic institutions and traditions, though these views, too, split sharply along partisan lines.
The 2020 election brought concerns about democracy into much starker relief. Even before the election, Trump had cast doubt on the security of mail-in voting and refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power in the event that he lost. When he did lose, he refused to publicly concede defeat, his campaign and allies filed dozens of unsuccessful lawsuits to challenge the results and Trump personally pressured state government officials to retroactively tilt the outcome in his favor.
The weeks of legal and political challenges culminated on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump addressed a crowd of supporters at a rally outside the White House and again falsely claimed the election had been “stolen.” With Congress meeting the same day to certify Biden’s win,
Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attack that left five people dead and forced lawmakers to be evacuated until order could be restored and the certification could be completed. The House of Representatives impeached Trump a week later on a charge of inciting the violence, with 10 Republicans joining 222 Democrats in support of the decision.
Picture below: Police clash with a mob of Trump supporters who breached security and stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. (Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Most Americans placed at least some blame on Trump for the riot at the Capitol, including 52% who said he bore a lot of responsibility for it. Again, however, partisans’ views differed widely: 81% of Democrats said Trump bore a lot of responsibility, compared with just 18% of Republicans.
Even as he repeatedly cast doubt on the democratic process, Trump proved to be an enormously galvanizing figure at the polls. Nearly 160 million Americans voted in 2020, the highest estimated turnout rate among eligible voters in 120 years, despite widespread changes in voting procedures brought on by the pandemic.
Biden received more than 81 million votes and Trump received more than 74 million, the highest and second-highest totals in U.S. history. Turnout in the 2018 midterm election, the first after Trump took office, also set a modern-day record.
Pew Research Center surveys catalogued the high stakes that voters perceived, particularly in the run-up to the 2020 election. Just before the election, around nine-in-ten Trump and Biden supporters said there would be “lasting harm” to the nation if the other candidate won, and around eight-in-ten in each group said they disagreed with the other side not just on political priorities, but on “core American values and goals.”
Earlier in the year, 83% of registered voters said it “really mattered” who won the election, the highest percentage for any presidential election in at least two decades. Trump himself was a clear motivating factor for voters on both sides: 71% of Trump supporters said before the election that their choice was more of a vote for the president than against Biden, while 63% of Biden supporters said their choice was more of a vote against Trump than for his opponent.
A reckoning over racial inequality:
Racial tensions were a constant undercurrent during Trump’s presidency, often intensified by the public statements he made in response to high-profile incidents.
The death of George Floyd, in particular, brought race to the surface in a way that few other recent events have. The videotaped killing of the unarmed, 46-year-old Black man by a White police officer in Minneapolis was among several police killings that sparked national and international protests in 2020 and led to an outpouring of public support for the Black Lives Matter movement, including from corporations, universities and other institutions.
In a survey shortly after Floyd’s death in May, two-thirds of U.S. adults – including majorities across all major racial and ethnic groups – voiced support for the movement, and use of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag surged to a record high on Twitter.
Attitudes began to change as the protests wore on and sometimes turned violent, drawing sharp condemnation from Trump.
By September, support for the Black Lives Matter movement had slipped to 55% – largely due to decreases among White adults – and many Americans questioned whether the nation’s renewed focus on race would lead to changes to address racial inequality or improve the lives of Black people.
Race-related tensions erupted into public view earlier in Trump’s tenure, too. In 2017, White nationalists rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest the removal of a Confederate statue amid a broader push to eliminate such memorials from public spaces across the country. The rally led to violent clashes in the city’s streets and the death of a 32-year-old woman when a White nationalist deliberately drove a car into a crowd of people.
Tensions also arose in the National Football League as some players protested racial injustices in the U.S. by kneeling during the national anthem. The display prompted a backlash among some who saw it as disrespectful to the American flag.
In all of these controversies and others, Trump weighed in from the White House, but typically not in a way that most Americans saw as helpful. In a summer 2020 survey, for example, six-in-ten U.S. adults said Trump had delivered the wrong message in response to the protests over Floyd’s killing. That included around four-in-ten adults (39%) who said Trump had delivered the completely wrong message.
More broadly, Americans viewed Trump’s impact on race relations as far more negative than positive. In an early 2019 poll, 56% of adults said Trump had made race relations worse since taking office, compared with only 15% who said he had made progress toward improving relations. In the same survey, around two-thirds of adults (65%) said it had become more common for people in the U.S. to express racist or racially insensitive views since his election.
The public also perceived Trump as too close with White nationalist groups. In 2019, a majority of adults (56%) said he had done too little to distance himself from these groups, while 29% said he had done about the right amount and 7% said he had done too much.
These opinions were nearly the same as in December 2016, before he took office.
While Americans overall gave Trump much more negative than positive marks for his handling of race relations, there were consistent divisions along racial, ethnic and partisan lines.
Black, Hispanic and Asian adults were often more critical of Trump’s impact on race relations than White adults, as were Democrats when compared with Republicans. For example, while an overwhelming majority of Democrats (83%) said in 2019 that Trump had done too little to distance himself from White nationalist groups, a majority of Republicans (56%) said he had done about the right amount.
White Republicans, in particular, rejected the idea of widespread structural racism in the U.S. and saw too much emphasis on race. In September 2020, around eight-in-ten White Republicans (79%) said the bigger problem was people seeing racial discrimination where it doesn’t exist, rather than people not seeing discrimination where it really does exist. The opinions of White Democrats on the same question were nearly the reverse.
A defining public health and economic crisis:
Every presidency is shaped by outside events, and Trump’s will undoubtedly be remembered for the enormous toll the coronavirus pandemic took on the nation’s public health and economy.
More than 400,000 Americans died from COVID-19 between the beginning of the pandemic and when Trump left office, with fatality counts sometimes exceeding 4,000 people a day – a toll more severe than the overall toll of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, or the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
Trump himself contracted the coronavirus in the home stretch of his campaign for reelection, as did dozens of White House and campaign staff and members of his family.
The far-reaching public health effects of the virus were reflected in a survey in November 2020, when more than half of U.S. adults (54%) said they personally knew someone who had been hospitalized or died due to COVID-19. The shares were even higher among Black (71%) and Hispanic (61%) adults.
Picture below: Nurses and health care workers mourn and remember colleagues who had died of COVID-19 outside Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan in April 2020. (Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images)
Even as he repeatedly cast doubt on the democratic process, Trump proved to be an enormously galvanizing figure at the polls. Nearly 160 million Americans voted in 2020, the highest estimated turnout rate among eligible voters in 120 years, despite widespread changes in voting procedures brought on by the pandemic.
Biden received more than 81 million votes and Trump received more than 74 million, the highest and second-highest totals in U.S. history. Turnout in the 2018 midterm election, the first after Trump took office, also set a modern-day record.
Pew Research Center surveys catalogued the high stakes that voters perceived, particularly in the run-up to the 2020 election. Just before the election, around nine-in-ten Trump and Biden supporters said there would be “lasting harm” to the nation if the other candidate won, and around eight-in-ten in each group said they disagreed with the other side not just on political priorities, but on “core American values and goals.”
Earlier in the year, 83% of registered voters said it “really mattered” who won the election, the highest percentage for any presidential election in at least two decades. Trump himself was a clear motivating factor for voters on both sides: 71% of Trump supporters said before the election that their choice was more of a vote for the president than against Biden, while 63% of Biden supporters said their choice was more of a vote against Trump than for his opponent.
A reckoning over racial inequality:
Racial tensions were a constant undercurrent during Trump’s presidency, often intensified by the public statements he made in response to high-profile incidents.
The death of George Floyd, in particular, brought race to the surface in a way that few other recent events have. The videotaped killing of the unarmed, 46-year-old Black man by a White police officer in Minneapolis was among several police killings that sparked national and international protests in 2020 and led to an outpouring of public support for the Black Lives Matter movement, including from corporations, universities and other institutions.
In a survey shortly after Floyd’s death in May, two-thirds of U.S. adults – including majorities across all major racial and ethnic groups – voiced support for the movement, and use of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag surged to a record high on Twitter.
Attitudes began to change as the protests wore on and sometimes turned violent, drawing sharp condemnation from Trump.
By September, support for the Black Lives Matter movement had slipped to 55% – largely due to decreases among White adults – and many Americans questioned whether the nation’s renewed focus on race would lead to changes to address racial inequality or improve the lives of Black people.
Race-related tensions erupted into public view earlier in Trump’s tenure, too. In 2017, White nationalists rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest the removal of a Confederate statue amid a broader push to eliminate such memorials from public spaces across the country. The rally led to violent clashes in the city’s streets and the death of a 32-year-old woman when a White nationalist deliberately drove a car into a crowd of people.
Tensions also arose in the National Football League as some players protested racial injustices in the U.S. by kneeling during the national anthem. The display prompted a backlash among some who saw it as disrespectful to the American flag.
In all of these controversies and others, Trump weighed in from the White House, but typically not in a way that most Americans saw as helpful. In a summer 2020 survey, for example, six-in-ten U.S. adults said Trump had delivered the wrong message in response to the protests over Floyd’s killing. That included around four-in-ten adults (39%) who said Trump had delivered the completely wrong message.
More broadly, Americans viewed Trump’s impact on race relations as far more negative than positive. In an early 2019 poll, 56% of adults said Trump had made race relations worse since taking office, compared with only 15% who said he had made progress toward improving relations. In the same survey, around two-thirds of adults (65%) said it had become more common for people in the U.S. to express racist or racially insensitive views since his election.
The public also perceived Trump as too close with White nationalist groups. In 2019, a majority of adults (56%) said he had done too little to distance himself from these groups, while 29% said he had done about the right amount and 7% said he had done too much.
These opinions were nearly the same as in December 2016, before he took office.
While Americans overall gave Trump much more negative than positive marks for his handling of race relations, there were consistent divisions along racial, ethnic and partisan lines.
Black, Hispanic and Asian adults were often more critical of Trump’s impact on race relations than White adults, as were Democrats when compared with Republicans. For example, while an overwhelming majority of Democrats (83%) said in 2019 that Trump had done too little to distance himself from White nationalist groups, a majority of Republicans (56%) said he had done about the right amount.
White Republicans, in particular, rejected the idea of widespread structural racism in the U.S. and saw too much emphasis on race. In September 2020, around eight-in-ten White Republicans (79%) said the bigger problem was people seeing racial discrimination where it doesn’t exist, rather than people not seeing discrimination where it really does exist. The opinions of White Democrats on the same question were nearly the reverse.
A defining public health and economic crisis:
Every presidency is shaped by outside events, and Trump’s will undoubtedly be remembered for the enormous toll the coronavirus pandemic took on the nation’s public health and economy.
More than 400,000 Americans died from COVID-19 between the beginning of the pandemic and when Trump left office, with fatality counts sometimes exceeding 4,000 people a day – a toll more severe than the overall toll of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, or the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
Trump himself contracted the coronavirus in the home stretch of his campaign for reelection, as did dozens of White House and campaign staff and members of his family.
The far-reaching public health effects of the virus were reflected in a survey in November 2020, when more than half of U.S. adults (54%) said they personally knew someone who had been hospitalized or died due to COVID-19. The shares were even higher among Black (71%) and Hispanic (61%) adults.
Picture below: Nurses and health care workers mourn and remember colleagues who had died of COVID-19 outside Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan in April 2020. (Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images)
At the same time, the pandemic had a disastrous effect on the economy. Trump and Barack Obama together had presided over the longest economic expansion in American history, with the U.S. unemployment rate at a 50-year low of 3.5% as recently as February 2020.
By April 2020, with businesses around the country closing their doors to prevent the spread of the virus, unemployment had soared to a post-World War II high of 14.8%. Even after considerable employment gains later in the year, Trump was the first modern president to leave the White House with fewer jobs in the U.S. than when he took office.
By April 2020, with businesses around the country closing their doors to prevent the spread of the virus, unemployment had soared to a post-World War II high of 14.8%. Even after considerable employment gains later in the year, Trump was the first modern president to leave the White House with fewer jobs in the U.S. than when he took office.
The economic consequences of the virus, like its public health repercussions, hit some Americans harder than others. Many upper-income workers were able to continue doing their jobs remotely during the outbreak, even as lower-income workers suffered widespread job losses and pay cuts.
The remarkable resiliency of U.S. stock markets was a rare bright spot during the downturn, but one that had its own implications for economic inequality: Going into the outbreak, upper-income adults were far more likely than lower-income adults to be invested in the market.
The pandemic clearly underscored and exacerbated America’s partisan divisions. Democrats were consistently much more likely than Republicans to see the virus as a major threat to public health, while Republicans were far more likely than Democrats to see it as exaggerated and overblown. The two sides disagreed on public health strategies ranging from mask wearing to contact tracing.
The outbreak also had important consequences for America’s image in the world. International views of the U.S. had already plummeted after Trump took office in 2017, but attitudes turned even more negative amid a widespread perception that the U.S. had mishandled the initial outbreak.
The share of people with a favorable opinion of the U.S. fell in 2020 to record or near-record lows in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and other countries. Across all 13 nations surveyed, a median of just 15% of adults said the U.S. had done a good job responding to COVID-19, well below the median share who said the same thing about their own country, the World Health Organization, the European Union and China.
The remarkable resiliency of U.S. stock markets was a rare bright spot during the downturn, but one that had its own implications for economic inequality: Going into the outbreak, upper-income adults were far more likely than lower-income adults to be invested in the market.
The pandemic clearly underscored and exacerbated America’s partisan divisions. Democrats were consistently much more likely than Republicans to see the virus as a major threat to public health, while Republicans were far more likely than Democrats to see it as exaggerated and overblown. The two sides disagreed on public health strategies ranging from mask wearing to contact tracing.
The outbreak also had important consequences for America’s image in the world. International views of the U.S. had already plummeted after Trump took office in 2017, but attitudes turned even more negative amid a widespread perception that the U.S. had mishandled the initial outbreak.
The share of people with a favorable opinion of the U.S. fell in 2020 to record or near-record lows in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and other countries. Across all 13 nations surveyed, a median of just 15% of adults said the U.S. had done a good job responding to COVID-19, well below the median share who said the same thing about their own country, the World Health Organization, the European Union and China.
At a much more personal level, many Americans expected the coronavirus outbreak to have a lasting impact on them. In an August 2020 survey, 51% of U.S. adults said they expected their lives to remain changed in major ways even after the pandemic is over.
Looking ahead:
The aftershocks of Donald Trump’s one-of-a-kind presidency will take years to place into full historical context. It remains to be seen, for example:
Some of the most pressing questions, particularly in the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol and Trump’s subsequent bipartisan impeachment, concern the future of the Republican Party.
Some Republicans have moved away from Trump, but many others have continued to fight on his behalf, including by voting to reject the electoral votes of two states won by Biden.
The GOP’s direction could depend to a considerable degree on what Trump does next. Around two-thirds of Americans (68%) said in January 2021 that they would not like to see Trump continue to be a major political figure in the years to come, but Republicans were divided by ideology.
More than half of self-described moderate and liberal Republicans (56%) said they preferred for him to exit the political stage, while 68% of conservatives said they wanted him to remain a national political figure for many years to come.
For his part, Joe Biden has some advantages as he begins his tenure. Democrats have majorities – albeit extraordinarily narrow ones – in both legislative chambers of Congress.
Other recent periods of single-party control in Washington have resulted in the enactment of major legislation, such as the $1.5 trillion tax cut package that Trump signed in 2017 or the health care overhaul that Obama signed in 2010.
Biden begins his presidency with generally positive assessments from the American public about his Cabinet appointments and the job he has done explaining his policies and plans for the future.
Early surveys show that he inspires broad confidence among people in three European countries that have long been important American allies: France, Germany and the UK.
Still, the new administration faces obvious challenges on many fronts. The coronavirus pandemic will continue in the months ahead as the vast majority of Americans remain unvaccinated. The economy is likely to struggle until the outbreak is under control.
Polarization in the U.S. is not likely to change dramatically, nor is the partisan gulf in views of the news media or the spread of misinformation in the age of social media. The global challenges of climate change and nuclear proliferation remain stark.
The nation’s 46th president has vowed to unite the country as he moves forward with his policy agenda. Few would question the formidable nature of the task.
[End of Article]
Looking ahead:
The aftershocks of Donald Trump’s one-of-a-kind presidency will take years to place into full historical context. It remains to be seen, for example:
- whether his disruptive brand of politics will be adopted by other candidates for office in the U.S.,
- whether other politicians can activate the same coalition of voters he energized
- and whether his positions on free trade, immigration and other issues will be reflected in government policy in the years to come.
Some of the most pressing questions, particularly in the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol and Trump’s subsequent bipartisan impeachment, concern the future of the Republican Party.
Some Republicans have moved away from Trump, but many others have continued to fight on his behalf, including by voting to reject the electoral votes of two states won by Biden.
The GOP’s direction could depend to a considerable degree on what Trump does next. Around two-thirds of Americans (68%) said in January 2021 that they would not like to see Trump continue to be a major political figure in the years to come, but Republicans were divided by ideology.
More than half of self-described moderate and liberal Republicans (56%) said they preferred for him to exit the political stage, while 68% of conservatives said they wanted him to remain a national political figure for many years to come.
For his part, Joe Biden has some advantages as he begins his tenure. Democrats have majorities – albeit extraordinarily narrow ones – in both legislative chambers of Congress.
Other recent periods of single-party control in Washington have resulted in the enactment of major legislation, such as the $1.5 trillion tax cut package that Trump signed in 2017 or the health care overhaul that Obama signed in 2010.
Biden begins his presidency with generally positive assessments from the American public about his Cabinet appointments and the job he has done explaining his policies and plans for the future.
Early surveys show that he inspires broad confidence among people in three European countries that have long been important American allies: France, Germany and the UK.
Still, the new administration faces obvious challenges on many fronts. The coronavirus pandemic will continue in the months ahead as the vast majority of Americans remain unvaccinated. The economy is likely to struggle until the outbreak is under control.
Polarization in the U.S. is not likely to change dramatically, nor is the partisan gulf in views of the news media or the spread of misinformation in the age of social media. The global challenges of climate change and nuclear proliferation remain stark.
The nation’s 46th president has vowed to unite the country as he moves forward with his policy agenda. Few would question the formidable nature of the task.
[End of Article]
Donald J. Trump: YouTube Videos:
- YouTube Video: President Trump hugs, gives kiss to American flag at CPAC Conference
- YouTube Video: Trump On Putin Invasion Plan: ‘This Is Genius’
- YouTube Video: Trump ‘coup bomb’ goes off as Jack Smith gets Trump insiders talking
large increases in government spending and the 2017 tax cut. As a result, the federal budget deficit increased by almost 50 percent, to nearly $1 trillion in 2019.
Under Trump, the U.S. national debt increased by 39 percent, reaching $27.75 trillion by the end of his term, and the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio hit a post-World War II high. Trump also failed to deliver the $1 trillion infrastructure spending plan on which he had campaigned.
Trump is the only modern U.S. president to leave office with a smaller workforce than when he took office, by 3 million people.
Climate change, environment, and energy:
Main article: Environmental policy of the Donald Trump administration
Trump rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. He reduced the budget for renewable energy research by 40 percent and reversed Obama-era policies directed at curbing climate change. In June 2017, Trump announced the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement, making the U.S. the only nation in the world to not ratify the agreement.
Trump aimed to boost the production and exports of fossil fuels. Natural gas expanded under Trump, but coal continued to decline. Trump rolled back more than 100 federal environmental regulations, including those that curbed greenhouse gas emissions, air and water pollution, and the use of toxic substances.
He weakened protections for animals and environmental standards for federal infrastructure projects, and expanded permitted areas for drilling and resource extraction, such as allowing drilling in the Arctic Refuge. Trump's actions while president have been called "a very aggressive attempt to rewrite our laws and reinterpret the meaning of environmental protections".
Deregulation:
In January 2017, Trump signed Executive Order 13771, which directed that, for every new regulation, federal agencies "identify" two existing regulations for elimination, though it did not require elimination. He dismantled many federal regulations on health, labor, and the environment, among other topics.
Trump signed 14 Congressional Review Act resolutions repealing federal regulations, including a bill that made it easier for severely mentally ill persons to buy guns. During his first six weeks in office, he delayed, suspended, or reversed ninety federal regulations, often "after requests by the regulated industries".
The Institute for Policy Integrity found that 78 percent of Trump's proposals were blocked by courts or did not prevail over litigation.
Health care:
During his campaign, Trump vowed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In office, he scaled back the Act's implementation through executive orders 13765 and 13813. Trump expressed a desire to "let Obamacare fail"; his administration cut the ACA enrollment period in half and drastically reduced funding for advertising and other ways to encourage enrollment.
Trump falsely claimed he saved the coverage of pre-existing conditions provided by the ACA. In June 2018, the Trump administration joined 18 Republican-led states in arguing before the Supreme Court that the elimination of the financial penalties associated with the individual mandate had rendered the ACA unconstitutional.
If they had succeeded, it would have eliminated health insurance coverage for up to 23 million Americans. During the 2016 campaign, Trump promised to protect funding for Medicare and other social safety-net programs, but in January 2020, he suggested he was willing to consider cuts to such programs.
In response to the opioid epidemic, Trump signed legislation in 2018 to increase funding for drug treatments, but was widely criticized for failing to make a concrete strategy. U.S. opioid overdose deaths declined slightly in 2018, but surged to a record 50,052 deaths in 2019.
Social issues:
Main article: Social policy of Donald Trump
Trump advocated for the reversal of Roe v. Wade. He said he supported "traditional marriage" but considered the nationwide legality of same-sex marriage a "settled" issue. In March 2017, his administration rolled back key components of the Obama administration's workplace protections against discrimination of LGBT people.
Trump has said he is opposed to gun control in general, although his views have shifted over time. After several mass shootings during his term, he said he would propose legislation to curtail gun violence, but he abandoned that effort in November 2019. His administration took an anti-marijuana position, revoking Obama-era policies that provided protections for states that legalized marijuana.
Trump is a long-time advocate of capital punishment. Under his administration, the federal government executed 13 prisoners, more than in the previous 56 years combined and after a 17-year moratorium. In 2016, Trump said he supported the use of interrogation torture methods such as waterboarding but later appeared to recant this due to the opposition of Defense Secretary James Mattis.
Pardons and commutations:
Further information: List of people granted executive clemency by Donald Trump
Most of Trump's pardons and commutations were granted to people with personal or political connections to him. In his term, Trump sidestepped regular Department of Justice procedures for considering pardons; instead, he often entertained pardon requests from his associates or celebrities.
From 2017 to 2019, he pardoned, amongst others:
Following a request by celebrity Kim Kardashian, Trump commuted the life sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, who had been convicted of drug trafficking. Trump also pardoned or reversed the sentences of three American servicemen convicted or accused of committing war crimes in Afghanistan or Iraq.
In November and December 2020, Trump pardoned:
In his last full day in office, Trump granted 143 pardons and commutations. Those pardoned included Steve Bannon, Trump fundraiser Elliott Broidy, and three former Republican congressmen. The commuted sentences included those of former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and sports gambler Billy Walters. Walters had paid tens of thousands of dollars to former Trump attorney John M. Dowd to plead his case with Trump.
Lafayette Square protester removal and photo op:
Main article: Donald Trump photo op at St. John's Church
On June 1, 2020, federal law-enforcement officials used batons, rubber bullets, pepper spray projectiles, stun grenades, and smoke to remove a largely peaceful crowd of protesters from Lafayette Square, outside the White House.
Trump then walked to St. John's Episcopal Church, where protesters had set a small fire the night before; he posed for photographs holding a Bible, with senior administration officials later joining him in photos. Trump said on June 3 that the protesters were cleared because "they tried to burn down the church [on May 31] and almost succeeded", describing the church as "badly hurt".
Religious leaders condemned the treatment of protesters and the photo opportunity itself. Many retired military leaders and defense officials condemned Trump's proposal to use the U.S. military against anti-police-brutality protesters.
Immigration:
Main article: Immigration policy of Donald Trump
Trump's proposed immigration policies were a topic of bitter and contentious debate during the campaign:
Trump attempted to drastically escalate immigration enforcement, including implementing harsher immigration enforcement policies against asylum seekers from Central America than any modern U.S. president.
From 2018 onward, Trump deployed nearly 6,000 troops to the U.S.–Mexico border to stop most Central American migrants from seeking U.S. asylum. In 2020, his administration widened the public charge rule to further restrict immigrants who might use government benefits from getting permanent residency via green cards.
Trump reduced the number of refugees admitted into the U.S. to record lows. When Trump took office, the annual limit was 110,000; Trump set a limit of 18,000 in the 2020 fiscal year and 15,000 in the 2021 fiscal year. Additional restrictions implemented by the Trump administration caused significant bottlenecks in processing refugee applications, resulting in fewer refugees accepted compared to the allowed limits.
Travel ban:
Main article: Trump travel ban
Further information: Executive Order 13769 and Executive Order 13780
Following the 2015 San Bernardino attack, Trump proposed to ban Muslim foreigners from entering the United States until stronger vetting systems could be implemented. He later reframed the proposed ban to apply to countries with a "proven history of terrorism".
On January 27, 2017, Trump signed Executive Order 13769, which suspended admission of refugees for 120 days and denied entry to citizens of Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen for 90 days, citing security concerns. The order took effect immediately and without warning, causing confusion and chaos at airports.
Protests against the ban began at airports the next day. Legal challenges to the order resulted in nationwide preliminary injunctions. A March 6 revised order, which excluded Iraq and gave other exemptions, again was blocked by federal judges in three states.
In a decision in June 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that the ban could be enforced on visitors who lack a "credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States".
The temporary order was replaced by Presidential Proclamation 9645 on September 24, 2017, which restricted travel from the originally targeted countries except Iraq and Sudan, and further banned travelers from North Korea and Chad, along with certain Venezuelan officials.
After lower courts partially blocked the new restrictions, the Supreme Court allowed the September version to go into full effect on December 4, 2017, and ultimately upheld the travel ban in a June 2019 ruling.
Family separation at border;
Main article: Trump administration family separation policy
The Trump administration separated more than 5,400 children of migrant families from their parents at the U.S.–Mexico border, a sharp increase in the number of family separations at the border starting from the summer of 2017.
In April 2018, the Trump administration announced a "zero tolerance" policy whereby every adult suspected of illegal entry would be criminally prosecuted. This resulted in family separations, as the migrant adults were put in criminal detention for prosecution, while their children were separated as unaccompanied alien minors. Administration officials described the policy as a way to deter illegal immigration.
The policy of family separations was unprecedented in previous administrations and sparked public outrage. Trump falsely asserted that his administration was merely following the law, blaming Democrats, despite the separations being his administration's policy.
Although Trump originally argued that the separations could not be stopped by an executive order, he accceded to intense public objection and signed an executive order on June 20, 2018, mandating that migrant families be detained together unless "there is a concern" doing so would pose a risk to the child.
On June 26, 2018, Judge Dana Sabraw concluded that the Trump administration had "no system in place to keep track of" the separated children, nor any effective measures for family communication and reunification; Sabraw ordered for the families to be reunited and family separations stopped except in limited circumstances.
After the federal-court order, the Trump administration separated more than a thousand migrant children from their families; the ACLU contended that the Trump administration had abused its discretion and asked Sabraw to more narrowly define the circumstances warranting separation.
Trump wall and government shutdown:
Main articles:
One of Trump's central campaign promises was to build a 1,000-mile (1,600 km) border wall to Mexico and have Mexico pay for it. By the end of his term, the U.S. had built "40 miles [64 km] of new primary wall and 33 miles [53 km] of secondary wall" in locations where there had been no barriers and 365 miles (587 km) of primary or secondary border fencing replacing dilapidated or outdated barriers.
In 2018, Trump refused to sign any appropriations bill from Congress unless it allocated $5.6 billion in funds for the border wall, resulting in the federal government partially shutting down for 35 days from December 2018 to January 2019, the longest U.S. government shutdown in history.
Around 800,000 government employees were furloughed or worked without pay. Trump and Congress ended the shutdown by approving temporary funding that provided delayed payments to government workers but no funds for the wall.
The shutdown resulted in an estimated permanent loss of $3 billion to the economy, according to the Congressional Budget Office. About half of those polled blamed Trump for the shutdown, and Trump's approval ratings dropped.
To prevent another imminent shutdown in February 2019, Congress passed and Trump signed a funding bill that included $1.375 billion for 55 miles (89 km) of bollard border fencing. Trump also declared a National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border of the United States, intending to divert $6.1 billion of funds Congress had allocated to other purposes.
Trump vetoed a joint resolution to overturn the declaration, and the Senate voted against a veto override. Legal challenges to the diversion of $2.5 billion originally meant for the Department of Defense's drug interdiction efforts and $3.6 billion originally meant for military construction were unsuccessful.
Foreign policy:
Main article: Foreign policy of the Donald Trump administration
See also: List of international presidential trips made by Donald Trump
Trump described himself as a "nationalist" and his foreign policy as "America First" His foreign policy was marked by praise and support of populist, neo-nationalist and authoritarian governments.
Hallmarks of foreign relations during Trump's tenure included unpredictability and uncertainty, a lack of a consistent foreign policy, and strained and sometimes antagonistic relationships with the U.S.'s European allies. He criticized NATO allies and privately suggested on multiple occasions that the United States should withdraw from the alliance.
Trade:
See also: Trump tariffs
In the 1980s, Trump publicly announced his skepticism of trade liberalization, saying, "I believe very strongly in tariffs." In 2015, he sharply criticized NAFTA during the Republican primary campaign.
During his presidency, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations, imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, and launched a trade war with China by sharply increasing tariffs on 818 categories (worth $50 billion) of Chinese goods imported into the U.S.
While Trump said that import tariffs are paid by China into the U.S. Treasury, they are paid by American companies that import goods from China. Although he pledged during the campaign to significantly reduce the U.S.'s large trade deficits, the trade deficit in July 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, "was the largest monthly deficit since July 2008".
Following a 2017–2018 renegotiation, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) became effective in July 2020 as the successor to NAFTA.
Russia:
The Trump administration "water[ed] down the toughest penalties the U.S. had imposed on Russian entities" after its 2014 annexation of Crimea. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, citing alleged Russian non-compliance and supported a potential return of Russia to the G7.
Trump repeatedly praised and rarely criticized Russian president Vladimir Putin but opposed some actions of the Russian government. After he met Putin at the Helsinki Summit in July 2018, Trump drew bipartisan criticism for accepting Putin's denial of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, rather than accepting the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies.
Trump did not discuss alleged Russian bounties offered to Taliban fighters for attacking American soldiers in Afghanistan with Putin, saying both that he doubted the intelligence and that he was not briefed on it.
China:
Before and during his presidency, Trump repeatedly accused China of taking unfair advantage of the U.S. As president, Trump launched a trade war against China that was widely characterized as a failure, sanctioned Huawei for its alleged ties to Iran, significantly increased visa restrictions on Chinese students and scholars, and classified China as a currency manipulator.
Trump also juxtaposed verbal attacks on China with praise of Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, which was attributed to trade war negotiations with the leader. After initially praising China for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, he began a campaign of criticism over its response starting in March 2020.
Trump said he resisted punishing China for its human rights abuses against ethnic minorities in the northwestern Xinjiang region for fear of jeopardizing trade negotiations. In July 2020, the Trump administration imposed sanctions and visa restrictions against senior Chinese officials, in response to expanded mass detention camps holding more than a million of the country's Uyghur Muslim ethnic minority.
North Korea:
See also: 2018–19 Korean peace process
In 2017, when North Korea's nuclear weapons were increasingly seen as a serious threat, Trump escalated his rhetoric, warning that North Korean aggression would be met with "fire and fury like the world has never seen". In 2017, Trump declared that he wanted North Korea's "complete denuclearization", and engaged in name-calling with leader Kim Jong Un.
After this period of tension, Trump and Kim exchanged at least 27 letters in which the two men described a warm personal friendship. Trump met Kim three times: in Singapore in 2018, in Hanoi in 2019, and in the Korean Demilitarized Zone in 2019. Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to meet a North Korean leader or to set foot on North Korean soil. Trump also lifted some U.S. sanctions against North Korea.
However, no denuclearization agreement was reached, and talks in October 2019 broke down after one day. While conducting no nuclear tests since 2017, North Korea continued to build up its arsenal of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
Afghanistan:
U.S. troop numbers in Afghanistan increased from 8,500 in January 2017 to 14,000 a year later, reversing Trump's pre-election position critical of further involvement in Afghanistan.
In February 2020, the Trump administration signed a conditional peace agreement with the Taliban, which called for the withdrawal of foreign troops in 14 months "contingent on a guarantee from the Taliban that Afghan soil will not be used by terrorists with aims to attack the United States or its allies" and for the U.S. to seek the release of 5,000 Taliban imprisoned by the Afghan government.
By the end of Trump's term, 5,000 Taliban had been released, and, despite the Taliban continuing attacks on Afghan forces and integrating Al-Qaeda members into its leadership, U.S. troops had been reduced to 2,500.
Israel:
Trump supported many of the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Under Trump, the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, leading to international condemnation including from the United Nations General Assembly, the European Union, and the Arab League.
Saudi Arabia:
Trump actively supported the Saudi Arabian–led intervention in Yemen against the Houthis and in 2017 signed a $110 billion agreement to sell arms to Saudi Arabia, In 2018, the USA provided limited intelligence and logistical support for the intervention.
Following the 2019 attack on Saudi oil facilities, which the U.S. and Saudi Arabia blamed on Iran, Trump approved the deployment of 3,000 additional U.S. troops, including fighter squadrons, two Patriot batteries, and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD), to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Syria:
Trump ordered missile strikes in April 2017 and in April 2018 against the Assad regime in Syria, in retaliation for the Khan Shaykhun and Douma chemical attacks, respectively.
In December 2018, Trump declared "we have won against ISIS", contradicting Department of Defense assessments, and ordered the withdrawal of all troops from Syria. The next day, Mattis resigned in protest, calling his decision an abandonment of the U.S.'s Kurdish allies who played a key role in fighting ISIS.
One week after his announcement, Trump said he would not approve any extension of the American deployment in Syria.
In October 2019, after Trump spoke to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, U.S. troops in northern Syria were withdrawn from the area and Turkey invaded northern Syria, attacking and displacing American-allied Kurds in the area.
Later that month, the U.S. House of Representatives, in a rare bipartisan vote of 354 to 60, condemned Trump's withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, for "abandoning U.S. allies, undermining the struggle against ISIS, and spurring a humanitarian catastrophe".
Iran:
After an Iranian missile test on January 29, 2017, and Houthi attacks on Saudi warships, the Trump administration sanctioned 12 companies and 13 individuals suspected of being involved in Iran's missile program.
In May 2018, Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 agreement between Iran, the U.S., and five other countries that lifted most economic sanctions against Iran in return for Iran agreeing to restrictions on its nuclear program. Analysts determined that, after the United States's withdrawal, Iran moved closer to developing a nuclear weapon.
In January 2020, Trump ordered a U.S. airstrike that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, who had planned nearly every significant operation by Iranian forces over the past two decades. Trump threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites, including some "important to Iran & the Iranian culture", if Iran retaliated.
The threat to hit cultural sites was seen as illegal and both Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the U.S. would not attack such sites, but would "follow the laws of armed conflict" and "behave inside the system". Iran did retaliate with ballistic missile strikes against two U.S. airbases in Iraq.
On the same day, amid the heightened tensions between the United States and Iran, Iran accidentally shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 after takeoff from Tehran airport.
In August 2020, the Trump administration unsuccessfully attempted to trigger a mechanism that was part of the agreement that would have led to the return of U.N. sanctions against Iran.
Personnel:
Main articles: Political appointments by Donald Trump and Cabinet of Donald Trump
The Trump administration had a high turnover of personnel, particularly among White House staff. By the end of Trump's first year in office, 34 percent of his original staff had resigned, been fired, or been reassigned. As of early July 2018, 61 percent of Trump's senior aides had left and 141 staffers had left in the previous year. Both figures set a record for recent presidents—more change in the first 13 months than his four immediate predecessors saw in their first two years.
Notable early departures included National Security Advisor Flynn (after just 25 days in office), and Press Secretary Sean Spicer. Close personal aides to Trump including Bannon, Hope Hicks, John McEntee, and Keith Schiller quit or were forced out. Some, including Hicks and McEntee, later returned to the White House in different posts.
Trump publicly disparaged several of his former top officials, calling them incompetent, stupid, or crazy.
Trump had four White House chiefs of staff, marginalizing or pushing out several. Reince Priebus was replaced after seven months by retired Marine general John F. Kelly. Kelly resigned in December 2018 after a tumultuous tenure in which his influence waned, and Trump subsequently disparaged him.
Kelly was succeeded by Mick Mulvaney as acting chief of staff; he was replaced in March 2020 by Mark Meadows.
On May 9, 2017, Trump dismissed FBI director James Comey. While initially attributing this action to Comey's conduct in the investigation about Hillary Clinton's emails, Trump said a few days later that he was concerned with Comey's roles in the ongoing Trump-Russia investigations, and that he had intended to fire Comey earlier.
At a private conversation in February, Trump said he hoped Comey would drop the investigation into Flynn. In March and April, Trump asked Comey to "lift the cloud impairing his ability to act" by saying publicly that the FBI was not investigating him.
Turnover was relatively high within the Trump Cabinet. Trump lost tree of his 15 original cabinet members within his first year. Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price was forced to resign in September 2017 due to excessive use of private charter jets and military aircraft.
Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt resigned in 2018 and Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke in January 2019 amid multiple investigations into their conduct.
Trump was slow to appoint second-tier officials in the executive branch, saying many of the positions are unnecessary. In October 2017, there were still hundreds of sub-cabinet positions without a nominee. By January 8, 2019, of 706 key positions, 433 had been filled (61 percent) and Trump had no nominee for 264 (37 percent).
Judiciary:
Further information:
Trump appointed 226 Article III judges, including 54 to the courts of appeals and three to the Supreme Court: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Trump's Supreme Court nominees were noted as having politically shifted the Supreme Court to the right.
In the 2016 campaign, Trump pledged that Roe v. Wade would be overturned "automatically" if he were elected and provided the opportunity to appoint two or three pro-life justices. Trump later took credit when Roe was overturned in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization; all three of his Supreme Court nominees voted with the majority.
Trump disparaged courts and judges he disagreed with, often in personal terms, and questioned the judiciary's constitutional authority. Trump's attacks on the courts drew rebukes from observers, including sitting federal judges, concerned about the effect of Trump's statements on the judicial independence and public confidence in the judiciary.
COVID-19 pandemic:
Main articles:
In December 2019, COVID-19 erupted in Wuhan, China; the SARS-CoV-2 virus spread worldwide within weeks. The first confirmed case in the U.S. was reported on January 20, 2020. The outbreak was officially declared a public health emergency by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar on January 31, 2020.
Trump's public statements on COVID-19 were at odds with his private statements. In February 2020 Trump publicly asserted that the outbreak in the U.S. was less deadly than influenza, was "very much under control", and would soon be over. At the same time he acknowledged the opposite in a private conversation with Bob Woodward.
In March 2020,Trump privately told Woodward that he was deliberately "playing it down" in public so as not to create panic.
Initial response:
Trump was slow to address the spread of the disease, initially dismissing the threat and ignoring persistent public health warnings and calls for action from health officials within his administration and Secretary Azar. Throughout January and February he focused on economic and political considerations of the outbreak, and largely ignored the danger.
By mid-March, most global financial markets had severely contracted in response to the emerging pandemic.
On March 6, Trump signed the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act into law, which provided $8.3 billion in emergency funding for federal agencies.
On March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized the spread of COVID-19 as a pandemic, and Trump announced partial travel restrictions for most of Europe, effective March 13.
That same day, he gave his first serious assessment of the virus in a nationwide Oval Office address, calling the outbreak "horrible" but "a temporary moment" and saying there was no financial crisis.
On March 13, he declared a national emergency, freeing up federal resources. Trump falsely claimed that "anybody that wants a test can get a test", despite the availability of tests being severely limited.
In September 2019, the Trump administration terminated United States Agency for International Development's PREDICT program, a $200 million epidemiological research program initiated in 2009 to provide early warning of pandemics abroad.
The program trained scientists in sixty foreign laboratories to detect and respond to viruses that have the potential to cause pandemics. One such laboratory was the Wuhan lab that first identified the virus that causes COVID-19. After revival in April 2020, the program was given two 6-month extensions to help fight COVID-19 in the U.S. and other countries.
On April 22, Trump signed an executive order restricting some forms of immigration to the United States.
In late spring and early summer, with infections and death counts continuing to rise, he adopted a strategy of blaming the states for the growing pandemic, rather than accepting that his initial assessments of the course of the pandemic were overly optimistic or his failure to provide presidential leadership.
White House Coronavirus Task Force:
Trump established the White House Coronavirus Task Force on January 29, 2020. Beginning in mid-March, Trump held a daily task force press conference, joined by medical experts and other administration officials, sometimes disagreeing with them by promoting unproven treatments.
Trump was the main speaker at the briefings, where he praised his own response to the pandemic, frequently criticized rival presidential candidate Joe Biden, and denounced the press.
On March 16, he acknowledged for the first time that the pandemic was not under control and that months of disruption to daily lives and a recession might occur. His repeated use of the terms "Chinese virus" and "China virus" to describe COVID-19 drew criticism from health experts.
By early April, as the pandemic worsened and amid criticism of his administration's response, Trump refused to admit any mistakes in his handling of the outbreak, instead blaming the media, Democratic state governors, the previous administration, China, and the World Health Organization (WHO).
The daily coronavirus task force briefings ended in late April, after a briefing at which Trump suggested the dangerous idea of injecting a disinfectant to treat COVID-19; the comment was widely condemned by medical professionals.
In early May, Trump proposed the phase-out of the coronavirus task force and its replacement with another group centered on reopening the economy. Amid a backlash, Trump said the task force would "indefinitely" continue. By the end of May, the coronavirus task force's meetings were sharply reduced.
World Health Organization:
Prior to the pandemic, Trump criticized the World Health Organization (WHO) and other international bodies, which he asserted were taking advantage of U.S. aid. His administration's proposed 2021 federal budget, released in February, proposed reducing WHO funding by more than half.
In May and April, Trump accused the WHO of "severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus" and alleged without evidence that the organization was under Chinese control and had enabled the Chinese government's concealment of the origins of the pandemic.
He then announced that he was withdrawing funding for the organization. Trump's criticisms and actions regarding the WHO were seen as attempts to distract attention from his own mishandling of the pandemic.
In July 2020, Trump announced the formal withdrawal of the United States from the WHO effective July 2021. The decision was widely condemned by health and government officials as "short-sighted", "senseless", and "dangerous".
Testing:
Further information: COVID-19 testing in the United States
In June and July, Trump said several times that the U.S. would have fewer cases of coronavirus if it did less testing, that having a large number of reported cases "makes us look bad". The CDC guideline at the time was that any person exposed to the virus should be "quickly identified and tested" even if they are not showing symptoms, because asymptomatic people can still spread the virus.
In August 2020 the CDC quietly lowered its recommendation for testing, advising that people who have been exposed to the virus, but are not showing symptoms, "do not necessarily need a test". The change in guidelines was made by HHS political appointees under Trump administration pressure, against the wishes of CDC scientists.
The day after this political interference was reported, the testing guideline was changed back to its original recommendation, stressing that anyone who has been in contact with an infected person should be tested.
Pressure to abandon pandemic mitigation measures:
In April 2020, Republican-connected groups organized anti-lockdown protests against the measures state governments were taking to combat the pandemic; Trump encouraged the protests on Twitter, even though the targeted states did not meet the Trump administration's own guidelines for reopening.
In April 2020, he first supported, then later criticized, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp's plan to reopen some nonessential businesses. Throughout the spring he increasingly pushed for ending the restrictions as a way to reverse the damage to the country's economy.
Trump often refused to wear a face mask at public events, contrary to his own administration's April 2020 guidance that Americans should wear masks in public and despite nearly unanimous medical consensus that masks are important to preventing the spread of the virus.
By June, Trump had said masks were a "double-edged sword"; ridiculed Biden for wearing masks; continually emphasized that mask-wearing was optional; and suggested that wearing a mask was a political statement against him personally.
Trump's contradiction of medical recommendations weakened national efforts to mitigate the pandemic.
Despite record numbers of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. from mid-June onward and an increasing percentage of positive test results, Trump largely continued to downplay the pandemic, including his false claim in early July 2020 that 99 percent of COVID-19 cases are "totally harmless". He also began insisting that all states should open schools to in-person education in the fall despite a July spike in reported cases.
Political pressure on health agencies:
Main article: Trump administration political interference with science agencies
Trump repeatedly pressured federal health agencies to take actions he favored, such as approving unproven treatments or speeding up the approval of vaccines. Trump administration political appointees at HHS sought to control CDC communications to the public that undermined Trump's claims that the pandemic was under control.
CDC resisted many of the changes, but increasingly allowed HHS personnel to review articles and suggest changes before publication. Trump alleged without evidence that FDA scientists were part of a "deep state" opposing him, and delaying approval of vaccines and treatments to hurt him politically.
Outbreak at the White House:
Main article: White House COVID-19 outbreak
On October 2, 2020, Trump tweeted that he had tested positive for COVID-19. His wife, their son Barron, and numerous staff members and visitors also became infected.
Later that day Trump was hospitalized at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, reportedly due to labored breathing and a fever. He was treated with antiviral and experimental antibody drugs and a steroid. He returned to the White House on October 5, still struggling with the disease. During and after his treatment he continued to downplay the virus.
In 2021, it was revealed that his condition had been far more serious; he had dangerously low blood oxygen levels, a high fever, and lung infiltrates, indicating a severe case of the disease.
Effects on the 2020 presidential campaign:
By July 2020, Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic had become a major issue for the 2020 presidential election. Biden sought to make the pandemic the central issue of the election.
Polls suggested voters blamed Trump for his pandemic response and disbelieved his rhetoric concerning the virus, with an Ipsos/ABC News poll indicating 65 percent of respondents disapproved of his pandemic response.
In the final months of the campaign,Trump repeatedly claimed that the U.S. was "rounding the turn" in managing the pandemic, despite increasing numbers of reported cases and deaths. A few days before the November 3 election, the United States reported more than 100,000 cases in a single day for the first time.
Investigations:
After he assumed office, Trump was the subject of increasing Justice Department and congressional scrutiny, with investigations covering his election campaign, transition, and inauguration, actions taken during his presidency, along with his private businesses, personal taxes, and charitable foundation.
There were 30 investigations of Trump, including ten federal criminal investigations, eight state and local investigations, and twelve congressional investigations.
In April 2019, the House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas seeking financial details from Trump's banks, Deutsche Bank and Capital One, and his accounting firm, Mazars USA. Trump then sued the banks, Mazars, and committee chair Elijah Cummings to prevent the disclosures.
In May, DC District Court judge Amit Mehta ruled that Mazars must comply with the subpoena, and judge Edgardo Ramos of the Southern District Court of New York ruled that the banks must also comply.
Trump's attorneys appealed the rulings. In September 2022, the committee and Trump agreed to a settlement about Mazars, and the accounting firm began turning over documents.
Hush money payments:
Main articles:
During the 2016 presidential election campaign, American Media, Inc. (AMI), the parent company of the National Enquirer, and a company set up by Cohen paid Playboy model Karen McDougal and adult film actress Stormy Daniels for keeping silent about their alleged affairs with Trump between 2006 and 2007.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to breaking campaign finance laws, saying he had arranged both payments at the direction of Trump to influence the presidential election. Trump denied the affairs and claimed he was not aware of Cohen's payment to Daniels, but he reimbursed him in 2017.
Federal prosecutors asserted that Trump had been involved in discussions regarding non-disclosure payments as early as 2014. Court documents showed that the FBI believed Trump was directly involved in the payment to Daniels, based on calls he had with Cohen in October 2016. Federal prosecutors closed the investigation in 2019, but the Manhattan District Attorney subpoenaed the Trump Organization and AMI for records related to the payments and Trump and the Trump Organization for eight years of tax returns.
In November 2022, The New York Times reported that Manhattan prosecutors were "newly optimistic about building a case" against Trump.
Russian election interference:
Main articles:
In January 2017, American intelligence agencies—the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA, represented by the Director of National Intelligence—jointly stated with "high confidence" that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election to favor the election of Trump.
In March 2017, FBI Director James Comey told Congress, "[T]he FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. That includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts."
Many suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies were discovered and the relationships between Russians and "team Trump" were widely reported by the press.
Manafort, one of Trump's campaign managers, worked from December 2004 to February 2010 to help pro-Russian politician Viktor Yanukovych win the Ukrainian presidency.
Other Trump associates, including Flynn and Stone, were connected to Russian officials. Russian agents were overheard during the campaign saying they could use Manafort and Flynn to influence Trump.
Members of Trump's campaign and later his White House staff, particularly Flynn, were in contact with Russian officials both before and after the November election.
On December 29, 2016, Flynn talked with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about sanctions that were imposed that same day; Flynn later resigned in the midst of controversy over whether he misled Pence. Trump told Kislyak and Sergei Lavrov in May 2017 he was unconcerned about Russian interference in U.S. elections.
Trump and his allies promoted a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, rather than Russia, interfered in the 2016 election—which was also promoted by Russia to frame Ukraine.
After the Democratic National Committee was hacked, Trump:
FBI Crossfire Hurricane and 2017 counterintelligence investigations:
In July 2016, the FBI launched an investigation, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane, into possible links between Russia and the Trump campaign. After Trump fired FBI director James Comey in May 2017, the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into Trump's personal and business dealings with Russia.
Crossfire Hurricane was transferred to the Mueller investigation, but deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein ended the investigation into Trump's direct ties to Russia while giving the bureau the false impression that Mueller would pursue the matter.
Mueller investigation:
Main articles:
In May 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller, a former director of the FBI, special counsel for the Department of Justice (DOJ), ordering him to "examine 'any links and/or coordination between the Russian government' and the Trump campaign". He privately told Mueller to restrict the investigation to criminal matters "in connection with Russia's 2016 election interference".
The special counsel also investigated whether Trump's dismissal of James Comey as FBI director constituted obstruction of justice and the Trump campaign's possible ties to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Qatar, Israel, and China.
Trump sought to fire Mueller and shut down the investigation multiple times but backed down after his staff objected or after changing his mind.
In March 2019, Mueller concluded his investigation and gave his report to Attorney General William Barr. Two days later, Barr sent a letter to Congress purporting to summarize the report's main conclusions.
A federal court, as well as Mueller himself, said Barr mischaracterized the investigation's conclusions and, in so doing, confused the public. Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed that the investigation exonerated him; the Mueller report expressly stated that it did not exonerate him.
A redacted version of the report was publicly released in April 2019. It found that Russia interfered in 2016 to favor Trump's candidacy and hinder Clinton's. Despite "numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign", the report found that the prevailing evidence "did not establish" that Trump campaign members conspired or coordinated with Russian interference.
The report revealed sweeping Russian interference and detailed how Trump and his campaign welcomed and encouraged it, believing "[they] would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts".
The report also detailed multiple acts of potential obstruction of justice by Trump but did not make a "traditional prosecutorial judgment" on whether Trump broke the law, suggesting that Congress should make such a determination.
Investigators decided they could not "apply an approach that could potentially result in a judgment that the President committed crimes" as an Office of Legal Counsel opinion stated that a sitting president could not be indicted, and investigators would not accuse him of a crime when he cannot clear his name in court.
The report concluded that Congress, having the authority to take action against a president for wrongdoing, "may apply the obstruction laws". The House of Representatives subsequently launched an impeachment inquiry following the Trump–Ukraine scandal, but did not pursue an article of impeachment related to the Mueller investigation.
Several Trump associates pleaded guilty or were convicted in connection with Mueller's investigation and related cases, including:
In February 2020, Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison for lying to Congress and witness tampering regarding his attempts to learn more about hacked Democratic emails during the 2016 election. The sentencing judge said Stone "was prosecuted for covering up for the president".
First impeachment:
Main articles: First impeachment of Donald Trump and Trump–Ukraine scandal
In August 2019, a whistleblower filed a complaint with the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community about a July 25 phone call between Trump and President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during which Trump had pressured Zelenskyy to investigate CrowdStrike and Democratic presidential candidate Biden and his son Hunter, adding that the White House had attempted to cover-up the incident.
The whistleblower stated that the call was part of a wider campaign by the Trump administration and Giuliani that may have included withholding financial aid from Ukraine in July 2019 and canceling Pence's May 2019 Ukraine trip.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi initiated a formal impeachment inquiry on September 24. Trump then confirmed that he withheld military aid from Ukraine, offering contradictory reasons for the decision.
On September 25, the Trump administration released a memorandum of the phone call which confirmed that, after Zelenskyy mentioned purchasing American anti-tank missiles, Trump asked him to discuss investigating Biden and his son with Giuliani and Barr. The testimony of multiple administration officials and former officials confirmed that this was part of a broader effort to further Trump's personal interests by giving him an advantage in the upcoming presidential election.
In October, William B. Taylor Jr., the chargé d'affaires for Ukraine, testified before congressional committees that soon after arriving in Ukraine in June 2019, he found that Zelenskyy was being subjected to pressure directed by Trump and led by Giuliani.
According to Taylor and others, the goal was to coerce Zelenskyy into making a public commitment investigating the company that employed Hunter Biden, as well as rumors about Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
He said it was made clear that until Zelenskyy made such an announcement, the administration would not release scheduled military aid for Ukraine and not invite Zelenskyy to the White House.
On December 13, the House Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to pass two articles of impeachment: one for abuse of power and one for obstruction of Congress. After debate, the House of Representatives impeached Trump on both articles on December 18.
Impeachment trial in the Senate:
Main article: First impeachment trial of Donald Trump
During the trial in January 2020, the House impeachment managers presented their case for three days. They cited evidence to support charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, and asserted that Trump's actions were exactly what the founding fathers had in mind when they created the Constitution's impeachment process.
Responding over the next three days, Trump's lawyers did not deny the facts as presented in the charges but said Trump had not broken any laws or obstructed Congress. They argued that the impeachment was "constitutionally and legally invalid" because Trump was not charged with a crime and that abuse of power is not an impeachable offense.
On January 31, the Senate voted against allowing subpoenas for witnesses or documents; 51 Republicans formed the majority for this vote. The impeachment trial was the first in U.S. history without witness testimony.
Trump was acquitted of both charges by the Republican majority, 52–48 on abuse of power and 53–47 on obstruction of Congress. Senator Mitt Romney was the only Republican who voted to convict Trump on one charge, the abuse of power.
Following his acquittal, Trump fired impeachment witnesses and other political appointees and career officials he deemed insufficiently loyal.
2020 presidential campaign:
Main articles:
Breaking with precedent, Trump filed to run for a second term with the FEC within a few hours of assuming the presidency. He held his first re-election rally less than a month after taking office and officially became the Republican nominee in August 2020.
In his first two years in office, Trump's reelection committee reported raising $67.5 million and began 2019 with $19.3 million in cash. By July 2020, the Trump campaign and the Republican Party had raised $1.1 billion and spent $800 million, losing their cash advantage over Biden. The cash shortage forced the campaign to scale back advertising spending.
Trump campaign advertisements focused on crime, claiming that cities would descend into lawlessness if Biden won the presidency. Trump repeatedly misrepresented Biden's positions and shifted to appeals to racism.
2020 presidential election:
Main articles:
Starting in spring 2020, Trump began to sow doubts about the election, claiming without evidence that the election would be rigged and that the expected widespread use of mail balloting would produce massive election fraud.
In July, Trump raised the idea of delaying the election. When, in August, the House of Representatives voted for a $25 billion grant to the U.S. Postal Service for the expected surge in mail voting, Trump blocked funding, saying he wanted to prevent any increase in voting by mail. He repeatedly refused to say whether he would accept the results of the election and commit to a peaceful transition of power if he lost.
Biden won the election on November 3, receiving 81.3 million votes (51.3 percent) to Trump's 74.2 million (46.8 percent) and 306 Electoral College votes to Trump's 232.
False claims of voting fraud, attempt to prevent presidential transition:
Further information:
At 2 a.m. the morning after the election, with the results still unclear, Trump declared victory. After Biden was projected the winner days later, Trump stated that "this election is far from over" and baselessly alleged election fraud.
Trump and his allies filed many legal challenges to the results, which were rejected by at least 86 judges in both the state and federal courts, including by federal judges appointed by Trump himself, finding no factual or legal basis.
Trump's unsubstantiated allegations of widespread voting fraud were also refuted by state election officials. After Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) director Chris Krebs contradicted Trump's fraud allegations, Trump dismissed him on November 17.
On December 11, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case from the Texas attorney general that asked the court to overturn the election results in four states won by Biden.
Trump withdrew from public activities in the weeks following the election. He initially blocked government officials from cooperating in Biden's presidential transition.
After three weeks, the administrator of the General Services Administration declared Biden the "apparent winner" of the election, allowing the disbursement of transition resources to his team. Trump still did not formally concede while claiming he recommended the GSA begin transition protocols.
The Electoral College formalized Biden's victory on December 14. From November to January, Trump repeatedly sought help to overturn the results of the election, personally pressuring various Republican local and state office-holders, Republican state and federal legislators, the Justice Department, and Vice President Pence, urging various actions such as replacing presidential electors, or a request for Georgia officials to "find" votes and announce a "recalculated" result.
On February 10, 2021, Georgia prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into Trump's efforts to subvert the election in Georgia.
Trump did not attend Biden's inauguration, leaving Washington for Florida hours before.
Concern about a possible coup attempt or military action:
In December 2020, Newsweek reported the Pentagon was on red alert, and ranking officers had discussed what they would do if Trump decided to declare martial law. The Pentagon responded with quotes from defense leaders that the military has no role to play in the outcome of elections.
When Trump moved supporters into positions of power at the Pentagon after the November 2020 election, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and CIA director Gina Haspel became concerned about the threat of a possible coup attempt or military action against China or Iran.
Milley insisted that he should be consulted about any military orders from Trump, including the use of nuclear weapons, and he instructed Haspel and NSA director Paul Nakasone to monitor developments closely.
January 6 Capitol attack:
Main articles:
On January 6, 2021, while congressional certification of the presidential election results was taking place in the United States Capitol, Trump held a noon rally at the Ellipse, Washington, D.C.. He called for the election result to be overturned and urged his supporters to "take back our country" by marching to the Capitol to "show strength" and "fight like hell".
Many supporters did, joining a crowd already there. Around 2:15 p.m. the mob broke into the building, disrupting certification and causing the evacuation of Congress. During the violence, Trump watched TV and posted messages on Twitter without asking the rioters to disperse.
At 6 p.m., Trump tweeted that the rioters should "go home with love & in peace", calling them "great patriots" and "very special" and repeating that the election was stolen from him.
After the mob was removed from the Capitol, Congress reconvened and confirmed the Biden election win in the early hours of the following morning. According to the Department of Justice, more than 140 police officers were injured, and five people, including a Capitol Police officer, died.
More than 1,000 people were arrested in the aftermath of the attack. In March 2023, Trump collaborated with incarcerated rioters on a song to benefit the prisoners, and, in June, he said that, if elected, he would pardon a large number of them.
Second impeachment:
Main articles:
On January 11, 2021, an article of impeachment charging Trump with incitement of insurrection against the U.S. government was introduced to the House. The House voted 232–197 to impeach Trump on January 13, making him the first U.S. president to be impeached twice. Ten Republicans voted for the impeachment—the most members of a party ever to vote to impeach a president of their own party.
On February 13, following a five-day Senate trial, Trump was acquitted when the Senate voted 57–43 for conviction, falling ten votes short of the two-thirds majority required to convict; seven Republicans joined every Democrat in voting to convict, the most bipartisan support in any Senate impeachment trial of a president or former president.
Most Republicans voted to acquit Trump, although some held him responsible but felt the Senate did not have jurisdiction over former presidents (Trump had left office on January 20; the Senate voted 56–44 the trial was constitutional); included in the latter group was Mitch McConnell.
Post-presidency (2021–present)
See also: Legal affairs of Donald Trump
At the end of his term, Trump went to live at his Mar-a-Lago club. As provided for by the Former Presidents Act, he established an office there to handle his post-presidential activities.
Trump's false claims concerning the 2020 election were commonly referred to as the "big lie" (see below) in the press and by his critics. In May 2021, Trump and his supporters attempted to co-opt the term, using it to refer to the election itself.
The Republican Party used Trump's false election narrative to justify the imposition of new voting restrictions in its favor. As late as July 2022, Trump was still pressuring state legislators to overturn the 2020 election by rescinding the state's electoral votes for Biden.
Trump resumed his campaign-style rallies with an 85-minute speech at the annual North Carolina Republican Party convention on June 6, 2021. On June 26, he held his first public rally since the January 6 rally that preceded the riot at the Capitol.
Unlike other former presidents, Trump continued to dominate his party; he has been compared to a modern-day party boss. He continued fundraising, raising more than twice as much as the Republican Party itself, hinted at a third candidacy, and profited from fundraisers many Republican candidates held at Mar-a-Lago.
Much of his focus was on the people in charge of elections and how elections are run. In the 2022 midterm elections he endorsed over 200 candidates for various offices, most of whom supported his false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. Though there were exceptions, Trump's endorsement was seen as important for candidates in Republican primary elections.
Trump registered a new company in February 2021. Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) was formed for providing "social networking services" to "customers in the United States".
In October 2021, Trump announced the planned merger of TMTG with Digital World Acquisition, a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC). A main backer of the SPAC is China-based financier ARC Group, who was reportedly involved in setting up the proposed merger. The transaction is under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
In February 2022, TMTG launched Truth Social, a Twitter-like social-media platform. As of March 2023, Trump Media, which had taken $8 million from Russia-connected entities, was being investigated by federal prosecutors for possible money laundering.
Post-presidency investigations:
Trump is the subject of several probes into his business dealings and his actions both before and during the presidency. In February 2021, the district attorney for Fulton County, Georgia, Fani Willis, announced a criminal probe into Trump's phone calls to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
The New York State Attorney General's Office is conducting criminal investigations into Trump's business activities in conjunction with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.
By May 2021, a special grand jury was considering indictments. In July 2021, New York prosecutors charged the Trump Organization with a "15 year 'scheme to defraud' the government". In January 2023, the organization's chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, was sentenced to five months in jail and five years probation for tax fraud after a plea deal.
In December 2021, the New York State Attorney General's office subpoenaed Trump to produce documents related to the business. On April 25, 2022, New York state judge Arthur Engoron held Trump in contempt of court for failing to comply with the subpoena. He imposed a fine of $10,000 per day until he complies. Trump was deposed in August and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 400 times.
In September 2022, the Attorney General of New York filed a civil fraud case against Trump, his three oldest children, and the Trump Organization.
FBI investigations:
Main articles:
When Trump left the White House in January 2021, he took government documents and material with him to Mar-a-Lago. By May 2021, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the federal agency that preserves government records, realized that important documents had not been turned over to them at the end of Trump's term and asked his office to locate them.
In January 2022, they retrieved 15 boxes of White House records from Mar-a-Lago. NARA later informed the Department of Justice that some of the retrieved documents were classified material.
The Justice Department began an investigation in April 2022 and convened a grand jury. The Justice Department sent Trump a subpoena for additional material on May 11. On June 3, Justice Department officials visited Mar-a-Lago and received some classified documents from Trump's lawyers.
One of the lawyers signed a statement affirming that all material marked as classified had been returned to the government. Later that month an additional subpoena was sent requesting surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago, which was provided.
On August 8, 2022, FBI agents searched Trump's residence, office, and storage areas at Mar-a-Lago to recover government documents and material Trump had taken with him when he left office in violation of the Presidential Records Act, reportedly including some related to nuclear weapons.
The search warrant, authorized by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and approved by a federal magistrate judge, and the written inventory of the seized items were made public on August 12. The text of the search warrant indicates an investigation of potential violations of the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice laws. The items taken in the search included 11 sets of classified documents, four of them tagged as "top secret" and one as "top secret/SCI", the highest level of classification.
On November 18, 2022, Garland appointed a special counsel, federal prosecutor Jack Smith, to oversee the federal criminal investigations into Trump retaining government property at Mar-a-Lago and examining Trump's role in the events leading up to the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
Criminal referral by the House January 6 Committee:
Main article: United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack
On December 19, 2022, the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack recommended criminal charges against Trump for obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and inciting or assisting an insurrection.
2024 presidential campaign:
Main article: Donald Trump 2024 presidential campaign
On November 15, 2022, Trump announced his candidacy for the 2024 United States presidential election and set up a fundraising account. In March 2023, the campaign began diverting 10 percent of the donations to Trump's leadership PAC which had paid $16 million for his legal bills by June 2023.
Indictments:
Main articles:
In March 2023, a New York grand jury indicted Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. On April 4, he surrendered and was arrested and arraigned; he pleaded not guilty on all counts and was released. The judge scheduled the next in-person hearing for December 4; Trump has until August 8 to file any motions in the case.
On June 8, the Justice Department indicted Trump in Miami federal court for 31 counts of "willfully retaining national defense information under the Espionage Act", one count of making false statements, and, jointly with a personal aide, single counts of conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding government documents, corruptly concealing records, concealing a document in a federal investigation and scheming to conceal their efforts.
The case was assigned to Judge Aileen M. Cannon. Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Public image:
Main article: Public image of Donald Trump
Approval ratings and scholar surveys:
Further information:
Trump was the only president to never reach a 50 percent approval rating in the Gallup poll dating to 1938. His approval ratings showed a record-high partisan gap: 88 percent among Republicans and 7 percent among Democrats.
Until September 2020, the ratings were unusually stable, reaching a high of 49 percent and a low of 35 percent. Trump finished his term with an approval rating between 29 percent and 34 percent—the lowest of any president since modern polling began—and a record-low average of 41 percent throughout his presidency.
In Gallup's annual poll asking Americans to name the man they admire the most, Trump placed second to Obama in 2017 and 2018, tied with Obama for most admired man in 2019, and was named most admired in 2020. Since Gallup started conducting the poll in 1948, Trump is the first elected president not to be named most admired in his first year in office.
A Gallup poll in 134 countries comparing the approval ratings of U.S. leadership between the years 2016 and 2017 found that Trump led Obama in job approval in only 29 countries, most of them non-democracies; approval of U.S. leadership plummeted among allies and G7 countries. Overall ratings were similar to those in the last two years of the George W. Bush presidency.
By mid-2020, only 16 percent of international respondents to a 13-nation Pew Research poll expressed confidence in Trump, a lower score than those historically accorded to Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping.
C-SPAN, which has surveyed presidential historians on presidential leadership each time the administration changed since 2000, ranked Trump fourth–lowest overall in their Presidential Historians Survey 2021, with Trump rated lowest in the leadership characteristics categories for moral authority and administrative skills.
The Siena College Research Institute (SCRI) has surveyed presidential scholars during the second year of the first term of each president since 1982. For the second time, SCRI ranked Trump third-lowest overall. He was ranked last on background, integrity, intelligence, foreign policy accomplishments, and executive appointments, and second to last on ability to compromise, executive ability, and present overall view. He was ranked near the bottom in all categories except for luck, willingness to take risks, and party leadership.
Social media:
Main article: Social media use by Donald Trump
Trump's social media presence attracted worldwide attention after he joined Twitter in 2009. He tweeted frequently during the 2016 election campaign and as president until Twitter banned him in the final days of his term.
Over twelve years, Trump posted around 57,000 tweets, often using Twitter as a direct means of communication with the public and sidelining the press.
In June 2017, a White House press secretary said that Trump's tweets were official presidential statements. Trump often announced terminations of administration officials and cabinet members over Twitter.
After years of criticism for allowing Trump to post misinformation and falsehoods, Twitter began to tag some of his tweets with fact-checking warnings in May 2020. In response, Trump tweeted that "Social Media Platforms totally silence conservative voices" and that he would "strongly regulate or close them down".
In the days after the storming of the United States Capitol, Trump was banned from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other platforms. The loss of Trump's social media presence, including his 88.7 million Twitter followers, diminished his ability to shape events, and prompted a dramatic decrease in the volume of misinformation shared on Twitter.
Trump's early attempts to re-establish a social media presence were unsuccessful. In February 2022, he launched social media platform Truth Social where he only attracted a fraction of his Twitter following.
On November 19, 2022, Twitter owner Elon Musk reinstated Trump's account. Trump had said that he would stay on Truth Social.
Relationship with the press:
Further information: Presidency of Donald Trump § Relationship with the news media
Trump sought media attention throughout his career, sustaining a "love–hate" relationship with the press. In the 2016 campaign, Trump benefited from a record amount of free media coverage, elevating his standing in the Republican primaries. The New York Times writer Amy Chozick wrote in 2018 that Trump's media dominance enthralled the public and created "must-see TV."
As a candidate and as president, Trump frequently accused the press of bias, calling it the "fake news media" and "the enemy of the people". In 2018, journalist Lesley Stahl recounted Trump's saying he intentionally demeaned and discredited the media "so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you".
As president, Trump privately and publicly mused about revoking the press credentials of journalists he viewed as critical. His administration moved to revoke the press passes of two White House reporters, which were restored by the courts.
In 2019, a member of the foreign press reported many of the same concerns as those of media in the U.S., expressing concern that a normalization process by reporters and media results in an inaccurate characterization of Trump.
The Trump White House held about a hundred formal press briefings in 2017, declining by half during 2018 and to two in 2019.
Trump also deployed the legal system to intimidate the press. In early 2020, the Trump campaign sued The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN for defamation in opinion pieces about Russian election interference. Legal experts said that the lawsuits lacked merit and were not likely to succeed. By March 2021, the lawsuits against The New York Times and CNN had been dismissed.
False or misleading statements:
See also: False or misleading statements by Donald Trump
Chart below: Fact-checkers from The Washington Post, the Toronto Star, and CNN compiled data on "false or misleading claims" (orange background), and "false claims" (violet foreground), respectively.
Under Trump, the U.S. national debt increased by 39 percent, reaching $27.75 trillion by the end of his term, and the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio hit a post-World War II high. Trump also failed to deliver the $1 trillion infrastructure spending plan on which he had campaigned.
Trump is the only modern U.S. president to leave office with a smaller workforce than when he took office, by 3 million people.
Climate change, environment, and energy:
Main article: Environmental policy of the Donald Trump administration
Trump rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. He reduced the budget for renewable energy research by 40 percent and reversed Obama-era policies directed at curbing climate change. In June 2017, Trump announced the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement, making the U.S. the only nation in the world to not ratify the agreement.
Trump aimed to boost the production and exports of fossil fuels. Natural gas expanded under Trump, but coal continued to decline. Trump rolled back more than 100 federal environmental regulations, including those that curbed greenhouse gas emissions, air and water pollution, and the use of toxic substances.
He weakened protections for animals and environmental standards for federal infrastructure projects, and expanded permitted areas for drilling and resource extraction, such as allowing drilling in the Arctic Refuge. Trump's actions while president have been called "a very aggressive attempt to rewrite our laws and reinterpret the meaning of environmental protections".
Deregulation:
In January 2017, Trump signed Executive Order 13771, which directed that, for every new regulation, federal agencies "identify" two existing regulations for elimination, though it did not require elimination. He dismantled many federal regulations on health, labor, and the environment, among other topics.
Trump signed 14 Congressional Review Act resolutions repealing federal regulations, including a bill that made it easier for severely mentally ill persons to buy guns. During his first six weeks in office, he delayed, suspended, or reversed ninety federal regulations, often "after requests by the regulated industries".
The Institute for Policy Integrity found that 78 percent of Trump's proposals were blocked by courts or did not prevail over litigation.
Health care:
During his campaign, Trump vowed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In office, he scaled back the Act's implementation through executive orders 13765 and 13813. Trump expressed a desire to "let Obamacare fail"; his administration cut the ACA enrollment period in half and drastically reduced funding for advertising and other ways to encourage enrollment.
Trump falsely claimed he saved the coverage of pre-existing conditions provided by the ACA. In June 2018, the Trump administration joined 18 Republican-led states in arguing before the Supreme Court that the elimination of the financial penalties associated with the individual mandate had rendered the ACA unconstitutional.
If they had succeeded, it would have eliminated health insurance coverage for up to 23 million Americans. During the 2016 campaign, Trump promised to protect funding for Medicare and other social safety-net programs, but in January 2020, he suggested he was willing to consider cuts to such programs.
In response to the opioid epidemic, Trump signed legislation in 2018 to increase funding for drug treatments, but was widely criticized for failing to make a concrete strategy. U.S. opioid overdose deaths declined slightly in 2018, but surged to a record 50,052 deaths in 2019.
Social issues:
Main article: Social policy of Donald Trump
Trump advocated for the reversal of Roe v. Wade. He said he supported "traditional marriage" but considered the nationwide legality of same-sex marriage a "settled" issue. In March 2017, his administration rolled back key components of the Obama administration's workplace protections against discrimination of LGBT people.
Trump has said he is opposed to gun control in general, although his views have shifted over time. After several mass shootings during his term, he said he would propose legislation to curtail gun violence, but he abandoned that effort in November 2019. His administration took an anti-marijuana position, revoking Obama-era policies that provided protections for states that legalized marijuana.
Trump is a long-time advocate of capital punishment. Under his administration, the federal government executed 13 prisoners, more than in the previous 56 years combined and after a 17-year moratorium. In 2016, Trump said he supported the use of interrogation torture methods such as waterboarding but later appeared to recant this due to the opposition of Defense Secretary James Mattis.
Pardons and commutations:
Further information: List of people granted executive clemency by Donald Trump
Most of Trump's pardons and commutations were granted to people with personal or political connections to him. In his term, Trump sidestepped regular Department of Justice procedures for considering pardons; instead, he often entertained pardon requests from his associates or celebrities.
From 2017 to 2019, he pardoned, amongst others:
- former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio;
- former Navy sailor Kristian Saucier, who was convicted of taking classified photographs of classified areas inside a submarine;
- and right-wing commentator Dinesh D'Souza.
Following a request by celebrity Kim Kardashian, Trump commuted the life sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, who had been convicted of drug trafficking. Trump also pardoned or reversed the sentences of three American servicemen convicted or accused of committing war crimes in Afghanistan or Iraq.
In November and December 2020, Trump pardoned:
- four Blackwater private security contractors convicted of killing Iraqi civilians in the 2007 Nisour Square massacre;
- white-collar criminals Michael Milken and Bernard Kerik;
- daughter Ivanka's father-in-law Charles Kushner.
- He also pardoned five people convicted as a result of investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections:
- Michael Flynn,
- George Papadopoulos,
- Alex van der Zwaan,
- Stone, whose 40-month sentence for lying to Congress, witness tampering, and obstruction he had already commuted in July,
- and Paul Manafort.
In his last full day in office, Trump granted 143 pardons and commutations. Those pardoned included Steve Bannon, Trump fundraiser Elliott Broidy, and three former Republican congressmen. The commuted sentences included those of former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and sports gambler Billy Walters. Walters had paid tens of thousands of dollars to former Trump attorney John M. Dowd to plead his case with Trump.
Lafayette Square protester removal and photo op:
Main article: Donald Trump photo op at St. John's Church
On June 1, 2020, federal law-enforcement officials used batons, rubber bullets, pepper spray projectiles, stun grenades, and smoke to remove a largely peaceful crowd of protesters from Lafayette Square, outside the White House.
Trump then walked to St. John's Episcopal Church, where protesters had set a small fire the night before; he posed for photographs holding a Bible, with senior administration officials later joining him in photos. Trump said on June 3 that the protesters were cleared because "they tried to burn down the church [on May 31] and almost succeeded", describing the church as "badly hurt".
Religious leaders condemned the treatment of protesters and the photo opportunity itself. Many retired military leaders and defense officials condemned Trump's proposal to use the U.S. military against anti-police-brutality protesters.
Immigration:
Main article: Immigration policy of Donald Trump
Trump's proposed immigration policies were a topic of bitter and contentious debate during the campaign:
- He promised to build a wall on the Mexico–United States border to restrict illegal movement and vowed Mexico would pay for it.
- He pledged to deport millions of illegal immigrants residing in the United States,
- and criticized birthright citizenship for incentivizing "anchor babies".
- As president, he frequently described illegal immigration as an "invasion" and conflated immigrants with the criminal gang MS-13, though available research shows undocumented immigrants have a lower crime rate than native-born Americans.
Trump attempted to drastically escalate immigration enforcement, including implementing harsher immigration enforcement policies against asylum seekers from Central America than any modern U.S. president.
From 2018 onward, Trump deployed nearly 6,000 troops to the U.S.–Mexico border to stop most Central American migrants from seeking U.S. asylum. In 2020, his administration widened the public charge rule to further restrict immigrants who might use government benefits from getting permanent residency via green cards.
Trump reduced the number of refugees admitted into the U.S. to record lows. When Trump took office, the annual limit was 110,000; Trump set a limit of 18,000 in the 2020 fiscal year and 15,000 in the 2021 fiscal year. Additional restrictions implemented by the Trump administration caused significant bottlenecks in processing refugee applications, resulting in fewer refugees accepted compared to the allowed limits.
Travel ban:
Main article: Trump travel ban
Further information: Executive Order 13769 and Executive Order 13780
Following the 2015 San Bernardino attack, Trump proposed to ban Muslim foreigners from entering the United States until stronger vetting systems could be implemented. He later reframed the proposed ban to apply to countries with a "proven history of terrorism".
On January 27, 2017, Trump signed Executive Order 13769, which suspended admission of refugees for 120 days and denied entry to citizens of Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen for 90 days, citing security concerns. The order took effect immediately and without warning, causing confusion and chaos at airports.
Protests against the ban began at airports the next day. Legal challenges to the order resulted in nationwide preliminary injunctions. A March 6 revised order, which excluded Iraq and gave other exemptions, again was blocked by federal judges in three states.
In a decision in June 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that the ban could be enforced on visitors who lack a "credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States".
The temporary order was replaced by Presidential Proclamation 9645 on September 24, 2017, which restricted travel from the originally targeted countries except Iraq and Sudan, and further banned travelers from North Korea and Chad, along with certain Venezuelan officials.
After lower courts partially blocked the new restrictions, the Supreme Court allowed the September version to go into full effect on December 4, 2017, and ultimately upheld the travel ban in a June 2019 ruling.
Family separation at border;
Main article: Trump administration family separation policy
The Trump administration separated more than 5,400 children of migrant families from their parents at the U.S.–Mexico border, a sharp increase in the number of family separations at the border starting from the summer of 2017.
In April 2018, the Trump administration announced a "zero tolerance" policy whereby every adult suspected of illegal entry would be criminally prosecuted. This resulted in family separations, as the migrant adults were put in criminal detention for prosecution, while their children were separated as unaccompanied alien minors. Administration officials described the policy as a way to deter illegal immigration.
The policy of family separations was unprecedented in previous administrations and sparked public outrage. Trump falsely asserted that his administration was merely following the law, blaming Democrats, despite the separations being his administration's policy.
Although Trump originally argued that the separations could not be stopped by an executive order, he accceded to intense public objection and signed an executive order on June 20, 2018, mandating that migrant families be detained together unless "there is a concern" doing so would pose a risk to the child.
On June 26, 2018, Judge Dana Sabraw concluded that the Trump administration had "no system in place to keep track of" the separated children, nor any effective measures for family communication and reunification; Sabraw ordered for the families to be reunited and family separations stopped except in limited circumstances.
After the federal-court order, the Trump administration separated more than a thousand migrant children from their families; the ACLU contended that the Trump administration had abused its discretion and asked Sabraw to more narrowly define the circumstances warranting separation.
Trump wall and government shutdown:
Main articles:
One of Trump's central campaign promises was to build a 1,000-mile (1,600 km) border wall to Mexico and have Mexico pay for it. By the end of his term, the U.S. had built "40 miles [64 km] of new primary wall and 33 miles [53 km] of secondary wall" in locations where there had been no barriers and 365 miles (587 km) of primary or secondary border fencing replacing dilapidated or outdated barriers.
In 2018, Trump refused to sign any appropriations bill from Congress unless it allocated $5.6 billion in funds for the border wall, resulting in the federal government partially shutting down for 35 days from December 2018 to January 2019, the longest U.S. government shutdown in history.
Around 800,000 government employees were furloughed or worked without pay. Trump and Congress ended the shutdown by approving temporary funding that provided delayed payments to government workers but no funds for the wall.
The shutdown resulted in an estimated permanent loss of $3 billion to the economy, according to the Congressional Budget Office. About half of those polled blamed Trump for the shutdown, and Trump's approval ratings dropped.
To prevent another imminent shutdown in February 2019, Congress passed and Trump signed a funding bill that included $1.375 billion for 55 miles (89 km) of bollard border fencing. Trump also declared a National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border of the United States, intending to divert $6.1 billion of funds Congress had allocated to other purposes.
Trump vetoed a joint resolution to overturn the declaration, and the Senate voted against a veto override. Legal challenges to the diversion of $2.5 billion originally meant for the Department of Defense's drug interdiction efforts and $3.6 billion originally meant for military construction were unsuccessful.
Foreign policy:
Main article: Foreign policy of the Donald Trump administration
See also: List of international presidential trips made by Donald Trump
Trump described himself as a "nationalist" and his foreign policy as "America First" His foreign policy was marked by praise and support of populist, neo-nationalist and authoritarian governments.
Hallmarks of foreign relations during Trump's tenure included unpredictability and uncertainty, a lack of a consistent foreign policy, and strained and sometimes antagonistic relationships with the U.S.'s European allies. He criticized NATO allies and privately suggested on multiple occasions that the United States should withdraw from the alliance.
Trade:
See also: Trump tariffs
In the 1980s, Trump publicly announced his skepticism of trade liberalization, saying, "I believe very strongly in tariffs." In 2015, he sharply criticized NAFTA during the Republican primary campaign.
During his presidency, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations, imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, and launched a trade war with China by sharply increasing tariffs on 818 categories (worth $50 billion) of Chinese goods imported into the U.S.
While Trump said that import tariffs are paid by China into the U.S. Treasury, they are paid by American companies that import goods from China. Although he pledged during the campaign to significantly reduce the U.S.'s large trade deficits, the trade deficit in July 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, "was the largest monthly deficit since July 2008".
Following a 2017–2018 renegotiation, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) became effective in July 2020 as the successor to NAFTA.
Russia:
The Trump administration "water[ed] down the toughest penalties the U.S. had imposed on Russian entities" after its 2014 annexation of Crimea. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, citing alleged Russian non-compliance and supported a potential return of Russia to the G7.
Trump repeatedly praised and rarely criticized Russian president Vladimir Putin but opposed some actions of the Russian government. After he met Putin at the Helsinki Summit in July 2018, Trump drew bipartisan criticism for accepting Putin's denial of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, rather than accepting the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies.
Trump did not discuss alleged Russian bounties offered to Taliban fighters for attacking American soldiers in Afghanistan with Putin, saying both that he doubted the intelligence and that he was not briefed on it.
China:
Before and during his presidency, Trump repeatedly accused China of taking unfair advantage of the U.S. As president, Trump launched a trade war against China that was widely characterized as a failure, sanctioned Huawei for its alleged ties to Iran, significantly increased visa restrictions on Chinese students and scholars, and classified China as a currency manipulator.
Trump also juxtaposed verbal attacks on China with praise of Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, which was attributed to trade war negotiations with the leader. After initially praising China for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, he began a campaign of criticism over its response starting in March 2020.
Trump said he resisted punishing China for its human rights abuses against ethnic minorities in the northwestern Xinjiang region for fear of jeopardizing trade negotiations. In July 2020, the Trump administration imposed sanctions and visa restrictions against senior Chinese officials, in response to expanded mass detention camps holding more than a million of the country's Uyghur Muslim ethnic minority.
North Korea:
See also: 2018–19 Korean peace process
In 2017, when North Korea's nuclear weapons were increasingly seen as a serious threat, Trump escalated his rhetoric, warning that North Korean aggression would be met with "fire and fury like the world has never seen". In 2017, Trump declared that he wanted North Korea's "complete denuclearization", and engaged in name-calling with leader Kim Jong Un.
After this period of tension, Trump and Kim exchanged at least 27 letters in which the two men described a warm personal friendship. Trump met Kim three times: in Singapore in 2018, in Hanoi in 2019, and in the Korean Demilitarized Zone in 2019. Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to meet a North Korean leader or to set foot on North Korean soil. Trump also lifted some U.S. sanctions against North Korea.
However, no denuclearization agreement was reached, and talks in October 2019 broke down after one day. While conducting no nuclear tests since 2017, North Korea continued to build up its arsenal of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
Afghanistan:
U.S. troop numbers in Afghanistan increased from 8,500 in January 2017 to 14,000 a year later, reversing Trump's pre-election position critical of further involvement in Afghanistan.
In February 2020, the Trump administration signed a conditional peace agreement with the Taliban, which called for the withdrawal of foreign troops in 14 months "contingent on a guarantee from the Taliban that Afghan soil will not be used by terrorists with aims to attack the United States or its allies" and for the U.S. to seek the release of 5,000 Taliban imprisoned by the Afghan government.
By the end of Trump's term, 5,000 Taliban had been released, and, despite the Taliban continuing attacks on Afghan forces and integrating Al-Qaeda members into its leadership, U.S. troops had been reduced to 2,500.
Israel:
Trump supported many of the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Under Trump, the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, leading to international condemnation including from the United Nations General Assembly, the European Union, and the Arab League.
Saudi Arabia:
Trump actively supported the Saudi Arabian–led intervention in Yemen against the Houthis and in 2017 signed a $110 billion agreement to sell arms to Saudi Arabia, In 2018, the USA provided limited intelligence and logistical support for the intervention.
Following the 2019 attack on Saudi oil facilities, which the U.S. and Saudi Arabia blamed on Iran, Trump approved the deployment of 3,000 additional U.S. troops, including fighter squadrons, two Patriot batteries, and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD), to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Syria:
Trump ordered missile strikes in April 2017 and in April 2018 against the Assad regime in Syria, in retaliation for the Khan Shaykhun and Douma chemical attacks, respectively.
In December 2018, Trump declared "we have won against ISIS", contradicting Department of Defense assessments, and ordered the withdrawal of all troops from Syria. The next day, Mattis resigned in protest, calling his decision an abandonment of the U.S.'s Kurdish allies who played a key role in fighting ISIS.
One week after his announcement, Trump said he would not approve any extension of the American deployment in Syria.
In October 2019, after Trump spoke to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, U.S. troops in northern Syria were withdrawn from the area and Turkey invaded northern Syria, attacking and displacing American-allied Kurds in the area.
Later that month, the U.S. House of Representatives, in a rare bipartisan vote of 354 to 60, condemned Trump's withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, for "abandoning U.S. allies, undermining the struggle against ISIS, and spurring a humanitarian catastrophe".
Iran:
After an Iranian missile test on January 29, 2017, and Houthi attacks on Saudi warships, the Trump administration sanctioned 12 companies and 13 individuals suspected of being involved in Iran's missile program.
In May 2018, Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 agreement between Iran, the U.S., and five other countries that lifted most economic sanctions against Iran in return for Iran agreeing to restrictions on its nuclear program. Analysts determined that, after the United States's withdrawal, Iran moved closer to developing a nuclear weapon.
In January 2020, Trump ordered a U.S. airstrike that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, who had planned nearly every significant operation by Iranian forces over the past two decades. Trump threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites, including some "important to Iran & the Iranian culture", if Iran retaliated.
The threat to hit cultural sites was seen as illegal and both Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the U.S. would not attack such sites, but would "follow the laws of armed conflict" and "behave inside the system". Iran did retaliate with ballistic missile strikes against two U.S. airbases in Iraq.
On the same day, amid the heightened tensions between the United States and Iran, Iran accidentally shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 after takeoff from Tehran airport.
In August 2020, the Trump administration unsuccessfully attempted to trigger a mechanism that was part of the agreement that would have led to the return of U.N. sanctions against Iran.
Personnel:
Main articles: Political appointments by Donald Trump and Cabinet of Donald Trump
The Trump administration had a high turnover of personnel, particularly among White House staff. By the end of Trump's first year in office, 34 percent of his original staff had resigned, been fired, or been reassigned. As of early July 2018, 61 percent of Trump's senior aides had left and 141 staffers had left in the previous year. Both figures set a record for recent presidents—more change in the first 13 months than his four immediate predecessors saw in their first two years.
Notable early departures included National Security Advisor Flynn (after just 25 days in office), and Press Secretary Sean Spicer. Close personal aides to Trump including Bannon, Hope Hicks, John McEntee, and Keith Schiller quit or were forced out. Some, including Hicks and McEntee, later returned to the White House in different posts.
Trump publicly disparaged several of his former top officials, calling them incompetent, stupid, or crazy.
Trump had four White House chiefs of staff, marginalizing or pushing out several. Reince Priebus was replaced after seven months by retired Marine general John F. Kelly. Kelly resigned in December 2018 after a tumultuous tenure in which his influence waned, and Trump subsequently disparaged him.
Kelly was succeeded by Mick Mulvaney as acting chief of staff; he was replaced in March 2020 by Mark Meadows.
On May 9, 2017, Trump dismissed FBI director James Comey. While initially attributing this action to Comey's conduct in the investigation about Hillary Clinton's emails, Trump said a few days later that he was concerned with Comey's roles in the ongoing Trump-Russia investigations, and that he had intended to fire Comey earlier.
At a private conversation in February, Trump said he hoped Comey would drop the investigation into Flynn. In March and April, Trump asked Comey to "lift the cloud impairing his ability to act" by saying publicly that the FBI was not investigating him.
Turnover was relatively high within the Trump Cabinet. Trump lost tree of his 15 original cabinet members within his first year. Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price was forced to resign in September 2017 due to excessive use of private charter jets and military aircraft.
Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt resigned in 2018 and Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke in January 2019 amid multiple investigations into their conduct.
Trump was slow to appoint second-tier officials in the executive branch, saying many of the positions are unnecessary. In October 2017, there were still hundreds of sub-cabinet positions without a nominee. By January 8, 2019, of 706 key positions, 433 had been filled (61 percent) and Trump had no nominee for 264 (37 percent).
Judiciary:
Further information:
Trump appointed 226 Article III judges, including 54 to the courts of appeals and three to the Supreme Court: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Trump's Supreme Court nominees were noted as having politically shifted the Supreme Court to the right.
In the 2016 campaign, Trump pledged that Roe v. Wade would be overturned "automatically" if he were elected and provided the opportunity to appoint two or three pro-life justices. Trump later took credit when Roe was overturned in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization; all three of his Supreme Court nominees voted with the majority.
Trump disparaged courts and judges he disagreed with, often in personal terms, and questioned the judiciary's constitutional authority. Trump's attacks on the courts drew rebukes from observers, including sitting federal judges, concerned about the effect of Trump's statements on the judicial independence and public confidence in the judiciary.
COVID-19 pandemic:
Main articles:
- COVID-19 pandemic and COVID-19 pandemic in the United States
- U.S. federal government response to the COVID-19 pandemic
- Communication of the Trump administration during the COVID-19 pandemic
- Economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States
In December 2019, COVID-19 erupted in Wuhan, China; the SARS-CoV-2 virus spread worldwide within weeks. The first confirmed case in the U.S. was reported on January 20, 2020. The outbreak was officially declared a public health emergency by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar on January 31, 2020.
Trump's public statements on COVID-19 were at odds with his private statements. In February 2020 Trump publicly asserted that the outbreak in the U.S. was less deadly than influenza, was "very much under control", and would soon be over. At the same time he acknowledged the opposite in a private conversation with Bob Woodward.
In March 2020,Trump privately told Woodward that he was deliberately "playing it down" in public so as not to create panic.
Initial response:
Trump was slow to address the spread of the disease, initially dismissing the threat and ignoring persistent public health warnings and calls for action from health officials within his administration and Secretary Azar. Throughout January and February he focused on economic and political considerations of the outbreak, and largely ignored the danger.
By mid-March, most global financial markets had severely contracted in response to the emerging pandemic.
On March 6, Trump signed the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act into law, which provided $8.3 billion in emergency funding for federal agencies.
On March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized the spread of COVID-19 as a pandemic, and Trump announced partial travel restrictions for most of Europe, effective March 13.
That same day, he gave his first serious assessment of the virus in a nationwide Oval Office address, calling the outbreak "horrible" but "a temporary moment" and saying there was no financial crisis.
On March 13, he declared a national emergency, freeing up federal resources. Trump falsely claimed that "anybody that wants a test can get a test", despite the availability of tests being severely limited.
In September 2019, the Trump administration terminated United States Agency for International Development's PREDICT program, a $200 million epidemiological research program initiated in 2009 to provide early warning of pandemics abroad.
The program trained scientists in sixty foreign laboratories to detect and respond to viruses that have the potential to cause pandemics. One such laboratory was the Wuhan lab that first identified the virus that causes COVID-19. After revival in April 2020, the program was given two 6-month extensions to help fight COVID-19 in the U.S. and other countries.
On April 22, Trump signed an executive order restricting some forms of immigration to the United States.
In late spring and early summer, with infections and death counts continuing to rise, he adopted a strategy of blaming the states for the growing pandemic, rather than accepting that his initial assessments of the course of the pandemic were overly optimistic or his failure to provide presidential leadership.
White House Coronavirus Task Force:
Trump established the White House Coronavirus Task Force on January 29, 2020. Beginning in mid-March, Trump held a daily task force press conference, joined by medical experts and other administration officials, sometimes disagreeing with them by promoting unproven treatments.
Trump was the main speaker at the briefings, where he praised his own response to the pandemic, frequently criticized rival presidential candidate Joe Biden, and denounced the press.
On March 16, he acknowledged for the first time that the pandemic was not under control and that months of disruption to daily lives and a recession might occur. His repeated use of the terms "Chinese virus" and "China virus" to describe COVID-19 drew criticism from health experts.
By early April, as the pandemic worsened and amid criticism of his administration's response, Trump refused to admit any mistakes in his handling of the outbreak, instead blaming the media, Democratic state governors, the previous administration, China, and the World Health Organization (WHO).
The daily coronavirus task force briefings ended in late April, after a briefing at which Trump suggested the dangerous idea of injecting a disinfectant to treat COVID-19; the comment was widely condemned by medical professionals.
In early May, Trump proposed the phase-out of the coronavirus task force and its replacement with another group centered on reopening the economy. Amid a backlash, Trump said the task force would "indefinitely" continue. By the end of May, the coronavirus task force's meetings were sharply reduced.
World Health Organization:
Prior to the pandemic, Trump criticized the World Health Organization (WHO) and other international bodies, which he asserted were taking advantage of U.S. aid. His administration's proposed 2021 federal budget, released in February, proposed reducing WHO funding by more than half.
In May and April, Trump accused the WHO of "severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus" and alleged without evidence that the organization was under Chinese control and had enabled the Chinese government's concealment of the origins of the pandemic.
He then announced that he was withdrawing funding for the organization. Trump's criticisms and actions regarding the WHO were seen as attempts to distract attention from his own mishandling of the pandemic.
In July 2020, Trump announced the formal withdrawal of the United States from the WHO effective July 2021. The decision was widely condemned by health and government officials as "short-sighted", "senseless", and "dangerous".
Testing:
Further information: COVID-19 testing in the United States
In June and July, Trump said several times that the U.S. would have fewer cases of coronavirus if it did less testing, that having a large number of reported cases "makes us look bad". The CDC guideline at the time was that any person exposed to the virus should be "quickly identified and tested" even if they are not showing symptoms, because asymptomatic people can still spread the virus.
In August 2020 the CDC quietly lowered its recommendation for testing, advising that people who have been exposed to the virus, but are not showing symptoms, "do not necessarily need a test". The change in guidelines was made by HHS political appointees under Trump administration pressure, against the wishes of CDC scientists.
The day after this political interference was reported, the testing guideline was changed back to its original recommendation, stressing that anyone who has been in contact with an infected person should be tested.
Pressure to abandon pandemic mitigation measures:
In April 2020, Republican-connected groups organized anti-lockdown protests against the measures state governments were taking to combat the pandemic; Trump encouraged the protests on Twitter, even though the targeted states did not meet the Trump administration's own guidelines for reopening.
In April 2020, he first supported, then later criticized, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp's plan to reopen some nonessential businesses. Throughout the spring he increasingly pushed for ending the restrictions as a way to reverse the damage to the country's economy.
Trump often refused to wear a face mask at public events, contrary to his own administration's April 2020 guidance that Americans should wear masks in public and despite nearly unanimous medical consensus that masks are important to preventing the spread of the virus.
By June, Trump had said masks were a "double-edged sword"; ridiculed Biden for wearing masks; continually emphasized that mask-wearing was optional; and suggested that wearing a mask was a political statement against him personally.
Trump's contradiction of medical recommendations weakened national efforts to mitigate the pandemic.
Despite record numbers of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. from mid-June onward and an increasing percentage of positive test results, Trump largely continued to downplay the pandemic, including his false claim in early July 2020 that 99 percent of COVID-19 cases are "totally harmless". He also began insisting that all states should open schools to in-person education in the fall despite a July spike in reported cases.
Political pressure on health agencies:
Main article: Trump administration political interference with science agencies
Trump repeatedly pressured federal health agencies to take actions he favored, such as approving unproven treatments or speeding up the approval of vaccines. Trump administration political appointees at HHS sought to control CDC communications to the public that undermined Trump's claims that the pandemic was under control.
CDC resisted many of the changes, but increasingly allowed HHS personnel to review articles and suggest changes before publication. Trump alleged without evidence that FDA scientists were part of a "deep state" opposing him, and delaying approval of vaccines and treatments to hurt him politically.
Outbreak at the White House:
Main article: White House COVID-19 outbreak
On October 2, 2020, Trump tweeted that he had tested positive for COVID-19. His wife, their son Barron, and numerous staff members and visitors also became infected.
Later that day Trump was hospitalized at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, reportedly due to labored breathing and a fever. He was treated with antiviral and experimental antibody drugs and a steroid. He returned to the White House on October 5, still struggling with the disease. During and after his treatment he continued to downplay the virus.
In 2021, it was revealed that his condition had been far more serious; he had dangerously low blood oxygen levels, a high fever, and lung infiltrates, indicating a severe case of the disease.
Effects on the 2020 presidential campaign:
By July 2020, Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic had become a major issue for the 2020 presidential election. Biden sought to make the pandemic the central issue of the election.
Polls suggested voters blamed Trump for his pandemic response and disbelieved his rhetoric concerning the virus, with an Ipsos/ABC News poll indicating 65 percent of respondents disapproved of his pandemic response.
In the final months of the campaign,Trump repeatedly claimed that the U.S. was "rounding the turn" in managing the pandemic, despite increasing numbers of reported cases and deaths. A few days before the November 3 election, the United States reported more than 100,000 cases in a single day for the first time.
Investigations:
After he assumed office, Trump was the subject of increasing Justice Department and congressional scrutiny, with investigations covering his election campaign, transition, and inauguration, actions taken during his presidency, along with his private businesses, personal taxes, and charitable foundation.
There were 30 investigations of Trump, including ten federal criminal investigations, eight state and local investigations, and twelve congressional investigations.
In April 2019, the House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas seeking financial details from Trump's banks, Deutsche Bank and Capital One, and his accounting firm, Mazars USA. Trump then sued the banks, Mazars, and committee chair Elijah Cummings to prevent the disclosures.
In May, DC District Court judge Amit Mehta ruled that Mazars must comply with the subpoena, and judge Edgardo Ramos of the Southern District Court of New York ruled that the banks must also comply.
Trump's attorneys appealed the rulings. In September 2022, the committee and Trump agreed to a settlement about Mazars, and the accounting firm began turning over documents.
Hush money payments:
Main articles:
- Stormy Daniels–Donald Trump scandal
- Legal affairs of Donald Trump § Payments related to alleged affairs, Karen McDougal § Alleged affair with Donald Trump,
- Prosecution of Donald Trump in New York § Hush money payments
During the 2016 presidential election campaign, American Media, Inc. (AMI), the parent company of the National Enquirer, and a company set up by Cohen paid Playboy model Karen McDougal and adult film actress Stormy Daniels for keeping silent about their alleged affairs with Trump between 2006 and 2007.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to breaking campaign finance laws, saying he had arranged both payments at the direction of Trump to influence the presidential election. Trump denied the affairs and claimed he was not aware of Cohen's payment to Daniels, but he reimbursed him in 2017.
Federal prosecutors asserted that Trump had been involved in discussions regarding non-disclosure payments as early as 2014. Court documents showed that the FBI believed Trump was directly involved in the payment to Daniels, based on calls he had with Cohen in October 2016. Federal prosecutors closed the investigation in 2019, but the Manhattan District Attorney subpoenaed the Trump Organization and AMI for records related to the payments and Trump and the Trump Organization for eight years of tax returns.
In November 2022, The New York Times reported that Manhattan prosecutors were "newly optimistic about building a case" against Trump.
Russian election interference:
Main articles:
- Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
- Timelines related to Donald Trump and Russian interference in United States elections
- Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election and Steele dossier
In January 2017, American intelligence agencies—the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA, represented by the Director of National Intelligence—jointly stated with "high confidence" that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election to favor the election of Trump.
In March 2017, FBI Director James Comey told Congress, "[T]he FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. That includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts."
Many suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies were discovered and the relationships between Russians and "team Trump" were widely reported by the press.
Manafort, one of Trump's campaign managers, worked from December 2004 to February 2010 to help pro-Russian politician Viktor Yanukovych win the Ukrainian presidency.
Other Trump associates, including Flynn and Stone, were connected to Russian officials. Russian agents were overheard during the campaign saying they could use Manafort and Flynn to influence Trump.
Members of Trump's campaign and later his White House staff, particularly Flynn, were in contact with Russian officials both before and after the November election.
On December 29, 2016, Flynn talked with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about sanctions that were imposed that same day; Flynn later resigned in the midst of controversy over whether he misled Pence. Trump told Kislyak and Sergei Lavrov in May 2017 he was unconcerned about Russian interference in U.S. elections.
Trump and his allies promoted a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, rather than Russia, interfered in the 2016 election—which was also promoted by Russia to frame Ukraine.
After the Democratic National Committee was hacked, Trump:
- first claimed it withheld "its server" from the FBI (in actuality there were more than 140 servers, of which digital copies were given to the FBI);
- second, that CrowdStrike, the company that investigated the servers, was Ukraine-based and Ukrainian-owned (in actuality, CrowdStrike is U.S.-based, with the largest owners being American companies);
- and third that "the server" was hidden in Ukraine. Members of the Trump administration spoke out against the conspiracy theories.
FBI Crossfire Hurricane and 2017 counterintelligence investigations:
In July 2016, the FBI launched an investigation, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane, into possible links between Russia and the Trump campaign. After Trump fired FBI director James Comey in May 2017, the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into Trump's personal and business dealings with Russia.
Crossfire Hurricane was transferred to the Mueller investigation, but deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein ended the investigation into Trump's direct ties to Russia while giving the bureau the false impression that Mueller would pursue the matter.
Mueller investigation:
Main articles:
- Mueller special counsel investigation,
- Mueller report,
- Criminal charges brought in the Mueller special counsel investigation
In May 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller, a former director of the FBI, special counsel for the Department of Justice (DOJ), ordering him to "examine 'any links and/or coordination between the Russian government' and the Trump campaign". He privately told Mueller to restrict the investigation to criminal matters "in connection with Russia's 2016 election interference".
The special counsel also investigated whether Trump's dismissal of James Comey as FBI director constituted obstruction of justice and the Trump campaign's possible ties to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Qatar, Israel, and China.
Trump sought to fire Mueller and shut down the investigation multiple times but backed down after his staff objected or after changing his mind.
In March 2019, Mueller concluded his investigation and gave his report to Attorney General William Barr. Two days later, Barr sent a letter to Congress purporting to summarize the report's main conclusions.
A federal court, as well as Mueller himself, said Barr mischaracterized the investigation's conclusions and, in so doing, confused the public. Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed that the investigation exonerated him; the Mueller report expressly stated that it did not exonerate him.
A redacted version of the report was publicly released in April 2019. It found that Russia interfered in 2016 to favor Trump's candidacy and hinder Clinton's. Despite "numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign", the report found that the prevailing evidence "did not establish" that Trump campaign members conspired or coordinated with Russian interference.
The report revealed sweeping Russian interference and detailed how Trump and his campaign welcomed and encouraged it, believing "[they] would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts".
The report also detailed multiple acts of potential obstruction of justice by Trump but did not make a "traditional prosecutorial judgment" on whether Trump broke the law, suggesting that Congress should make such a determination.
Investigators decided they could not "apply an approach that could potentially result in a judgment that the President committed crimes" as an Office of Legal Counsel opinion stated that a sitting president could not be indicted, and investigators would not accuse him of a crime when he cannot clear his name in court.
The report concluded that Congress, having the authority to take action against a president for wrongdoing, "may apply the obstruction laws". The House of Representatives subsequently launched an impeachment inquiry following the Trump–Ukraine scandal, but did not pursue an article of impeachment related to the Mueller investigation.
Several Trump associates pleaded guilty or were convicted in connection with Mueller's investigation and related cases, including:
- Manafort, convicted on eight felony counts,
- deputy campaign manager Rick Gates, foreign policy advisor Papadopoulos,
- and Flynn.
- Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about Trump's 2016 attempts to reach a deal with Russia to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen said he had made the false statements on behalf of Trump, who was identified as "Individual-1" in the court documents.
In February 2020, Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison for lying to Congress and witness tampering regarding his attempts to learn more about hacked Democratic emails during the 2016 election. The sentencing judge said Stone "was prosecuted for covering up for the president".
First impeachment:
Main articles: First impeachment of Donald Trump and Trump–Ukraine scandal
In August 2019, a whistleblower filed a complaint with the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community about a July 25 phone call between Trump and President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during which Trump had pressured Zelenskyy to investigate CrowdStrike and Democratic presidential candidate Biden and his son Hunter, adding that the White House had attempted to cover-up the incident.
The whistleblower stated that the call was part of a wider campaign by the Trump administration and Giuliani that may have included withholding financial aid from Ukraine in July 2019 and canceling Pence's May 2019 Ukraine trip.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi initiated a formal impeachment inquiry on September 24. Trump then confirmed that he withheld military aid from Ukraine, offering contradictory reasons for the decision.
On September 25, the Trump administration released a memorandum of the phone call which confirmed that, after Zelenskyy mentioned purchasing American anti-tank missiles, Trump asked him to discuss investigating Biden and his son with Giuliani and Barr. The testimony of multiple administration officials and former officials confirmed that this was part of a broader effort to further Trump's personal interests by giving him an advantage in the upcoming presidential election.
In October, William B. Taylor Jr., the chargé d'affaires for Ukraine, testified before congressional committees that soon after arriving in Ukraine in June 2019, he found that Zelenskyy was being subjected to pressure directed by Trump and led by Giuliani.
According to Taylor and others, the goal was to coerce Zelenskyy into making a public commitment investigating the company that employed Hunter Biden, as well as rumors about Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
He said it was made clear that until Zelenskyy made such an announcement, the administration would not release scheduled military aid for Ukraine and not invite Zelenskyy to the White House.
On December 13, the House Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to pass two articles of impeachment: one for abuse of power and one for obstruction of Congress. After debate, the House of Representatives impeached Trump on both articles on December 18.
Impeachment trial in the Senate:
Main article: First impeachment trial of Donald Trump
During the trial in January 2020, the House impeachment managers presented their case for three days. They cited evidence to support charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, and asserted that Trump's actions were exactly what the founding fathers had in mind when they created the Constitution's impeachment process.
Responding over the next three days, Trump's lawyers did not deny the facts as presented in the charges but said Trump had not broken any laws or obstructed Congress. They argued that the impeachment was "constitutionally and legally invalid" because Trump was not charged with a crime and that abuse of power is not an impeachable offense.
On January 31, the Senate voted against allowing subpoenas for witnesses or documents; 51 Republicans formed the majority for this vote. The impeachment trial was the first in U.S. history without witness testimony.
Trump was acquitted of both charges by the Republican majority, 52–48 on abuse of power and 53–47 on obstruction of Congress. Senator Mitt Romney was the only Republican who voted to convict Trump on one charge, the abuse of power.
Following his acquittal, Trump fired impeachment witnesses and other political appointees and career officials he deemed insufficiently loyal.
2020 presidential campaign:
Main articles:
Breaking with precedent, Trump filed to run for a second term with the FEC within a few hours of assuming the presidency. He held his first re-election rally less than a month after taking office and officially became the Republican nominee in August 2020.
In his first two years in office, Trump's reelection committee reported raising $67.5 million and began 2019 with $19.3 million in cash. By July 2020, the Trump campaign and the Republican Party had raised $1.1 billion and spent $800 million, losing their cash advantage over Biden. The cash shortage forced the campaign to scale back advertising spending.
Trump campaign advertisements focused on crime, claiming that cities would descend into lawlessness if Biden won the presidency. Trump repeatedly misrepresented Biden's positions and shifted to appeals to racism.
2020 presidential election:
Main articles:
Starting in spring 2020, Trump began to sow doubts about the election, claiming without evidence that the election would be rigged and that the expected widespread use of mail balloting would produce massive election fraud.
In July, Trump raised the idea of delaying the election. When, in August, the House of Representatives voted for a $25 billion grant to the U.S. Postal Service for the expected surge in mail voting, Trump blocked funding, saying he wanted to prevent any increase in voting by mail. He repeatedly refused to say whether he would accept the results of the election and commit to a peaceful transition of power if he lost.
Biden won the election on November 3, receiving 81.3 million votes (51.3 percent) to Trump's 74.2 million (46.8 percent) and 306 Electoral College votes to Trump's 232.
False claims of voting fraud, attempt to prevent presidential transition:
Further information:
- Big lie § Donald Trump's false claims of a stolen election,
- Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election,
- and 2020–21 United States election protests
At 2 a.m. the morning after the election, with the results still unclear, Trump declared victory. After Biden was projected the winner days later, Trump stated that "this election is far from over" and baselessly alleged election fraud.
Trump and his allies filed many legal challenges to the results, which were rejected by at least 86 judges in both the state and federal courts, including by federal judges appointed by Trump himself, finding no factual or legal basis.
Trump's unsubstantiated allegations of widespread voting fraud were also refuted by state election officials. After Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) director Chris Krebs contradicted Trump's fraud allegations, Trump dismissed him on November 17.
On December 11, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case from the Texas attorney general that asked the court to overturn the election results in four states won by Biden.
Trump withdrew from public activities in the weeks following the election. He initially blocked government officials from cooperating in Biden's presidential transition.
After three weeks, the administrator of the General Services Administration declared Biden the "apparent winner" of the election, allowing the disbursement of transition resources to his team. Trump still did not formally concede while claiming he recommended the GSA begin transition protocols.
The Electoral College formalized Biden's victory on December 14. From November to January, Trump repeatedly sought help to overturn the results of the election, personally pressuring various Republican local and state office-holders, Republican state and federal legislators, the Justice Department, and Vice President Pence, urging various actions such as replacing presidential electors, or a request for Georgia officials to "find" votes and announce a "recalculated" result.
On February 10, 2021, Georgia prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into Trump's efforts to subvert the election in Georgia.
Trump did not attend Biden's inauguration, leaving Washington for Florida hours before.
Concern about a possible coup attempt or military action:
In December 2020, Newsweek reported the Pentagon was on red alert, and ranking officers had discussed what they would do if Trump decided to declare martial law. The Pentagon responded with quotes from defense leaders that the military has no role to play in the outcome of elections.
When Trump moved supporters into positions of power at the Pentagon after the November 2020 election, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and CIA director Gina Haspel became concerned about the threat of a possible coup attempt or military action against China or Iran.
Milley insisted that he should be consulted about any military orders from Trump, including the use of nuclear weapons, and he instructed Haspel and NSA director Paul Nakasone to monitor developments closely.
January 6 Capitol attack:
Main articles:
On January 6, 2021, while congressional certification of the presidential election results was taking place in the United States Capitol, Trump held a noon rally at the Ellipse, Washington, D.C.. He called for the election result to be overturned and urged his supporters to "take back our country" by marching to the Capitol to "show strength" and "fight like hell".
Many supporters did, joining a crowd already there. Around 2:15 p.m. the mob broke into the building, disrupting certification and causing the evacuation of Congress. During the violence, Trump watched TV and posted messages on Twitter without asking the rioters to disperse.
At 6 p.m., Trump tweeted that the rioters should "go home with love & in peace", calling them "great patriots" and "very special" and repeating that the election was stolen from him.
After the mob was removed from the Capitol, Congress reconvened and confirmed the Biden election win in the early hours of the following morning. According to the Department of Justice, more than 140 police officers were injured, and five people, including a Capitol Police officer, died.
More than 1,000 people were arrested in the aftermath of the attack. In March 2023, Trump collaborated with incarcerated rioters on a song to benefit the prisoners, and, in June, he said that, if elected, he would pardon a large number of them.
Second impeachment:
Main articles:
On January 11, 2021, an article of impeachment charging Trump with incitement of insurrection against the U.S. government was introduced to the House. The House voted 232–197 to impeach Trump on January 13, making him the first U.S. president to be impeached twice. Ten Republicans voted for the impeachment—the most members of a party ever to vote to impeach a president of their own party.
On February 13, following a five-day Senate trial, Trump was acquitted when the Senate voted 57–43 for conviction, falling ten votes short of the two-thirds majority required to convict; seven Republicans joined every Democrat in voting to convict, the most bipartisan support in any Senate impeachment trial of a president or former president.
Most Republicans voted to acquit Trump, although some held him responsible but felt the Senate did not have jurisdiction over former presidents (Trump had left office on January 20; the Senate voted 56–44 the trial was constitutional); included in the latter group was Mitch McConnell.
Post-presidency (2021–present)
See also: Legal affairs of Donald Trump
At the end of his term, Trump went to live at his Mar-a-Lago club. As provided for by the Former Presidents Act, he established an office there to handle his post-presidential activities.
Trump's false claims concerning the 2020 election were commonly referred to as the "big lie" (see below) in the press and by his critics. In May 2021, Trump and his supporters attempted to co-opt the term, using it to refer to the election itself.
The Republican Party used Trump's false election narrative to justify the imposition of new voting restrictions in its favor. As late as July 2022, Trump was still pressuring state legislators to overturn the 2020 election by rescinding the state's electoral votes for Biden.
Trump resumed his campaign-style rallies with an 85-minute speech at the annual North Carolina Republican Party convention on June 6, 2021. On June 26, he held his first public rally since the January 6 rally that preceded the riot at the Capitol.
Unlike other former presidents, Trump continued to dominate his party; he has been compared to a modern-day party boss. He continued fundraising, raising more than twice as much as the Republican Party itself, hinted at a third candidacy, and profited from fundraisers many Republican candidates held at Mar-a-Lago.
Much of his focus was on the people in charge of elections and how elections are run. In the 2022 midterm elections he endorsed over 200 candidates for various offices, most of whom supported his false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. Though there were exceptions, Trump's endorsement was seen as important for candidates in Republican primary elections.
Trump registered a new company in February 2021. Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) was formed for providing "social networking services" to "customers in the United States".
In October 2021, Trump announced the planned merger of TMTG with Digital World Acquisition, a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC). A main backer of the SPAC is China-based financier ARC Group, who was reportedly involved in setting up the proposed merger. The transaction is under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
In February 2022, TMTG launched Truth Social, a Twitter-like social-media platform. As of March 2023, Trump Media, which had taken $8 million from Russia-connected entities, was being investigated by federal prosecutors for possible money laundering.
Post-presidency investigations:
Trump is the subject of several probes into his business dealings and his actions both before and during the presidency. In February 2021, the district attorney for Fulton County, Georgia, Fani Willis, announced a criminal probe into Trump's phone calls to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
The New York State Attorney General's Office is conducting criminal investigations into Trump's business activities in conjunction with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.
By May 2021, a special grand jury was considering indictments. In July 2021, New York prosecutors charged the Trump Organization with a "15 year 'scheme to defraud' the government". In January 2023, the organization's chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, was sentenced to five months in jail and five years probation for tax fraud after a plea deal.
In December 2021, the New York State Attorney General's office subpoenaed Trump to produce documents related to the business. On April 25, 2022, New York state judge Arthur Engoron held Trump in contempt of court for failing to comply with the subpoena. He imposed a fine of $10,000 per day until he complies. Trump was deposed in August and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 400 times.
In September 2022, the Attorney General of New York filed a civil fraud case against Trump, his three oldest children, and the Trump Organization.
FBI investigations:
Main articles:
- FBI investigation into Donald Trump's handling of government documents,
- FBI search of Mar-a-Lago,
- Smith special counsel investigation
When Trump left the White House in January 2021, he took government documents and material with him to Mar-a-Lago. By May 2021, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the federal agency that preserves government records, realized that important documents had not been turned over to them at the end of Trump's term and asked his office to locate them.
In January 2022, they retrieved 15 boxes of White House records from Mar-a-Lago. NARA later informed the Department of Justice that some of the retrieved documents were classified material.
The Justice Department began an investigation in April 2022 and convened a grand jury. The Justice Department sent Trump a subpoena for additional material on May 11. On June 3, Justice Department officials visited Mar-a-Lago and received some classified documents from Trump's lawyers.
One of the lawyers signed a statement affirming that all material marked as classified had been returned to the government. Later that month an additional subpoena was sent requesting surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago, which was provided.
On August 8, 2022, FBI agents searched Trump's residence, office, and storage areas at Mar-a-Lago to recover government documents and material Trump had taken with him when he left office in violation of the Presidential Records Act, reportedly including some related to nuclear weapons.
The search warrant, authorized by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and approved by a federal magistrate judge, and the written inventory of the seized items were made public on August 12. The text of the search warrant indicates an investigation of potential violations of the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice laws. The items taken in the search included 11 sets of classified documents, four of them tagged as "top secret" and one as "top secret/SCI", the highest level of classification.
On November 18, 2022, Garland appointed a special counsel, federal prosecutor Jack Smith, to oversee the federal criminal investigations into Trump retaining government property at Mar-a-Lago and examining Trump's role in the events leading up to the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
Criminal referral by the House January 6 Committee:
Main article: United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack
On December 19, 2022, the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack recommended criminal charges against Trump for obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and inciting or assisting an insurrection.
2024 presidential campaign:
Main article: Donald Trump 2024 presidential campaign
On November 15, 2022, Trump announced his candidacy for the 2024 United States presidential election and set up a fundraising account. In March 2023, the campaign began diverting 10 percent of the donations to Trump's leadership PAC which had paid $16 million for his legal bills by June 2023.
Indictments:
Main articles:
In March 2023, a New York grand jury indicted Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. On April 4, he surrendered and was arrested and arraigned; he pleaded not guilty on all counts and was released. The judge scheduled the next in-person hearing for December 4; Trump has until August 8 to file any motions in the case.
On June 8, the Justice Department indicted Trump in Miami federal court for 31 counts of "willfully retaining national defense information under the Espionage Act", one count of making false statements, and, jointly with a personal aide, single counts of conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding government documents, corruptly concealing records, concealing a document in a federal investigation and scheming to conceal their efforts.
The case was assigned to Judge Aileen M. Cannon. Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Public image:
Main article: Public image of Donald Trump
Approval ratings and scholar surveys:
Further information:
- Opinion polling on the Donald Trump administration;
- Historical rankings of presidents of the United States
Trump was the only president to never reach a 50 percent approval rating in the Gallup poll dating to 1938. His approval ratings showed a record-high partisan gap: 88 percent among Republicans and 7 percent among Democrats.
Until September 2020, the ratings were unusually stable, reaching a high of 49 percent and a low of 35 percent. Trump finished his term with an approval rating between 29 percent and 34 percent—the lowest of any president since modern polling began—and a record-low average of 41 percent throughout his presidency.
In Gallup's annual poll asking Americans to name the man they admire the most, Trump placed second to Obama in 2017 and 2018, tied with Obama for most admired man in 2019, and was named most admired in 2020. Since Gallup started conducting the poll in 1948, Trump is the first elected president not to be named most admired in his first year in office.
A Gallup poll in 134 countries comparing the approval ratings of U.S. leadership between the years 2016 and 2017 found that Trump led Obama in job approval in only 29 countries, most of them non-democracies; approval of U.S. leadership plummeted among allies and G7 countries. Overall ratings were similar to those in the last two years of the George W. Bush presidency.
By mid-2020, only 16 percent of international respondents to a 13-nation Pew Research poll expressed confidence in Trump, a lower score than those historically accorded to Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping.
C-SPAN, which has surveyed presidential historians on presidential leadership each time the administration changed since 2000, ranked Trump fourth–lowest overall in their Presidential Historians Survey 2021, with Trump rated lowest in the leadership characteristics categories for moral authority and administrative skills.
The Siena College Research Institute (SCRI) has surveyed presidential scholars during the second year of the first term of each president since 1982. For the second time, SCRI ranked Trump third-lowest overall. He was ranked last on background, integrity, intelligence, foreign policy accomplishments, and executive appointments, and second to last on ability to compromise, executive ability, and present overall view. He was ranked near the bottom in all categories except for luck, willingness to take risks, and party leadership.
Social media:
Main article: Social media use by Donald Trump
Trump's social media presence attracted worldwide attention after he joined Twitter in 2009. He tweeted frequently during the 2016 election campaign and as president until Twitter banned him in the final days of his term.
Over twelve years, Trump posted around 57,000 tweets, often using Twitter as a direct means of communication with the public and sidelining the press.
In June 2017, a White House press secretary said that Trump's tweets were official presidential statements. Trump often announced terminations of administration officials and cabinet members over Twitter.
After years of criticism for allowing Trump to post misinformation and falsehoods, Twitter began to tag some of his tweets with fact-checking warnings in May 2020. In response, Trump tweeted that "Social Media Platforms totally silence conservative voices" and that he would "strongly regulate or close them down".
In the days after the storming of the United States Capitol, Trump was banned from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other platforms. The loss of Trump's social media presence, including his 88.7 million Twitter followers, diminished his ability to shape events, and prompted a dramatic decrease in the volume of misinformation shared on Twitter.
Trump's early attempts to re-establish a social media presence were unsuccessful. In February 2022, he launched social media platform Truth Social where he only attracted a fraction of his Twitter following.
On November 19, 2022, Twitter owner Elon Musk reinstated Trump's account. Trump had said that he would stay on Truth Social.
Relationship with the press:
Further information: Presidency of Donald Trump § Relationship with the news media
Trump sought media attention throughout his career, sustaining a "love–hate" relationship with the press. In the 2016 campaign, Trump benefited from a record amount of free media coverage, elevating his standing in the Republican primaries. The New York Times writer Amy Chozick wrote in 2018 that Trump's media dominance enthralled the public and created "must-see TV."
As a candidate and as president, Trump frequently accused the press of bias, calling it the "fake news media" and "the enemy of the people". In 2018, journalist Lesley Stahl recounted Trump's saying he intentionally demeaned and discredited the media "so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you".
As president, Trump privately and publicly mused about revoking the press credentials of journalists he viewed as critical. His administration moved to revoke the press passes of two White House reporters, which were restored by the courts.
In 2019, a member of the foreign press reported many of the same concerns as those of media in the U.S., expressing concern that a normalization process by reporters and media results in an inaccurate characterization of Trump.
The Trump White House held about a hundred formal press briefings in 2017, declining by half during 2018 and to two in 2019.
Trump also deployed the legal system to intimidate the press. In early 2020, the Trump campaign sued The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN for defamation in opinion pieces about Russian election interference. Legal experts said that the lawsuits lacked merit and were not likely to succeed. By March 2021, the lawsuits against The New York Times and CNN had been dismissed.
False or misleading statements:
See also: False or misleading statements by Donald Trump
Chart below: Fact-checkers from The Washington Post, the Toronto Star, and CNN compiled data on "false or misleading claims" (orange background), and "false claims" (violet foreground), respectively.
As a candidate and as president, Trump frequently made false statements in public speeches and remarks to an extent unprecedented in American politics. His falsehoods became a distinctive part of his political identity.
Trump's false and misleading statements were documented by fact-checkers, including at The Washington Post, which tallied a total of 30,573 false or misleading statements made by Trump over his four-year term.
Trump's falsehoods increased in frequency over time, rising from about six false or misleading claims per day in his first year as president to 16 per day in his second year, 22 per day in his third year, and 39 per day in his final year. He reached 10,000 false or misleading claims 27 months into his term; 20,000 false or misleading claims 14 months later, and 30,000 false or misleading claims five months later.
Some of Trump's falsehoods were inconsequential, such as his claim of the "biggest inaugural crowd ever". Others had more far-reaching effects, such as his promotion of unproven antimalarial drugs as a treatment for COVID-19 in a press conference and on Twitter.
The claims had consequences worldwide, such as a shortage of these drugs in the United States and panic-buying in Africa and South Asia. Other misinformation, such as misattributing a rise in crime in England and Wales to the "spread of radical Islamic terror", served Trump's domestic political purposes. As a matter of principle, Trump does not apologize for his falsehoods.
Despite the frequency of Trump's falsehoods, the media rarely referred to them as lies. The first time The Washington Post did so was in August 2018, when it declared that some of Trump's misstatements, in particular those concerning hush money paid to Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, were lies.
In 2020, Trump was a significant source of disinformation on mail-in voting and misinformation on the COVID-19 pandemic. His attacks on mail-in ballots and other election practices served to weaken public faith in the integrity of the 2020 presidential election, while his disinformation about the pandemic delayed and weakened the national response to it.
James Pfiffner, professor of policy and government at George Mason University, wrote in 2019 that Trump lies differently from previous presidents, because he offers "egregious false statements that are demonstrably contrary to well-known facts"; these lies are the "most important" of all Trump lies.
By calling facts into question, people will be unable to properly evaluate their government, with beliefs or policy irrationally settled by "political power"; this erodes liberal democracy, wrote Pfiffner.
Promotion of conspiracy theories:
Main article: List of conspiracy theories promoted by Donald Trump
Before and throughout his presidency, Trump has promoted numerous conspiracy theories, including:
In at least two instances, Trump clarified to press that he also believed the conspiracy theory in question.
During and since the 2020 presidential election, Trump has promoted various conspiracy theories for his defeat including dead people voting, voting machines changing or deleting Trump votes, fraudulent mail-in voting, throwing out Trump votes, and "finding" suitcases full of Biden votes.
Racial views:
Main article: Racial views of Donald Trump
Many of Trump's comments and actions have been considered racist. In national polling, about half of respondents said that Trump is racist; a greater proportion believed that he emboldened racists. Several studies and surveys found that racist attitudes fueled Trump's political ascent and were more important than economic factors in determining the allegiance of Trump voters.
Racist and Islamophobic attitudes are a powerful indicator of support for Trump.
In 1975, he settled a 1973 Department of Justice lawsuit that alleged housing discrimination against black renters.
He has also been accused of racism for insisting a group of black and Latino teenagers were guilty of raping a white woman in the 1989 Central Park jogger case, even after they were exonerated by DNA evidence in 2002. As of 2019, he maintained this position.
In 2011, when he was reportedly considering a presidential run, he became the leading proponent of the racist "birther" conspiracy theory, alleging that Barack Obama, the first black U.S. president, was not born in the United States.
In April, he claimed credit for pressuring the White House to publish the "long-form" birth certificate, which he considered fraudulent, and later said this made him "very popular". In September 2016, amid pressure, he acknowledged that Obama was born in the U.S. In 2017, he reportedly expressed birther views in private.
According to an analysis in Political Science Quarterly, Trump made "explicitly racist appeals to whites" during his 2016 presidential campaign. In particular, his campaign launch speech drew widespread criticism for claiming Mexican immigrants were "bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists".
His later comments about a Mexican-American judge presiding over a civil suit regarding Trump University were also criticized as racist.
Trump's comments on the 2017 far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, condemning "this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides" and stating that there were "very fine people on both sides", were widely criticized as implying a moral equivalence between the white supremacist demonstrators and the counter-protesters.
In a January 2018 Oval Office meeting to discuss immigration legislation, Trump reportedly referred to El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, and African nations as "shithole countries". His remarks were condemned as racist.
In July 2019, Trump tweeted that four Democratic congresswomen—all minorities, three of whom are native-born Americans—should "go back" to the countries they "came from".
Two days later the House of Representatives voted 240–187, mostly along party lines, to condemn his "racist comments". White nationalist publications and social media sites praised his remarks, which continued over the following days. Trump continued to make similar remarks during his 2020 campaign.
Misogyny and allegations of sexual misconduct:
Main article: Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations
Trump has a history of insulting and belittling women when speaking to media and on social media. He made lewd comments, demeaned women's looks, and called them names, such as "dog", "crazed", "crying lowlife", "face of a pig", or "horseface".
At least 26 women publicly accused Trump of rape, kissing, and groping without consent; looking under women's skirts; and walking in on naked teenage pageant contestants. Trump has denied all of the allegations.
In October 2016, two days before the second presidential debate, a 2005 "hot mic" recording surfaced in which Trump was heard bragging about kissing and groping women without their consent, saying that "when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab 'em by the pussy."
The incident's widespread media exposure led to Trump's first public apology during the campaign and caused outrage across the political spectrum.
Incitement of violence:
Research suggests Trump's rhetoric caused an increased incidence of hate crimes. During his 2016 campaign, he urged or praised physical attacks against protesters or reporters. Numerous defendants investigated or prosecuted for violent acts and hate crimes, including participants of the January 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol, cited Trump's rhetoric in arguing that they were not culpable or should receive a lighter sentence.
A nationwide review by ABC News in May 2020 identified at least 54 criminal cases from August 2015 to April 2020 in which Trump was invoked in direct connection with violence or threats of violence mostly by white men and primarily against members of minority groups.
Popular culture:
Main articles:
Trump has been the subject of parody, comedy, and caricature on television, in films, and in comics. He has been named in hundreds of hip hop songs since the 1980s—until 2015, most of these references cast Trump in a positive light, but they turned largely negative after he began running for office.
See also:
Trumpism
Trump's false and misleading statements were documented by fact-checkers, including at The Washington Post, which tallied a total of 30,573 false or misleading statements made by Trump over his four-year term.
Trump's falsehoods increased in frequency over time, rising from about six false or misleading claims per day in his first year as president to 16 per day in his second year, 22 per day in his third year, and 39 per day in his final year. He reached 10,000 false or misleading claims 27 months into his term; 20,000 false or misleading claims 14 months later, and 30,000 false or misleading claims five months later.
Some of Trump's falsehoods were inconsequential, such as his claim of the "biggest inaugural crowd ever". Others had more far-reaching effects, such as his promotion of unproven antimalarial drugs as a treatment for COVID-19 in a press conference and on Twitter.
The claims had consequences worldwide, such as a shortage of these drugs in the United States and panic-buying in Africa and South Asia. Other misinformation, such as misattributing a rise in crime in England and Wales to the "spread of radical Islamic terror", served Trump's domestic political purposes. As a matter of principle, Trump does not apologize for his falsehoods.
Despite the frequency of Trump's falsehoods, the media rarely referred to them as lies. The first time The Washington Post did so was in August 2018, when it declared that some of Trump's misstatements, in particular those concerning hush money paid to Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, were lies.
In 2020, Trump was a significant source of disinformation on mail-in voting and misinformation on the COVID-19 pandemic. His attacks on mail-in ballots and other election practices served to weaken public faith in the integrity of the 2020 presidential election, while his disinformation about the pandemic delayed and weakened the national response to it.
James Pfiffner, professor of policy and government at George Mason University, wrote in 2019 that Trump lies differently from previous presidents, because he offers "egregious false statements that are demonstrably contrary to well-known facts"; these lies are the "most important" of all Trump lies.
By calling facts into question, people will be unable to properly evaluate their government, with beliefs or policy irrationally settled by "political power"; this erodes liberal democracy, wrote Pfiffner.
Promotion of conspiracy theories:
Main article: List of conspiracy theories promoted by Donald Trump
Before and throughout his presidency, Trump has promoted numerous conspiracy theories, including:
- Obama birtherism,
- the Clinton body count conspiracy theory,
- QAnon,
- the Global warming hoax theory,
- Trump Tower wiretapping allegations,
- a John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory involving Rafael Cruz,
- linking talk show host Joe Scarborough to the death of a staffer,
- alleged foul-play in the death of Justice Antonin Scalia,
- alleged Ukrainian interference in U.S. elections,
- and that Osama bin Laden was alive
- and Obama and Biden had members of Navy SEAL Team 6 killed
In at least two instances, Trump clarified to press that he also believed the conspiracy theory in question.
During and since the 2020 presidential election, Trump has promoted various conspiracy theories for his defeat including dead people voting, voting machines changing or deleting Trump votes, fraudulent mail-in voting, throwing out Trump votes, and "finding" suitcases full of Biden votes.
Racial views:
Main article: Racial views of Donald Trump
Many of Trump's comments and actions have been considered racist. In national polling, about half of respondents said that Trump is racist; a greater proportion believed that he emboldened racists. Several studies and surveys found that racist attitudes fueled Trump's political ascent and were more important than economic factors in determining the allegiance of Trump voters.
Racist and Islamophobic attitudes are a powerful indicator of support for Trump.
In 1975, he settled a 1973 Department of Justice lawsuit that alleged housing discrimination against black renters.
He has also been accused of racism for insisting a group of black and Latino teenagers were guilty of raping a white woman in the 1989 Central Park jogger case, even after they were exonerated by DNA evidence in 2002. As of 2019, he maintained this position.
In 2011, when he was reportedly considering a presidential run, he became the leading proponent of the racist "birther" conspiracy theory, alleging that Barack Obama, the first black U.S. president, was not born in the United States.
In April, he claimed credit for pressuring the White House to publish the "long-form" birth certificate, which he considered fraudulent, and later said this made him "very popular". In September 2016, amid pressure, he acknowledged that Obama was born in the U.S. In 2017, he reportedly expressed birther views in private.
According to an analysis in Political Science Quarterly, Trump made "explicitly racist appeals to whites" during his 2016 presidential campaign. In particular, his campaign launch speech drew widespread criticism for claiming Mexican immigrants were "bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists".
His later comments about a Mexican-American judge presiding over a civil suit regarding Trump University were also criticized as racist.
Trump's comments on the 2017 far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, condemning "this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides" and stating that there were "very fine people on both sides", were widely criticized as implying a moral equivalence between the white supremacist demonstrators and the counter-protesters.
In a January 2018 Oval Office meeting to discuss immigration legislation, Trump reportedly referred to El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, and African nations as "shithole countries". His remarks were condemned as racist.
In July 2019, Trump tweeted that four Democratic congresswomen—all minorities, three of whom are native-born Americans—should "go back" to the countries they "came from".
Two days later the House of Representatives voted 240–187, mostly along party lines, to condemn his "racist comments". White nationalist publications and social media sites praised his remarks, which continued over the following days. Trump continued to make similar remarks during his 2020 campaign.
Misogyny and allegations of sexual misconduct:
Main article: Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations
Trump has a history of insulting and belittling women when speaking to media and on social media. He made lewd comments, demeaned women's looks, and called them names, such as "dog", "crazed", "crying lowlife", "face of a pig", or "horseface".
At least 26 women publicly accused Trump of rape, kissing, and groping without consent; looking under women's skirts; and walking in on naked teenage pageant contestants. Trump has denied all of the allegations.
In October 2016, two days before the second presidential debate, a 2005 "hot mic" recording surfaced in which Trump was heard bragging about kissing and groping women without their consent, saying that "when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab 'em by the pussy."
The incident's widespread media exposure led to Trump's first public apology during the campaign and caused outrage across the political spectrum.
Incitement of violence:
Research suggests Trump's rhetoric caused an increased incidence of hate crimes. During his 2016 campaign, he urged or praised physical attacks against protesters or reporters. Numerous defendants investigated or prosecuted for violent acts and hate crimes, including participants of the January 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol, cited Trump's rhetoric in arguing that they were not culpable or should receive a lighter sentence.
A nationwide review by ABC News in May 2020 identified at least 54 criminal cases from August 2015 to April 2020 in which Trump was invoked in direct connection with violence or threats of violence mostly by white men and primarily against members of minority groups.
Popular culture:
Main articles:
- Donald Trump in popular culture
- Donald Trump in music
- Musicians who oppose Donald Trump's use of their music
Trump has been the subject of parody, comedy, and caricature on television, in films, and in comics. He has been named in hundreds of hip hop songs since the 1980s—until 2015, most of these references cast Trump in a positive light, but they turned largely negative after he began running for office.
See also:
- Archive of Donald Trump's tweets
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Donald Trump at IMDb
- Donald Trump on the Internet Archive
- Donald Trump's page on whitehouse.gov
Trumpism
Pictures above: Clockwise from top:
Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina; Donald Trump at a 2016 rally in Arizona; armed supporters of Trump at a Minnesota demonstration, September 2020; a supporter kneeling in prayer at a 2016 Trump rally in Tucson; a supporter rejecting calls for empathy at a rally in 2019; Trump supporters storming the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021
Trumpism:
Trumpism is the political ideologies, social emotions, style of governance, political movement, and set of mechanisms for acquiring and keeping control of power associated with Donald Trump and his political base. Trumpists and Trumpian are terms used to refer to those exhibiting characteristics of Trumpism, whereas political supporters of Trump are known as Trumpers.
The precise composition of Trumpism is contentious and is sufficiently complex to overwhelm any single framework of analysis; it has been referred to as an American political variant of the far right and the national-populist and neo-nationalist sentiment seen in multiple nations worldwide from the late 2010s to the early 2020s.
Though not strictly limited to any one party, Trump supporters became the largest faction of the Republican Party in the United States, with the remainder often characterized as "the elite" or "the establishment" in contrast. Some Republicans became members of the Never Trump movement, with several leaving the party in protest of Trump's ascendancy.
Some commentators have rejected the populist designation for Trumpism and view it instead as part of a trend towards a new form of fascism or neo-fascism, with some referring to it as explicitly fascist and others as authoritarian and illiberal. Others have more mildly identified it as a specific lite version of fascism in the United States.
Some historians, including many of those using a new fascism classification, write of the hazards of direct comparisons with European fascist regimes of the 1930s, stating that while there are parallels, there are also important dissimilarities.
The label Trumpism has been applied to national-conservative and national-populist movements in other Western democracies, and many politicians outside of the United States have been labeled as staunch allies of Trump or Trumpism, or even as their country's equivalent to Trump, by various news agencies; among them are:
Populist themes, sentiments, and methods:
Trumpism started its development predominantly during Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. For many scholars, it denotes a populist political method that suggests nationalistic answers to political, economic, and social problems. These inclinations are refracted into such policy preferences as immigration restrictionism, trade protectionism, isolationism, and opposition to entitlement reform.
As a political method, populism is not driven by any particular ideology. Former National Security Advisor and close Trump advisor John Bolton states this is true of Trump, disputing that Trumpism even exists in any meaningful philosophical sense, adding that "[t]he man does not have a philosophy. And people can try and draw lines between the dots of his decisions. They will fail."
Writing for the Routledge Handbook of Global Populism (2019), Olivier Jutel claims, "What Donald Trump reveals is that the various iterations of right-wing American populism have less to do with a programmatic social conservatism or libertarian economics than with enjoyment."
Referring to the populism of Trump, sociologist Michael Kimmel states that it "is not a theory [or] an ideology, it's an emotion. And the emotion is righteous indignation that the government is screwing 'us'".
Kimmel notes that "Trump is an interesting character because he channels all that sense of what I called 'aggrieved entitlement,'" a term Kimmel defines as "that sense that those benefits to which you believed yourself entitled have been snatched away from you by unseen forces larger and more powerful. You feel yourself to be the heir to a great promise, the American Dream, which has turned into an impossible fantasy for the very people who were supposed to inherit it."
Communications scholar Zizi Papacharissi explains the utility of being ideologically vague, and using terms and slogans that can mean anything the supporter wants them to mean. "When these publics thrive in affective engagement it's because they've found an affective hook that's built around an open signifier that they get to use and reuse and re-employ.
So yes, of course you know, President Trump has used MAGA; that's an open signifier that pulls in all of these people, and is open because it allows them all to assign different meanings to it. So MAGA works for connecting publics that are different, because it is open enough to permit people to ascribe their own meaning to it."
Other contributors to the Routledge Handbook of Populism note that populist leaders rather than being ideology driven are instead pragmatic and opportunistic regarding themes, ideas and beliefs that strongly resonate with their followers.
Exit polling data suggests the campaign was successful at mobilizing the "white disenfranchised the lower- to working-class European-Americans who are experiencing growing social inequality and who often have stated opposition to the American political establishment. Ideologically, Trumpism has a right-wing populist accent.
Focus on sentiments:
Historian Peter E. Gordon raises the possibility that "Trump, far from being a violation of the norm, actually signifies an emergent norm of the social order" where the categories of the psychological and political have dissolved.
In accounting for Trump's election and ability to sustain stable high approval ratings among a significant segment of voters, Erika Tucker argues in the book Trump and Political Philosophy that though all presidential campaigns have strong emotions associated with them, Trump was able to recognize, and then to gain the trust and loyalty of those who, like him, felt a particular set of strong emotions about perceived changes in the United States.
She notes, "Political psychologist Drew Westen has argued that Democrats are less successful at gauging and responding to affective politics—issues that arouse strong emotional states in citizens."
Like many academics examining the populist appeal of Trump's messaging, Hidalgo-Tenorio and Benítez-Castro draw on the theories of Ernesto Laclau writing, "The emotional appeal of populist discourse is key to its polarising effects, this being so much so that populism 'would be unintelligible without the affective component.' (Laclau 2005)"
Scholars from a wide number of fields have argued that particular affective themes and the dynamics of their impact on social media-connected followers characterize Trump and his supporters.
Pleasure from sympathetic company:
Communications scholar Michael Carpini states that "Trumpism is a culmination of trends that have been occurring for several decades. What we are witnessing is nothing short of a fundamental shift in the relationships between journalism, politics, and democracy." Among the shifts, Carpini identifies "the collapsing of the prior [media] regime's presumed and enforced distinctions between news and entertainment."
Examining Trump's use of media for the book Language in the Trump Era, communication professor Marco Jacquemet writes that "It's an approach that, like much of the rest of Trump's ideology and policy agenda, assumes (correctly, it appears) that his audiences care more about shock and entertainment value in their media consumption than almost anything else."
The perspective is shared among other communication academics, with Plasser & Ulram (2003) describing a media logic which emphasizes "personalization ... a political star system ... [and] sports based dramatization."
Olivier Jutel notes that "Donald Trump's celebrity status and reality-TV rhetoric of 'winning' and 'losing' corresponds perfectly to these values", asserting that "Fox News and conservative personalities from Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Alex Jones do not simply represent a new political and media voice but embody the convergence of politics and media in which affect and enjoyment are the central values of media production."
Studying Trump's use of social media, anthropologist Jessica Johnson finds that social emotional pleasure plays a central role, writing, "Rather than finding accurate news meaningful, Facebook users find the affective pleasure of connectivity addictive, whether or not the information they share is factual, and that is how communicative capitalism captivates subjects as it holds them captive."
Looking back at the world prior to social media, communications researcher Brian L. Ott writes: "I'm nostalgic for the world of television that Neil Postman (1985) argued, produced the 'least well-informed people in the Western world' by packaging news as entertainment. Twitter is producing the most self-involved people in history by treating everything one does or thinks as newsworthy. Television may have assaulted journalism, but Twitter killed it."
Commenting on Trump's support among Fox News viewers, Hofstra University Communication Dean Mark Lukasiewicz has a similar perspective, writing, "Tristan Harris famously said that social networks are about 'affirmation, not information'—and the same can be said about cable news, especially in prime time."
Arlie Russell Hochschild's perspective on the relationship between Trump supporters and their preferred sources of information - whether social media friends or news and commentary stars, is that they are trusted due to the affective bond they have with them.
As media scholar Daniel Kreiss summarizes Hochschild, "Trump, along with Fox News, gave these strangers in their own land the hope that they would be restored to their rightful place at the center of the nation, and provided a very real emotional release from the fetters of political correctness that dictated they respect people of color, lesbians and gays, and those of other faiths ... that the network's personalities share the same 'deep story' of political and social life, and therefore they learn from them 'what to feel afraid, angry, and anxious about.'"
From Kreiss's 2018 account of conservative personalities and media, information became less important than providing a sense of familial bonding, where "family provides a sense of identity, place, and belonging; emotional, social, and cultural support and security; and gives rise to political and social affiliations and beliefs."
Hochschild gives the example of one woman who explains the familial bond of trust with the star personalities. "Bill O'Reilly is like a steady, reliable dad. Sean Hannity is like a difficult uncle who rises to anger too quickly. Megyn Kelly is like a smart sister. Then there's Greta Van Susteren. And Juan Williams, who came over from NPR, which was too left for him, the adoptee. They're all different, just like in a family."
Media scholar Olivier Jutel focuses on the neoliberal privatization and market segmentation of the public square, noting that, "Affect is central to the brand strategy of Fox which imagined its journalism not in terms of servicing the rational citizen in the public sphere but in 'craft[ing] intensive relationships with their viewers' (Jones, 2012) in order to sustain audience share across platforms."
In this segmented market, Trump "offers himself as an ego-ideal to an individuated public of enjoyment that coalesce around his media brand as part of their own performance of identity."
Jutel cautions that it is not just conservative media companies that benefit from the transformation of news media to conform to values of spectacle and reality TV drama. "Trump is a definitive product of mediatized politics providing the spectacle that drives ratings and affective media consumption, either as part of his populist movement or as the liberal resistance."
Researchers give differing emphasis to which emotions are important to followers. Michael Richardson argues in the Journal of Media and Cultural Studies that "affirmation, amplification and circulation of disgust is one of the primary affective drivers of Trump's political success."
Richardson agrees with Ott about the "entanglement of Trumpian affect and social media crowds" who seek "affective affirmation, confirmation and amplification. Social media postings of crowd experiences accumulate as 'archives of feelings' that are both dynamic in nature and affirmative of social values (Pybus 2015)."
Using Trump as an example, social trust expert Karen Jones follows philosopher Annette Baier in claiming that the masters of the art of creating trust and distrust are populist politicians and criminals. On this view, it is not moral philosophers who are the experts at discerning different forms of trust, but members of this class of practitioners who "show a masterful appreciation of the ways in which certain emotional states drive out trust and replace it with distrust."
Jones sees Trump as an exemplar of this class who recognize that fear and contempt are powerful tools that can reorient networks of trust and distrust in social networks in order to alter how a potential supporter "interprets the words, deeds, and motives of the other."
She points out that the tactic is used globally writing, "A core strategy of Donald Trump, both as candidate and president, has been to manufacture fear and contempt towards some undocumented migrants (among other groups). This strategy of manipulating fear and contempt has gone global, being replicated with minor local adjustment in Australia, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Italy and the United Kingdom."
Right-wing authoritarian populism:
Other academics have made politically urgent warnings about Trumpian authoritarianism, such as Yale sociologist Philip S. Gorski who writes, "the election of Donald Trump constitutes perhaps the greatest threat to American democracy since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. There is a real and growing danger that representative government will be slowly but effectively supplanted by a populist form of authoritarian rule in the years to come. Media intimidation, mass propaganda, voter suppression, court packing, and even armed paramilitaries—many of the necessary and sufficient conditions for an authoritarian devolution are gradually falling into place."
Some academics regard such authoritarian backlash as a feature of liberal democracies. Some have even argued that Trump is a totalitarian capitalist exploiting the "fascist impulses of his ordinary supporters that hide in plain sight." Michelle Goldberg, an opinion columnist for The New York Times, compares "the spirit of Trumpism" to classical fascist themes.
The "mobilizing vision" of fascism is of "the national community rising phoenix-like after a period of encroaching decadence which all but destroyed it", which "sounds a lot like MAGA" (Make America Great Again) according to Goldberg.
Similarly, like the Trump movement, fascism sees a "need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group's historical destiny." They believe in "the superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason".
Conservative columnist George Will considers Trumpism similar to fascism, stating that Trumpism is "a mood masquerading as a doctrine". National unity is based "on shared domestic dreads"—for fascists the "Jews", for Trump the media ("enemies of the people"), "elites" and "globalists". Solutions come not from tedious "incrementalism and conciliation", but from the leader (who claims "only I can fix it") unfettered by procedure.
The political base is kept entertained with mass rallies, but inevitably the strongman develops a contempt for those he leads. Both are based on machismo, and in the case of Trumpism, "appeals to those in thrall to country-music manliness: 'We're truck-driving, beer-drinking, big-chested Americans too freedom-loving to let any itsy-bitsy virus make us wear masks.'"
Disputing the view that the surge of support for Trumpism and Brexit represents a new phenomenon, political scientist Karen Stenner and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt present the argument that the far-right populist wave that seemed to 'come out of nowhere' did not in fact come out of nowhere.
It is not a sudden madness, or virus, or tide, or even just a copycat phenomenon—the emboldening of bigots and despots by others' electoral successes. Rather, it is something that sits just beneath the surface of any human society—including in the advanced liberal democracies at the heart of the Western world—and can be activated by core elements of liberal democracy itself.
Discussing the statistical basis for their conclusions regarding the triggering of such waves, Stenner and Haidt present the view that "authoritarians, by their very nature, want to believe in authorities and institutions; they want to feel they are part of a cohesive community.
Accordingly, they seem (if anything) to be modestly inclined toward giving authorities and institutions the benefit of the doubt, and lending them their support until the moment these seem incapable of maintaining 'normative order'"; the authors write that this normative order is regularly threatened by liberal democracy itself because it tolerates a lack of consensus in group values and beliefs, tolerates disrespect of group authorities, nonconformity to group norms, or norms proving questionable, and in general promotes diversity and freedom from domination by authorities.
Stenner and Haidt regard such authoritarian waves as a feature of liberal democracies noting that the findings of their 2016 study of Trump and Brexit supporters was not unexpected, as they wrote: "Across two decades of empirical research, we cannot think of a significant exception to the finding that normative threat tends either to leave non-authoritarians utterly unmoved by the things that catalyze authoritarians or to propel them toward being (what one might conceive as) their 'best selves.'"
In previous investigations, this has seen non-authoritarians move toward positions of greater tolerance and respect for diversity under the very conditions that seem to propel authoritarians toward increasing intolerance.
Author and authoritarianism critic Masha Gessen contrasted the "democratic" strategy of the Republican establishment making policy arguments appealing to the public, with the "autocratic" strategy of appealing to an "audience of one" in Donald Trump. Gessen noted the fear of Republicans that Trump would endorse a primary election opponent or otherwise use his political power to undermine any fellow party members that he felt had betrayed him.
The 2020 Republican Party platform simply endorsed "the President's America-first agenda", prompting comparisons to contemporary leader-focused party platforms in Russia and China.
Nostalgia and male bravado:
Nostalgia is a staple of American politics but according to Philip Gorski, Trumpian nostalgia is novel because among other things "it severs the traditional connection between greatness and virtue." In the traditional "Puritan narrative, moral decline precedes material and political decline, and a return to the law must precede any return to greatness. ... Not so in Trump's version of nostalgia.
In this narrative, decline is brought about by docility and femininity and the return to greatness requires little more than a reassertion of dominance and masculinity. In this way, 'virtue' is reduced to its root etymology of manly bravado."
In studies of the men who would become Trump supporters Michael Kimmel describes the nostalgia of male entitlement felt by men who despaired "over whether or not anything could enable them to find a place with some dignity in this new, multicultural, and more egalitarian world. ...
These men were angry, but they all looked back nostalgically to a time when their sense of masculine entitlement went unchallenged. They wanted to reclaim their country, restore their rightful place in it, and retrieve their manhood in the process."
The term that describes the behavior of Kimmel's angry white males is toxic masculinity and according to William Liu, editor of the journal Psychology of Men and Masculinity, it applies especially to Trump.
Kimmel was surprised at the sexual turn the 2016 election took and thinks that Trump is for many men a fantasy figure, an uber-male completely free to indulge every desire. "Many of these guys feel that the current order of things has emasculated them, by which I mean it has taken away their ability to support a family and have great life. Here's a guy who says: 'I can build anything I want. I can do anything I want. I can have the women I want.' They're going, 'This guy is awesome!'"
Social psychologists Theresa Vescio and Nathaniel Schermerhorn note that "In his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump embodied HM [hegemonic masculinity] while waxing nostalgic for a racially homogenous past that maintained an unequal gender order. Trump performed HM by repeatedly referencing his status as a successful businessman ("blue-collar businessman") and alluding to how tough he would be as president.
Further contributing to his enactment of HM, Trump was openly hostile toward gender-atypical women, sexualized gender typical women, and attacked the masculinity of male peers and opponents."
In their studies involving 2007 people, they found that endorsement of hegemonic masculinity better predicted support for Trump than other factors, such as support for antiestablishment, antielitist, nativist, racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic perspectives.
Neville Hoad, an expert on gender issues in South Africa, sees this as a common theme with another strongman leader, Jacob Zuma, comparing his "Zulu Big Man version of toxic masculinity versus a dog whistle white supremacist version; the putative real estate billionaire turned reality television star".
Both authoritarian leaders are figureheads living the "masculinist fantasy of freedom" supporters dream of, a dream bound to national mythologies of the good life. According to Hoad, one description of this symbolism comes from Jacques Lacan who describes the supremely masculine mythic leader of the primal horde whose power to satisfy every pleasure or whim has not been castrated.
By activating such fantasies, toxic masculine behaviors from opulent displays of greed (the dream palaces of Mar-a-Lago and Nkandla), violent rhetoric, "grab them by the pussy" "locker room" "jokes" to misogynist insults, philandering, and even sexual predatory behavior including allegations of groping and raping become political assets not liabilities.
Gender role scholar Colleen Clemens describes this toxic masculinity as "a narrow and repressive description of manhood, designating manhood as defined by violence, sex, status and aggression.
It's the cultural ideal of manliness, where strength is everything while emotions are a weakness; where sex and brutality are yardsticks by which men are measured, while supposedly 'feminine' traits—which can range from emotional vulnerability to simply not being hypersexual—are the means by which your status as "man" can be taken away."
Writing in the Journal of Human Rights, Kimberly Theidon notes the COVID-19 pandemic's irony of Trumpian toxic masculinity: "Being a tough guy means wearing the mask of masculinity: Being a tough guy means refusing to don a mask that might preserve one's life and the lives of others."
Tough guy bravado appeared on the internet prior to attack on Congress on January 6, 2021, with one poster writing, "Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in ... . Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die." Of the rioters arrested for the attack on the U.S. Capitol, 88% were men, and 67% were 35 years or older.
Christian Trumpism:
According to 2016 election exit polls, 26% of voters self identified as white evangelical Christians, of whom more than three-fourths in 2017 approved of Trump's performance, most of them approving "very strongly" as reported by a Pew Research Center study.
In contrast, approximately two-thirds of non-white evangelicals supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, with 90% of black Protestants also voting for her even though their theological views are similar to evangelicals.
According to Yale researcher Philip Gorski, "the question is not so much why evangelicals voted for Trump then—many did not—but why so many white evangelicals did." Gorski's answer to why Trump, and not an orthodox evangelical was the first choice among white evangelicals was simply "because they are also white Christian nationalists and Trumpism is inter alia a reactionary version of white Christian nationalism."
Israeli philosopher Adi Ophir sees the politics of purity in the white Christian nationalist rhetoric of evangelical supporters, such as the comparison of Nehemiah's wall around Jerusalem to Trump's wall keeping out the enemy, writing, "the notion of the enemy includes 'Mexican migrants', 'filthy' gays, and even Catholics 'led astray by Satan', and the real danger these enemies pose is degradation to a 'blessed—great— ... nation' whose God is the Lord."
According to 2016 election exit polls, 26% of voters self identified as white evangelical Christians, of whom more than three-fourths in 2017 approved of Trump's performance, most of them approving "very strongly" as reported by a Pew Research Center study. In contrast, approximately two-thirds of non-white evangelicals supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, with 90% of black Protestants also voting for her even though their theological views are similar to evangelicals.
According to Yale researcher Philip Gorski, "the question is not so much why evangelicals voted for Trump then—many did not—but why so many white evangelicals did." Gorski's answer to why Trump, and not an orthodox evangelical was the first choice among white evangelicals was simply "because they are also white Christian nationalists and Trumpism is inter alia a reactionary version of white Christian nationalism."
Israeli philosopher Adi Ophir sees the politics of purity in the white Christian nationalist rhetoric of evangelical supporters, such as the comparison of Nehemiah's wall around Jerusalem to Trump's wall keeping out the enemy, writing, "the notion of the enemy includes 'Mexican migrants', 'filthy' gays, and even Catholics 'led astray by Satan', and the real danger these enemies pose is degradation to a 'blessed—great— ... nation' whose God is the Lord."
Jeffress claims that evangelical leaders' support of Trump is moral regardless of behavior that Christianity Today's chief editor called "a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused." Jeffress argues that "the godly principle here is that governments have one responsibility, and that is Romans 13 [which] says to avenge evil doers."
This same biblical chapter was used by Jeff Sessions to claim biblical justification for Trump's policy of separating children from immigrant families. Historian Lincoln Muller explains this is one of two types of interpretations of Romans 13 which has been used in American political debates since its founding and is on the side of "the thread of American history that justifies oppression and domination in the name of law and order."
From Jeffress's reading, government's purpose is as a "strongman to protect its citizens against evildoers", adding: "I don't care about that candidate's tone or vocabulary, I want the meanest toughest son a you-know-what I can find, and I believe that is biblical."
Jeffress referred to Barack Obama as "paving the way for the future reign of the Antichrist," Mitt Romney as a cult follower of a non-Christian religion and Roman Catholicism as a "Satanic" result of "Babylonian mystery religion." Jeffress traces the Christian libertarian perspective on government's sole role to suppress evil back to Saint Augustine who argued in The City of God against the Pagans (426 CE) that government's role is to restrain evil so Christians can peacefully practice their beliefs.
Martin Luther similarly believed that government should be limited to checking sin.
Like Jeffress, Richard Land refused to cut ties with Trump after his reaction to the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, with the explanation that "Jesus did not turn away from those who may have seemed brash with their words or behavior," adding that "now is not the time to quit or retreat, but just the opposite—to lean in closer."
Johnnie Moore's explanation for refusing to repudiate Trump after his Charlottesville response was that "you only make a difference if you have a seat at the table." Trinity Forum fellow Peter Wehner warns that "[t]he perennial danger facing Christians is seduction and self-delusion. That's what's happening in the Trump era. The president is using evangelical leaders to shield himself from criticism."
Evangelical biblical scholar Ben Witherington believes Trump's evangelical apologists' defensive use of the tax collector comparison is false and that retaining a "seat at the table" is supportable only if the Christian leader is admonishing the President to reverse course, explaining that "[t]he sinners and tax collectors were not political officials, so there is no analogy there.
Besides, Jesus was not giving the sinners and tax collectors political advice—he was telling them to repent! If that's what evangelical leaders are doing with our President, and telling him when his politics are un-Christian, and explaining to him that racism is an enormous sin and there is no moral equivalency between the two sides in Charlottesville, then well and good. Otherwise, they are complicit with the sins of our leaders."
Evangelical Bible studies author Beth Moore joins in criticism of the perspective of Trump's evangelicals, writing: "I have never seen anything in these United States of America I found more astonishingly seductive and dangerous to the saints of God than Trumpism. This Christian nationalism is not of God. Move back from it."
Moore warns that "we will be held responsible for remaining passive in this day of seduction to save our own skin while the saints we've been entrusted to serve are being seduced, manipulated, USED and stirred up into a lather of zeal devoid of the Holy Spirit for political gain."
Moore's view is that "[w]e can't sanctify idolatry by labeling a leader our Cyrus. We need no Cyrus. We have a king. His name is Jesus."
Other prominent white evangelicals have taken Bible based stands against Trump, such as Peter Wehner of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center and Russell D. Moore, president of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Wehner describes Trump's theology as embodying "a Nietzschean morality rather than a Christian one," that evangelicals' "support for Trump comes at a high cost for Christian witness," and that "Trump's most enduring legacy [may be] a nihilistic political culture, one that is tribalistic, distrustful, and sometimes delusional, swimming in conspiracy theories."
Moore sharply distanced himself from Trump's racial rhetoric stating, "The Bible speaks so directly to these issues," and, "that, really, in order to avoid questions of racial unity, one has to evade the Bible itself."
Presbyterian minister and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Chris Hedges thinks many of Trump's white evangelical supporters resemble those of the German Christians movement of 1930s Germany who also regarded their leader in an idolatrous way, the Christo-fascist idea of a Volk messiah, a leader who would act as an instrument of God to restore their country from moral depravity to greatness.
Also rejecting the idolatry, John Fea said "Trump takes everything that Jesus taught, especially in the Sermon on the Mount, throws it out the window, exchanges it for a mess of pottage called 'Make America Great Again', and from a Christian perspective for me, that borders on—no, it is a form of idolatry."
Theologian Greg Boyd challenges the religious right's politicization of Christianity, and the Christian nationalist theory of American exceptionalism, charging that "a significant segment of American evangelicalism is guilty of nationalistic and political idolatry."
Boyd compares the cause of "taking America back for God" and policies to force Christian values through political coercion to the aspiration in first century Israel to "take Israel back for God" which caused followers to attempt to fit Jesus into the role of a political messiah.
Boyd argues that Jesus declined, demonstrating that "God's mode of operation in the world was no longer going to be nationalistic."
Boyd asks to consider Christ's example, asking questions such as whether Jesus ever suggested by word or example that Christians should aspire to gaining power in the reigning government of the day, or whether he advocated using civil laws to change the behavior of sinners.
Like Fea, Boyd states he is not making the argument of passive political non involvement, writing that "of course our political views will be influenced by our Christian faith" but rather that we must embrace humility and not "christen our views as 'the' Christian view".
This humility in Boyd's view requires Christians to reject social domination, the "'power over' others to acquire and secure these things", and that "the only way we individually and collectively represent the kingdom of God is through loving, Christ like, sacrificial acts of service to others. Anything and everything else, however good and noble, lies outside the kingdom of God."
Horton thinks that rather than engage in what he calls the cult of "Christian Trumpism", Christians should reject turning the "saving gospel into a worldly power", while Fea thinks the Christian response to Trump should instead be those used in the civil rights movement, namely preaching hope not fear; humility, not power to socially dominate others; and responsible reading of history as in Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail rather than nostalgia for a prior American Christian utopia that never was.
Conservative orthodox Christian writer Rod Dreher and theologian Michael Horton have argued that participants in the Jericho March were engaging in "Trump worship", akin to idolatry. In the National Review, Cameron Hilditch described the movement as:
a toxic ideological cocktail of grievance, paranoia, and self-exculpatory rage ... Their aim was to "stop the steal" of the presidential election, [and] to prepare patriots for battle against a "One-World Government" ...
In fact, there was a strange impression given throughout the event that attendees believe Christianity is, in some sense, consubstantial with American nationalism. It was as if a new and improved Holy Trinity of "Father, Son, and Uncle Sam" had taken the place of the old and outmoded Nicene version.
When Eric Metaxas, the partisan radio host and emcee for the event, first stepped on stage, he wasn't greeted with psalm-singing or with hymns of praise to the Holy Redeemer, but with chants of "USA! USA!" In short, the Jericho rally was a worrying example of how Christianity can be twisted and drafted into the service of a political ideology.
Emma Green in The Atlantic blamed pro-Trump, evangelical white Christians and the Jericho March participants for the storming of the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, saying: "The mob carried signs and flag declaring Jesus Saves! and God, Guns & Guts Made America, Let's Keep All Three."
Methods of persuasion:
Further information:
Sociologist Arlie Hochschild thinks emotional themes in Trump's rhetoric are fundamental, writing that his "speeches—evoking dominance, bravado, clarity, national pride, and personal uplift—inspire an emotional transformation," deeply resonating with their "emotional self-interest".
Hochschild's perspective is that Trump is best understood as an "emotions candidate", arguing that comprehending the emotional self-interests of voters explains the paradox of the success of such politicians raised by Thomas Frank's book What's the Matter with Kansas?, an anomaly which motivated her five-year immersive research into the emotional dynamics of the Tea Party movement which she believes has mutated into Trumpism.
The book resulting from her research, Strangers in Their Own Land, was named one of the "6 books to understand Trump's Win" by the New York Times. Hochschild claims it is wrong for progressives to assume that well educated individuals have mainly been persuaded by political rhetoric to vote against their rational self interest through appeals to the "bad angels" of their nature: "their greed, selfishness, racial intolerance, homophobia, and desire to get out of paying taxes that go to the unfortunate."
She grants that the appeal to bad angels are made by Trump, but that it "obscures another—to the right wing's good angels—their patience in waiting in line in scary economic times, their capacity for loyalty, sacrifice, and endurance", qualities she describes as a part of a motivating narrative she calls their "deep story", a social contract narrative that appears to be widely shared in other countries as well.
She thinks Trump's approach towards his audience creates group cohesiveness among his followers by exploiting a crowd phenomenon Emile Durkheim called "collective effervescence", "a state of emotional excitation felt by those who join with others they take to be fellow members of a moral or biological tribe ... to affirm their unity and, united, they feel secure and respected."
Rhetorically, Trumpism employs absolutist framings and threat narratives characterized by a rejection of the political establishment. The absolutist rhetoric emphasizes non-negotiable boundaries and moral outrage at their supposed violation. The rhetorical pattern within a Trump rally is common for authoritarian movements.
First, elicit a sense of depression, humiliation and victimhood. Second, separate the world into two opposing groups: a relentlessly demonized set of others versus those who have the power and will to overcome them. This involves vividly identifying the enemy supposedly causing the current state of affairs and then promoting paranoid conspiracy theories and fearmongering to inflame fear and anger.
After cycling these first two patterns through the populace, the final message aim to produce a cathartic release of pent-up ochlocracy and mob energy, with a promise that salvation is at hand because there is a powerful leader who will deliver the nation back to its former glory.
This three-part pattern was first identified in 1932 by Roger Money-Kyrle and later published in his Psychology of Propaganda. A constant barrage of sensationalistic rhetoric serves to rivet media attention while achieving multiple political objectives, not the least of which is that it serves to obscure actions such as profound neoliberal deregulation.
One study gives the example that significant environmental deregulation occurred during the first year of the Trump administration due to its concurrent use of spectacular racist rhetoric but escaped much media attention.
According to the authors, this served political objectives of dehumanizing its targets, eroding democratic norms, and consolidating power by emotionally connecting with and inflaming resentments among the base of followers but most importantly served to distract media attention from deregulatory policymaking by igniting intense media coverage of the distractions, precisely due to their radically transgressive nature.
Trump's skill with personal branding allowed him to effectively market himself as the Money-Kyrle extraordinary leader by leveraging his celebrity status and name recognition.
As one of the communications director for the MAGA super PAC put it in 2016, "Like Hercules, Donald Trump is a work of fiction." Journalism professor Mark Danner explains that "week after week for a dozen years millions of Americans saw Donald J. Trump portraying the business magus [in The Apprentice], the grand vizier of capitalism, the wise man of the boardroom, a living confection whose every step and word bespoke gravitas and experience and power and authority and ... money. Endless amounts of money."
Political science scholar Andrea Schneiker regards the heavily promoted Trump public persona as that of a superhero, a genius but still "an ordinary citizen that, in case of an emergency, uses his superpowers to save others, that is, his country. He sees a problem, knows what has to be done in order to solve it, has the ability to fix the situation and does so. According to the branding strategy of Donald Trump ... a superhero is needed to solve the problems of ordinary Americans and the nation as such, because politicians are not able to do so. Hence, the superhero per definition is an anti-politician. Due to his celebrity status and his identity as entertainer, Donald Trump can thereby be considered to be allowed to take extraordinary measures and even to break rules."
According to civil rights lawyer Burt Neuborne and political theorist William E. Connolly, Trumpist rhetoric employs tropes similar to those used by fascists in Germany to persuade citizens (at first a minority) to give up democracy, by using a barrage of falsehoods, half-truths, personal invective, threats, xenophobia, national-security scares, religious bigotry, white racism, exploitation of economic insecurity, and a never-ending search for scapegoats.
Neuborne found twenty parallel practices, such as creating what amounts to an "alternate reality" in adherents' minds, through direct communications, by nurturing a fawning mass media and by deriding scientists to erode the notion of objective truth;
Connolly presents a similar list in his book Aspirational Fascism (2017), adding comparisons of the integration of theatrics and crowd participation with rhetoric, involving grandiose bodily gestures, grimaces, hysterical charges, dramatic repetitions of alternate reality falsehoods, and totalistic assertions incorporated into signature phrases that audiences are strongly encouraged to join in chanting.
Despite the similarities, Connolly stresses that Trump is no Nazi but "is rather, an aspirational fascist who pursues crowd adulation, hyperaggressive nationalism, white triumphalism, and militarism, pursues a law-and-order regime giving unaccountable power to the police, and is a practitioner of a rhetorical style that regularly creates fake news and smears opponents to mobilize support for the Big Lies he advances."
Reporting on the crowd dynamics of Trumpist rallies has documented expressions of the Money-Kyrle pattern and associated stagecraft, with some comparing the symbiotic dynamics of crowd pleasing to that of the sports entertainment style of events which Trump was involved with since the 1980s.
Critical theory scholar Douglas Kellner compares the elaborate staging of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will with that used with Trump supporters using the example of the preparation of photo op sequences and aggressive hyping of huge attendance expected for Trump's 2015 primary event in Mobile, Alabama, when the media coverage repeatedly cuts between the Trump jet circling the stadium, the rising excitement of rapturous admirers below, the motorcade and the final triumphal entrance of the individual Kellner claims is being presented as the "political savior to help them out with their problems and address their grievances".
Connolly thinks the performance draws energy from the crowd's anger as it channels it, drawing it into a collage of anxieties, frustrations and resentments about malaise themes, such as deindustrialization, offshoring, racial tensions, political correctness, a more humble position for the United States in global security, economics and so on.
Connolly observes that animated gestures, pantomiming, facial expressions, strutting and finger pointing are incorporated as part of the theater, transforming the anxiety into anger directed at particular targets, concluding that "each element in a Trump performance flows and folds into the others until an aggressive resonance machine is formed that is more intense than its parts."
Some academics point out that the narrative common in the popular press describing the psychology of such crowds is a repetition of a 19th-century theory by Gustave Le Bon when organized crowds were seen by political elites as potentially anarchic threats to the social order.
In his book The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895), Le Bon described a sort of collective contagion uniting a crowd into a near religious frenzy, reducing members to barbaric, if not subhuman levels of consciousness with mindless anarchic goals. Since such a description depersonalizes supporters, this type of Le Bon analysis is criticized because the would-be defenders of liberal democracy simultaneously are dodging responsibility for investigating grievances while also unwittingly accepting the same us vs. them framing of illiberalism.
Connolly acknowledges the risks but considers it more risky to ignore that Trumpian persuasion is successful due to deliberate use of techniques evoking more mild forms of affective contagion.
Falsehoods:
See also: Stop the Steal and False or misleading statements by Donald Trump
The absolutist rhetoric employed heavily favors crowd reaction over veracity, with a large number of falsehoods which Trump presents as facts.
Drawing on Harry G. Frankfurt's book On Bullshit, political science professor Matthew McManus points out that it is more precise to identify Trump as a bullshitter whose sole interest is to persuade, and not a liar (e.g. Richard Nixon) who takes the power of truth seriously and so deceitfully attempts to conceal it. Trump by contrast is indifferent to the truth or unaware of it.
Unlike conventional lies of politicians exaggerating their accomplishments, Trump's lies are egregious, making lies about easily verifiable facts. At one rally Trump stated his father "came from Germany", even though Fred Trump was born in New York City.
Trump is surprised when his falsehoods are contradicted, as was the case when leaders at the 2018 United Nations General Assembly burst into laughter at his boast that he had accomplished more in his first two years than any other United States president. Visibly startled, Trump responded to the audience: "I didn't expect that reaction."
Trump lies about the trivial, such as claiming that there was no rain on the day of his inauguration when in fact it did rain, as well as making grandiose "Big Lies", such as claiming that Obama founded ISIS, or promoting the birther movement, a conspiracy theory which claims that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii.
Connolly points to the similarities of such reality-bending gaslighting with fascist and post Soviet techniques of propaganda including Kompromat (scandalous material), stating that "Trumpian persuasion draws significantly upon the repetition of Big Lies."
More combative, less ideological base:
Journalist Elaina Plott suggests ideology is not as important as other characteristics of Trumpism. Plott cites political analyst Jeff Roe, who observed Trump "understood" and acted on the trend among Republican voters to be "less ideological" but "more polarized".
Republicans are now more willing to accept policies like government mandated health care coverage for pre-existing conditions or trade tariffs, formerly disdained by conservatives as burdensome government regulations.
At the same time, strong avowals of support for Trump and aggressive partisanship have become part of Republican election campaigning—in at least some parts of America—reaching down even to non-partisan campaigns for local government which formerly were collegial and issue-driven.
Research by political scientist Marc Hetherington and others has found Trump supporters tend to share a "worldview" transcending political ideology, agreeing with statements like "the best strategy is to play hardball, even if it means being unfair." In contrast, those who agree with statements like "cooperation is the key to success" tend to prefer Trump's adversary former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
On January 31, 2021, a detailed overview of the attempt by combative Trump supporters to subvert the election of the United States was published in The New York Times. Journalist Nicholas Lemann writes of the disconnect between some of Trump's campaign rhetoric and promises, and what he accomplished once in office—and the fact that the difference seemed to bother very few supporters.
The campaign themes being:
The accomplishments being "conventional" Republican policies and legislation—substantial tax cuts, rollbacks of federal regulations, and increases in military spending. Many have noted that instead of the Republican National Convention issuing the customary "platform" of policies and promises for the 2020 campaign, it offered a "one-page resolution" stating that the party was not "going to have a new platform, but instead ... 'has and will continue to enthusiastically support the president's America-first agenda.'"
An alternate nonideological circular definition of Trumpism widely held among Trump activists was reported by Saagar Enjeti, chief Washington correspondent for The Hill, who stated: "I was frequently told by people wholly within the MAGA camp that trumpism meant anything Trump does, ergo nothing that he did is a departure from trumpism."
Ideological themes:
Trumpism differs from classical Abraham Lincoln Republicanism in many ways regarding free trade, immigration, equality, checks and balances in federal government, and the separation of church and state. Peter J. Katzenstein of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center believes that Trumpism rests on three pillars, namely nationalism, religion and race.
According to Jeff Goodwin, Trumpism is characterized by five key elements:
At the 2021 CPAC conference, Trump gave his own definition of what defines Trumpism: "What it means is great deals, ... . Like the USMCA replacement of the horrible NAFTA. ... It means low taxes and eliminated job killing regulations, ... . It means strong borders, but people coming into our country based on a system of merit. ... [I]t means no riots in the streets.
It means law enforcement. It means very strong protection for the second amendment and the right to keep and bear arms. ... [I]t means a strong military and taking care of our vets ... ."
Social psychology:
Dominance orientation:
Social psychology research into the Trump movement, such as that of Bob Altemeyer, Thomas F. Pettigrew, and Karen Stenner, views the Trump movement as primarily being driven by the psychological predispositions of its followers.
Altemeyer and other researchers such as Pettigrew emphasize that no claim is made that these factors provide a complete explanation, mentioning other research showing that important political and historical factors (reviewed elsewhere in this article) are also involved.
The academic peer-reviewed journal Social Psychological and Personality Science published the article "Group-Based Dominance and Authoritarian Aggression Predict Support for Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election", describing a study concluding that Trump followers have a distinguishing preference for strongly hierarchical and ethnocentric social orders that favor their in-group.
In a non-academic book which he co-authored with John Dean entitled Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers, Altemeyer describes research which reaches the same conclusions.
Despite disparate and inconsistent beliefs and ideologies, a coalition of such followers can become cohesive and broad in part because each individual "compartmentalizes" their thoughts and they are free to define their sense of the threatened tribal in-group in their own terms, whether it is predominantly related to their cultural or religious views (e.g. the mystery of evangelical support for Trump), nationalism (e.g. the Make America Great Again slogan), or their race (maintaining a white majority).
Altemeyer, MacWilliams, Feldman, Choma, Hancock, Van Assche and Pettigrew claim that instead of directly attempting to measure such ideological, racial or policy views, supporters of such movements can be reliably predicted by using two social psychology scales (singly or in combination), namely right-wing authoritarian (RWA) measures which were developed in the 1980s by Altemeyer and other authoritarian personality researchers, and the social dominance orientation (SDO) scale developed in the 1990s by social dominance theorists.
In May 2019, Monmouth University Polling Institute conducted a study in collaboration with Altemeyer in order to empirically test the hypothesis using the SDO and RWA measures. The finding was that social dominance orientation and affinity for authoritarian leadership are highly correlated with followers of Trumpism.
Altemeyer's perspective and his use of an authoritarian scale and SDO to identify Trump followers is not uncommon. His study was a further confirmation of the earlier mentioned studies discussed in MacWilliams (2016), Feldman (2020), Choma and Hancock (2017), and Van Assche & Pettigrew (2016).
The research does not imply that the followers always behave in an authoritarian manner but that expression is contingent, which means there is reduced influence if it is not triggered by fear and what the subject perceives as threats.
The research is global and similar social psychological techniques for analyzing Trumpism have demonstrated their effectiveness at identifying adherents of similar movements in Europe, including those Belgium and France (Lubbers & Scheepers, 2002; Swyngedouw & Giles, 2007; Van Hiel & Mervielde, 2002; Van Hiel, 2012), the Netherlands (Cornelis & Van Hiel, 2014) and Italy (Leone, Desimoni & Chirumbolo, 2014).
Quoting comments from participants in a series of focus groups made up of people who had voted for Democrat Obama in 2012 but flipped to Trump in 2016, pollster Diane Feldman noted the anti-government, anti-coastal-elite anger: "'They think they're better than us, they're P.C., they're virtue-signallers.'
'[Trump] doesn't come across as one of those people who think they're better than us and are screwing us.' 'They lecture us.' 'They don't even go to church.' 'They're in charge, and they're ripping us off.'"
Basis in animal behavior:
Former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich explained the central role of dominance in his speech "Principles of Trumpism", comparing the needed leadership style to that of a violent bear. Psychology researcher Dan P. McAdams thinks a better comparison is to the dominance behavior of alpha male chimpanzees such as Yeroen, the subject of an extensive study of chimp social behavior conducted by renowned primatologist Frans de Waal.
Christopher Boehm, a professor of biology and anthropology agrees, writing, "his model of political posturing has echoes of what I saw in the wild in six years in Tanzania studying the Gombe chimpanzees," and "seems like a classic alpha display."
Using the example of Yeroen, McAdams describes the similarities: "On Twitter, Trump's incendiary tweets are like Yeroen's charging displays. In chimp colonies, the alpha male occasionally goes berserk and starts screaming, hooting, and gesticulating wildly as he charges toward other males nearby.
Pandemonium ensues as rival males cower in fear ... Once the chaos ends, there is a period of peace and order, wherein rival males pay homage to the alpha, visiting him, grooming him, and expressing various forms of submission. In Trump's case, his tweets are designed to intimidate his foes and rally his submissive base ... These verbal outbursts reinforce the president's dominance by reminding everybody of his wrath and his force."
Primatologist Dame Jane Goodall explains that like the dominance performances of Trump, "In order to impress rivals, males seeking to rise in the dominance hierarchy perform spectacular displays: Stamping, slapping the ground, dragging branches, throwing rocks.
The more vigorous and imaginative the display, the faster the individual is likely to rise in the hierarchy, and the longer he is likely to maintain that position."
The comparison has been echoed by political observers sympathetic to Trump. Nigel Farage, an enthusiastic backer of Trump, stated that in the 2016 United States presidential debates where Trump loomed up on Clinton, he "looked like a big silverback gorilla", and added that "he is that big alpha male. The leader of the pack!"
McAdams points out the audience gets to vicariously share in the sense of dominance due to the parasocial bonding that his performance produces for his fans, as shown by Shira Gabriel's research studying the phenomenon in Trump's role in The Apprentice.
McAdams writes that the "television audience vicariously experienced the world according to Donald Trump", a world where Trump says "Man is the most vicious of all animals, and life is a series of battles ending in victory or defeat."
Collective narcissism:
Further information: Collective narcissism
Donald Trump on social media, and Post-truth politics
Cultural anthropologist Paul Stoller thinks Trump masterfully employed the fundamentals of celebrity culture-glitz, illusion and fantasy to construct a shared alternate reality where lies become truth and reality's resistance to one's own dreams are overcome by the right attitude and bold self-confidence.
Trump's father indoctrinated his children from an early age into the sort of positive thinking approach to reality advocated by the family's pastor Norman Vincent Peale.
Trump boasted that Peale considered him the greatest student of his philosophy that regards facts as not important, because positive attitudes will instead cause what you "image" to materialize. Trump biographer Gwenda Blair thinks Trump took Peale's self-help philosophy and "weaponized it".
Robert Jay Lifton, a scholar of psychohistory and authority on the nature of cults, emphasizes the importance of understanding Trumpism "as an assault on reality". A leader has more power if he is in any part successful at making truth irrelevant to his followers.
Trump biographer Timothy L. O'Brien agrees, stating: "It is a core operating principle of Trumpism.If you constantly attack objective reality, you are left as the only trustworthy source of information, which is one of his goals for his relationship with his supporters—that they should believe no one else but him." Lifton believes Trump is a purveyor of a solipsistic reality which is hostile to facts and is made collective by amplifying frustrations and fears held by his community of zealous believers.
Social psychologists refer to this as collective narcissism, a commonly held and strong emotional investment in the idea that one's group has a special status in society. It is often accompanied by chronic expressions of intolerance towards out-groups, intergroup aggression and frequent expressions of group victimhood whenever the in-group feels threatened by perceived criticisms or lack of proper respect for the in-group.
Identity of group members is closely tied to the collective identity expressed by its leader, motivating multiple studies to examine its relationship to authoritarian movements.
Collective narcissism measures have been shown to be a powerful predictor of membership in such movements including Trump's.
In his book Believe Me which details Trump's exploitation of white evangelical politics of fear, Messiah College history professor John Fea points out the narcissistic nature of the fanciful appeals to nostalgia, noting that "In the end, the practice of nostalgia is inherently selfish because it focuses entirely on our own experience of the past and not on the experience of others.
For example, people nostalgic for the world of Leave It to Beaver may fail to recognize that other people, perhaps even some of the people living in the Cleaver's suburban "paradise" of the 1950s, were not experiencing the world in a way that they would describe as 'great.'
Nostalgia can give us tunnel vision. Its selective use of the past fails to recognize the complexity and breadth of the human experience ... ."
According to Fea, the hopelessness of achieving such fanciful versions of an idealized past "causes us to imagine a future filled with horror" making anything unfamiliar the fodder for conspiratorial narratives that easily mobilize white evangelicals who cannot summon "the kind of spiritual courage necessary to overcome fear."
As a result, they not only embrace these fears but are easily captivated by a strongman such as Trump who repeats and amplifies their fears while posing as the deliverer from them. In his review of Fea's analysis of the impact of conspiracy theories on white evangelical Trump supporters, scholar of religious politics David Gutterman writes: "The greater the threat, the more powerful the deliverance."
Gutterman's view is that "Donald J. Trump did not invent this formula; evangelicals have, in their lack of spiritual courage, demanded and gloried in this message for generations. Despite the literal biblical reassurance to 'fear not,' white evangelicals are primed for fear, their identity is stoked by fear, and the sources of fear are around every unfamiliar turn.
Social theory scholar John Cash notes that disaster narratives of impending horrors have a broader audience than a single community whose identity is associated with specific collectively held certainties offered by white evangelical leaders, pointing to a 2010 Pew study which found that 41 percent of those in the US think that the world will either definitely or probably be destroyed by the middle of the century.
Cash points out that certainties may be found in other narratives which also have the unifying effect of binding like minded individuals into shared "us versus them" narratives such as those based on race or political absolutisms.
Cash notes that all political systems must endure some such exposure to the lure of narcissism, fantasy, illogicality and distortion. Cash thinks that psychoanalytic theorist Joel Whitebook is correct that "Trumpism as a social experience can be understood as a psychotic like phenomenon, that "[Trumpism is] an intentional [...] attack on our relation to reality."
Whitebook thinks Trump's playbook is like that of Putin's strategist Vladislav Surkov who employs "ceaseless shapeshifting, appealing to nationalist skinheads one moment and human rights groups the next."
Cash makes comparisons to an Alice in Wonderland world when describing Trump's adept ability to hold a looking glass up to followers with disparate fantasies by seemingly embracing all of them in a series of contradictory tweets and pronouncements.
Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina; Donald Trump at a 2016 rally in Arizona; armed supporters of Trump at a Minnesota demonstration, September 2020; a supporter kneeling in prayer at a 2016 Trump rally in Tucson; a supporter rejecting calls for empathy at a rally in 2019; Trump supporters storming the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021
Trumpism:
Trumpism is the political ideologies, social emotions, style of governance, political movement, and set of mechanisms for acquiring and keeping control of power associated with Donald Trump and his political base. Trumpists and Trumpian are terms used to refer to those exhibiting characteristics of Trumpism, whereas political supporters of Trump are known as Trumpers.
The precise composition of Trumpism is contentious and is sufficiently complex to overwhelm any single framework of analysis; it has been referred to as an American political variant of the far right and the national-populist and neo-nationalist sentiment seen in multiple nations worldwide from the late 2010s to the early 2020s.
Though not strictly limited to any one party, Trump supporters became the largest faction of the Republican Party in the United States, with the remainder often characterized as "the elite" or "the establishment" in contrast. Some Republicans became members of the Never Trump movement, with several leaving the party in protest of Trump's ascendancy.
Some commentators have rejected the populist designation for Trumpism and view it instead as part of a trend towards a new form of fascism or neo-fascism, with some referring to it as explicitly fascist and others as authoritarian and illiberal. Others have more mildly identified it as a specific lite version of fascism in the United States.
Some historians, including many of those using a new fascism classification, write of the hazards of direct comparisons with European fascist regimes of the 1930s, stating that while there are parallels, there are also important dissimilarities.
The label Trumpism has been applied to national-conservative and national-populist movements in other Western democracies, and many politicians outside of the United States have been labeled as staunch allies of Trump or Trumpism, or even as their country's equivalent to Trump, by various news agencies; among them are:
- Silvio Berlusconi,
- Jair Bolsonaro,
- Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,
- Nigel Farage,
- Shinzo Abe,
- Hong Joon-pyo,
- Viktor Orbán,
- and Yoon Suk-yeol.
Populist themes, sentiments, and methods:
Trumpism started its development predominantly during Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. For many scholars, it denotes a populist political method that suggests nationalistic answers to political, economic, and social problems. These inclinations are refracted into such policy preferences as immigration restrictionism, trade protectionism, isolationism, and opposition to entitlement reform.
As a political method, populism is not driven by any particular ideology. Former National Security Advisor and close Trump advisor John Bolton states this is true of Trump, disputing that Trumpism even exists in any meaningful philosophical sense, adding that "[t]he man does not have a philosophy. And people can try and draw lines between the dots of his decisions. They will fail."
Writing for the Routledge Handbook of Global Populism (2019), Olivier Jutel claims, "What Donald Trump reveals is that the various iterations of right-wing American populism have less to do with a programmatic social conservatism or libertarian economics than with enjoyment."
Referring to the populism of Trump, sociologist Michael Kimmel states that it "is not a theory [or] an ideology, it's an emotion. And the emotion is righteous indignation that the government is screwing 'us'".
Kimmel notes that "Trump is an interesting character because he channels all that sense of what I called 'aggrieved entitlement,'" a term Kimmel defines as "that sense that those benefits to which you believed yourself entitled have been snatched away from you by unseen forces larger and more powerful. You feel yourself to be the heir to a great promise, the American Dream, which has turned into an impossible fantasy for the very people who were supposed to inherit it."
Communications scholar Zizi Papacharissi explains the utility of being ideologically vague, and using terms and slogans that can mean anything the supporter wants them to mean. "When these publics thrive in affective engagement it's because they've found an affective hook that's built around an open signifier that they get to use and reuse and re-employ.
So yes, of course you know, President Trump has used MAGA; that's an open signifier that pulls in all of these people, and is open because it allows them all to assign different meanings to it. So MAGA works for connecting publics that are different, because it is open enough to permit people to ascribe their own meaning to it."
Other contributors to the Routledge Handbook of Populism note that populist leaders rather than being ideology driven are instead pragmatic and opportunistic regarding themes, ideas and beliefs that strongly resonate with their followers.
Exit polling data suggests the campaign was successful at mobilizing the "white disenfranchised the lower- to working-class European-Americans who are experiencing growing social inequality and who often have stated opposition to the American political establishment. Ideologically, Trumpism has a right-wing populist accent.
Focus on sentiments:
Historian Peter E. Gordon raises the possibility that "Trump, far from being a violation of the norm, actually signifies an emergent norm of the social order" where the categories of the psychological and political have dissolved.
In accounting for Trump's election and ability to sustain stable high approval ratings among a significant segment of voters, Erika Tucker argues in the book Trump and Political Philosophy that though all presidential campaigns have strong emotions associated with them, Trump was able to recognize, and then to gain the trust and loyalty of those who, like him, felt a particular set of strong emotions about perceived changes in the United States.
She notes, "Political psychologist Drew Westen has argued that Democrats are less successful at gauging and responding to affective politics—issues that arouse strong emotional states in citizens."
Like many academics examining the populist appeal of Trump's messaging, Hidalgo-Tenorio and Benítez-Castro draw on the theories of Ernesto Laclau writing, "The emotional appeal of populist discourse is key to its polarising effects, this being so much so that populism 'would be unintelligible without the affective component.' (Laclau 2005)"
Scholars from a wide number of fields have argued that particular affective themes and the dynamics of their impact on social media-connected followers characterize Trump and his supporters.
Pleasure from sympathetic company:
Communications scholar Michael Carpini states that "Trumpism is a culmination of trends that have been occurring for several decades. What we are witnessing is nothing short of a fundamental shift in the relationships between journalism, politics, and democracy." Among the shifts, Carpini identifies "the collapsing of the prior [media] regime's presumed and enforced distinctions between news and entertainment."
Examining Trump's use of media for the book Language in the Trump Era, communication professor Marco Jacquemet writes that "It's an approach that, like much of the rest of Trump's ideology and policy agenda, assumes (correctly, it appears) that his audiences care more about shock and entertainment value in their media consumption than almost anything else."
The perspective is shared among other communication academics, with Plasser & Ulram (2003) describing a media logic which emphasizes "personalization ... a political star system ... [and] sports based dramatization."
Olivier Jutel notes that "Donald Trump's celebrity status and reality-TV rhetoric of 'winning' and 'losing' corresponds perfectly to these values", asserting that "Fox News and conservative personalities from Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Alex Jones do not simply represent a new political and media voice but embody the convergence of politics and media in which affect and enjoyment are the central values of media production."
Studying Trump's use of social media, anthropologist Jessica Johnson finds that social emotional pleasure plays a central role, writing, "Rather than finding accurate news meaningful, Facebook users find the affective pleasure of connectivity addictive, whether or not the information they share is factual, and that is how communicative capitalism captivates subjects as it holds them captive."
Looking back at the world prior to social media, communications researcher Brian L. Ott writes: "I'm nostalgic for the world of television that Neil Postman (1985) argued, produced the 'least well-informed people in the Western world' by packaging news as entertainment. Twitter is producing the most self-involved people in history by treating everything one does or thinks as newsworthy. Television may have assaulted journalism, but Twitter killed it."
Commenting on Trump's support among Fox News viewers, Hofstra University Communication Dean Mark Lukasiewicz has a similar perspective, writing, "Tristan Harris famously said that social networks are about 'affirmation, not information'—and the same can be said about cable news, especially in prime time."
Arlie Russell Hochschild's perspective on the relationship between Trump supporters and their preferred sources of information - whether social media friends or news and commentary stars, is that they are trusted due to the affective bond they have with them.
As media scholar Daniel Kreiss summarizes Hochschild, "Trump, along with Fox News, gave these strangers in their own land the hope that they would be restored to their rightful place at the center of the nation, and provided a very real emotional release from the fetters of political correctness that dictated they respect people of color, lesbians and gays, and those of other faiths ... that the network's personalities share the same 'deep story' of political and social life, and therefore they learn from them 'what to feel afraid, angry, and anxious about.'"
From Kreiss's 2018 account of conservative personalities and media, information became less important than providing a sense of familial bonding, where "family provides a sense of identity, place, and belonging; emotional, social, and cultural support and security; and gives rise to political and social affiliations and beliefs."
Hochschild gives the example of one woman who explains the familial bond of trust with the star personalities. "Bill O'Reilly is like a steady, reliable dad. Sean Hannity is like a difficult uncle who rises to anger too quickly. Megyn Kelly is like a smart sister. Then there's Greta Van Susteren. And Juan Williams, who came over from NPR, which was too left for him, the adoptee. They're all different, just like in a family."
Media scholar Olivier Jutel focuses on the neoliberal privatization and market segmentation of the public square, noting that, "Affect is central to the brand strategy of Fox which imagined its journalism not in terms of servicing the rational citizen in the public sphere but in 'craft[ing] intensive relationships with their viewers' (Jones, 2012) in order to sustain audience share across platforms."
In this segmented market, Trump "offers himself as an ego-ideal to an individuated public of enjoyment that coalesce around his media brand as part of their own performance of identity."
Jutel cautions that it is not just conservative media companies that benefit from the transformation of news media to conform to values of spectacle and reality TV drama. "Trump is a definitive product of mediatized politics providing the spectacle that drives ratings and affective media consumption, either as part of his populist movement or as the liberal resistance."
Researchers give differing emphasis to which emotions are important to followers. Michael Richardson argues in the Journal of Media and Cultural Studies that "affirmation, amplification and circulation of disgust is one of the primary affective drivers of Trump's political success."
Richardson agrees with Ott about the "entanglement of Trumpian affect and social media crowds" who seek "affective affirmation, confirmation and amplification. Social media postings of crowd experiences accumulate as 'archives of feelings' that are both dynamic in nature and affirmative of social values (Pybus 2015)."
Using Trump as an example, social trust expert Karen Jones follows philosopher Annette Baier in claiming that the masters of the art of creating trust and distrust are populist politicians and criminals. On this view, it is not moral philosophers who are the experts at discerning different forms of trust, but members of this class of practitioners who "show a masterful appreciation of the ways in which certain emotional states drive out trust and replace it with distrust."
Jones sees Trump as an exemplar of this class who recognize that fear and contempt are powerful tools that can reorient networks of trust and distrust in social networks in order to alter how a potential supporter "interprets the words, deeds, and motives of the other."
She points out that the tactic is used globally writing, "A core strategy of Donald Trump, both as candidate and president, has been to manufacture fear and contempt towards some undocumented migrants (among other groups). This strategy of manipulating fear and contempt has gone global, being replicated with minor local adjustment in Australia, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Italy and the United Kingdom."
Right-wing authoritarian populism:
Other academics have made politically urgent warnings about Trumpian authoritarianism, such as Yale sociologist Philip S. Gorski who writes, "the election of Donald Trump constitutes perhaps the greatest threat to American democracy since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. There is a real and growing danger that representative government will be slowly but effectively supplanted by a populist form of authoritarian rule in the years to come. Media intimidation, mass propaganda, voter suppression, court packing, and even armed paramilitaries—many of the necessary and sufficient conditions for an authoritarian devolution are gradually falling into place."
Some academics regard such authoritarian backlash as a feature of liberal democracies. Some have even argued that Trump is a totalitarian capitalist exploiting the "fascist impulses of his ordinary supporters that hide in plain sight." Michelle Goldberg, an opinion columnist for The New York Times, compares "the spirit of Trumpism" to classical fascist themes.
The "mobilizing vision" of fascism is of "the national community rising phoenix-like after a period of encroaching decadence which all but destroyed it", which "sounds a lot like MAGA" (Make America Great Again) according to Goldberg.
Similarly, like the Trump movement, fascism sees a "need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group's historical destiny." They believe in "the superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason".
Conservative columnist George Will considers Trumpism similar to fascism, stating that Trumpism is "a mood masquerading as a doctrine". National unity is based "on shared domestic dreads"—for fascists the "Jews", for Trump the media ("enemies of the people"), "elites" and "globalists". Solutions come not from tedious "incrementalism and conciliation", but from the leader (who claims "only I can fix it") unfettered by procedure.
The political base is kept entertained with mass rallies, but inevitably the strongman develops a contempt for those he leads. Both are based on machismo, and in the case of Trumpism, "appeals to those in thrall to country-music manliness: 'We're truck-driving, beer-drinking, big-chested Americans too freedom-loving to let any itsy-bitsy virus make us wear masks.'"
Disputing the view that the surge of support for Trumpism and Brexit represents a new phenomenon, political scientist Karen Stenner and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt present the argument that the far-right populist wave that seemed to 'come out of nowhere' did not in fact come out of nowhere.
It is not a sudden madness, or virus, or tide, or even just a copycat phenomenon—the emboldening of bigots and despots by others' electoral successes. Rather, it is something that sits just beneath the surface of any human society—including in the advanced liberal democracies at the heart of the Western world—and can be activated by core elements of liberal democracy itself.
Discussing the statistical basis for their conclusions regarding the triggering of such waves, Stenner and Haidt present the view that "authoritarians, by their very nature, want to believe in authorities and institutions; they want to feel they are part of a cohesive community.
Accordingly, they seem (if anything) to be modestly inclined toward giving authorities and institutions the benefit of the doubt, and lending them their support until the moment these seem incapable of maintaining 'normative order'"; the authors write that this normative order is regularly threatened by liberal democracy itself because it tolerates a lack of consensus in group values and beliefs, tolerates disrespect of group authorities, nonconformity to group norms, or norms proving questionable, and in general promotes diversity and freedom from domination by authorities.
Stenner and Haidt regard such authoritarian waves as a feature of liberal democracies noting that the findings of their 2016 study of Trump and Brexit supporters was not unexpected, as they wrote: "Across two decades of empirical research, we cannot think of a significant exception to the finding that normative threat tends either to leave non-authoritarians utterly unmoved by the things that catalyze authoritarians or to propel them toward being (what one might conceive as) their 'best selves.'"
In previous investigations, this has seen non-authoritarians move toward positions of greater tolerance and respect for diversity under the very conditions that seem to propel authoritarians toward increasing intolerance.
Author and authoritarianism critic Masha Gessen contrasted the "democratic" strategy of the Republican establishment making policy arguments appealing to the public, with the "autocratic" strategy of appealing to an "audience of one" in Donald Trump. Gessen noted the fear of Republicans that Trump would endorse a primary election opponent or otherwise use his political power to undermine any fellow party members that he felt had betrayed him.
The 2020 Republican Party platform simply endorsed "the President's America-first agenda", prompting comparisons to contemporary leader-focused party platforms in Russia and China.
Nostalgia and male bravado:
Nostalgia is a staple of American politics but according to Philip Gorski, Trumpian nostalgia is novel because among other things "it severs the traditional connection between greatness and virtue." In the traditional "Puritan narrative, moral decline precedes material and political decline, and a return to the law must precede any return to greatness. ... Not so in Trump's version of nostalgia.
In this narrative, decline is brought about by docility and femininity and the return to greatness requires little more than a reassertion of dominance and masculinity. In this way, 'virtue' is reduced to its root etymology of manly bravado."
In studies of the men who would become Trump supporters Michael Kimmel describes the nostalgia of male entitlement felt by men who despaired "over whether or not anything could enable them to find a place with some dignity in this new, multicultural, and more egalitarian world. ...
These men were angry, but they all looked back nostalgically to a time when their sense of masculine entitlement went unchallenged. They wanted to reclaim their country, restore their rightful place in it, and retrieve their manhood in the process."
The term that describes the behavior of Kimmel's angry white males is toxic masculinity and according to William Liu, editor of the journal Psychology of Men and Masculinity, it applies especially to Trump.
Kimmel was surprised at the sexual turn the 2016 election took and thinks that Trump is for many men a fantasy figure, an uber-male completely free to indulge every desire. "Many of these guys feel that the current order of things has emasculated them, by which I mean it has taken away their ability to support a family and have great life. Here's a guy who says: 'I can build anything I want. I can do anything I want. I can have the women I want.' They're going, 'This guy is awesome!'"
Social psychologists Theresa Vescio and Nathaniel Schermerhorn note that "In his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump embodied HM [hegemonic masculinity] while waxing nostalgic for a racially homogenous past that maintained an unequal gender order. Trump performed HM by repeatedly referencing his status as a successful businessman ("blue-collar businessman") and alluding to how tough he would be as president.
Further contributing to his enactment of HM, Trump was openly hostile toward gender-atypical women, sexualized gender typical women, and attacked the masculinity of male peers and opponents."
In their studies involving 2007 people, they found that endorsement of hegemonic masculinity better predicted support for Trump than other factors, such as support for antiestablishment, antielitist, nativist, racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic perspectives.
Neville Hoad, an expert on gender issues in South Africa, sees this as a common theme with another strongman leader, Jacob Zuma, comparing his "Zulu Big Man version of toxic masculinity versus a dog whistle white supremacist version; the putative real estate billionaire turned reality television star".
Both authoritarian leaders are figureheads living the "masculinist fantasy of freedom" supporters dream of, a dream bound to national mythologies of the good life. According to Hoad, one description of this symbolism comes from Jacques Lacan who describes the supremely masculine mythic leader of the primal horde whose power to satisfy every pleasure or whim has not been castrated.
By activating such fantasies, toxic masculine behaviors from opulent displays of greed (the dream palaces of Mar-a-Lago and Nkandla), violent rhetoric, "grab them by the pussy" "locker room" "jokes" to misogynist insults, philandering, and even sexual predatory behavior including allegations of groping and raping become political assets not liabilities.
Gender role scholar Colleen Clemens describes this toxic masculinity as "a narrow and repressive description of manhood, designating manhood as defined by violence, sex, status and aggression.
It's the cultural ideal of manliness, where strength is everything while emotions are a weakness; where sex and brutality are yardsticks by which men are measured, while supposedly 'feminine' traits—which can range from emotional vulnerability to simply not being hypersexual—are the means by which your status as "man" can be taken away."
Writing in the Journal of Human Rights, Kimberly Theidon notes the COVID-19 pandemic's irony of Trumpian toxic masculinity: "Being a tough guy means wearing the mask of masculinity: Being a tough guy means refusing to don a mask that might preserve one's life and the lives of others."
Tough guy bravado appeared on the internet prior to attack on Congress on January 6, 2021, with one poster writing, "Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in ... . Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die." Of the rioters arrested for the attack on the U.S. Capitol, 88% were men, and 67% were 35 years or older.
Christian Trumpism:
According to 2016 election exit polls, 26% of voters self identified as white evangelical Christians, of whom more than three-fourths in 2017 approved of Trump's performance, most of them approving "very strongly" as reported by a Pew Research Center study.
In contrast, approximately two-thirds of non-white evangelicals supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, with 90% of black Protestants also voting for her even though their theological views are similar to evangelicals.
According to Yale researcher Philip Gorski, "the question is not so much why evangelicals voted for Trump then—many did not—but why so many white evangelicals did." Gorski's answer to why Trump, and not an orthodox evangelical was the first choice among white evangelicals was simply "because they are also white Christian nationalists and Trumpism is inter alia a reactionary version of white Christian nationalism."
Israeli philosopher Adi Ophir sees the politics of purity in the white Christian nationalist rhetoric of evangelical supporters, such as the comparison of Nehemiah's wall around Jerusalem to Trump's wall keeping out the enemy, writing, "the notion of the enemy includes 'Mexican migrants', 'filthy' gays, and even Catholics 'led astray by Satan', and the real danger these enemies pose is degradation to a 'blessed—great— ... nation' whose God is the Lord."
According to 2016 election exit polls, 26% of voters self identified as white evangelical Christians, of whom more than three-fourths in 2017 approved of Trump's performance, most of them approving "very strongly" as reported by a Pew Research Center study. In contrast, approximately two-thirds of non-white evangelicals supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, with 90% of black Protestants also voting for her even though their theological views are similar to evangelicals.
According to Yale researcher Philip Gorski, "the question is not so much why evangelicals voted for Trump then—many did not—but why so many white evangelicals did." Gorski's answer to why Trump, and not an orthodox evangelical was the first choice among white evangelicals was simply "because they are also white Christian nationalists and Trumpism is inter alia a reactionary version of white Christian nationalism."
Israeli philosopher Adi Ophir sees the politics of purity in the white Christian nationalist rhetoric of evangelical supporters, such as the comparison of Nehemiah's wall around Jerusalem to Trump's wall keeping out the enemy, writing, "the notion of the enemy includes 'Mexican migrants', 'filthy' gays, and even Catholics 'led astray by Satan', and the real danger these enemies pose is degradation to a 'blessed—great— ... nation' whose God is the Lord."
Jeffress claims that evangelical leaders' support of Trump is moral regardless of behavior that Christianity Today's chief editor called "a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused." Jeffress argues that "the godly principle here is that governments have one responsibility, and that is Romans 13 [which] says to avenge evil doers."
This same biblical chapter was used by Jeff Sessions to claim biblical justification for Trump's policy of separating children from immigrant families. Historian Lincoln Muller explains this is one of two types of interpretations of Romans 13 which has been used in American political debates since its founding and is on the side of "the thread of American history that justifies oppression and domination in the name of law and order."
From Jeffress's reading, government's purpose is as a "strongman to protect its citizens against evildoers", adding: "I don't care about that candidate's tone or vocabulary, I want the meanest toughest son a you-know-what I can find, and I believe that is biblical."
Jeffress referred to Barack Obama as "paving the way for the future reign of the Antichrist," Mitt Romney as a cult follower of a non-Christian religion and Roman Catholicism as a "Satanic" result of "Babylonian mystery religion." Jeffress traces the Christian libertarian perspective on government's sole role to suppress evil back to Saint Augustine who argued in The City of God against the Pagans (426 CE) that government's role is to restrain evil so Christians can peacefully practice their beliefs.
Martin Luther similarly believed that government should be limited to checking sin.
Like Jeffress, Richard Land refused to cut ties with Trump after his reaction to the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, with the explanation that "Jesus did not turn away from those who may have seemed brash with their words or behavior," adding that "now is not the time to quit or retreat, but just the opposite—to lean in closer."
Johnnie Moore's explanation for refusing to repudiate Trump after his Charlottesville response was that "you only make a difference if you have a seat at the table." Trinity Forum fellow Peter Wehner warns that "[t]he perennial danger facing Christians is seduction and self-delusion. That's what's happening in the Trump era. The president is using evangelical leaders to shield himself from criticism."
Evangelical biblical scholar Ben Witherington believes Trump's evangelical apologists' defensive use of the tax collector comparison is false and that retaining a "seat at the table" is supportable only if the Christian leader is admonishing the President to reverse course, explaining that "[t]he sinners and tax collectors were not political officials, so there is no analogy there.
Besides, Jesus was not giving the sinners and tax collectors political advice—he was telling them to repent! If that's what evangelical leaders are doing with our President, and telling him when his politics are un-Christian, and explaining to him that racism is an enormous sin and there is no moral equivalency between the two sides in Charlottesville, then well and good. Otherwise, they are complicit with the sins of our leaders."
Evangelical Bible studies author Beth Moore joins in criticism of the perspective of Trump's evangelicals, writing: "I have never seen anything in these United States of America I found more astonishingly seductive and dangerous to the saints of God than Trumpism. This Christian nationalism is not of God. Move back from it."
Moore warns that "we will be held responsible for remaining passive in this day of seduction to save our own skin while the saints we've been entrusted to serve are being seduced, manipulated, USED and stirred up into a lather of zeal devoid of the Holy Spirit for political gain."
Moore's view is that "[w]e can't sanctify idolatry by labeling a leader our Cyrus. We need no Cyrus. We have a king. His name is Jesus."
Other prominent white evangelicals have taken Bible based stands against Trump, such as Peter Wehner of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center and Russell D. Moore, president of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Wehner describes Trump's theology as embodying "a Nietzschean morality rather than a Christian one," that evangelicals' "support for Trump comes at a high cost for Christian witness," and that "Trump's most enduring legacy [may be] a nihilistic political culture, one that is tribalistic, distrustful, and sometimes delusional, swimming in conspiracy theories."
Moore sharply distanced himself from Trump's racial rhetoric stating, "The Bible speaks so directly to these issues," and, "that, really, in order to avoid questions of racial unity, one has to evade the Bible itself."
Presbyterian minister and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Chris Hedges thinks many of Trump's white evangelical supporters resemble those of the German Christians movement of 1930s Germany who also regarded their leader in an idolatrous way, the Christo-fascist idea of a Volk messiah, a leader who would act as an instrument of God to restore their country from moral depravity to greatness.
Also rejecting the idolatry, John Fea said "Trump takes everything that Jesus taught, especially in the Sermon on the Mount, throws it out the window, exchanges it for a mess of pottage called 'Make America Great Again', and from a Christian perspective for me, that borders on—no, it is a form of idolatry."
Theologian Greg Boyd challenges the religious right's politicization of Christianity, and the Christian nationalist theory of American exceptionalism, charging that "a significant segment of American evangelicalism is guilty of nationalistic and political idolatry."
Boyd compares the cause of "taking America back for God" and policies to force Christian values through political coercion to the aspiration in first century Israel to "take Israel back for God" which caused followers to attempt to fit Jesus into the role of a political messiah.
Boyd argues that Jesus declined, demonstrating that "God's mode of operation in the world was no longer going to be nationalistic."
Boyd asks to consider Christ's example, asking questions such as whether Jesus ever suggested by word or example that Christians should aspire to gaining power in the reigning government of the day, or whether he advocated using civil laws to change the behavior of sinners.
Like Fea, Boyd states he is not making the argument of passive political non involvement, writing that "of course our political views will be influenced by our Christian faith" but rather that we must embrace humility and not "christen our views as 'the' Christian view".
This humility in Boyd's view requires Christians to reject social domination, the "'power over' others to acquire and secure these things", and that "the only way we individually and collectively represent the kingdom of God is through loving, Christ like, sacrificial acts of service to others. Anything and everything else, however good and noble, lies outside the kingdom of God."
Horton thinks that rather than engage in what he calls the cult of "Christian Trumpism", Christians should reject turning the "saving gospel into a worldly power", while Fea thinks the Christian response to Trump should instead be those used in the civil rights movement, namely preaching hope not fear; humility, not power to socially dominate others; and responsible reading of history as in Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail rather than nostalgia for a prior American Christian utopia that never was.
Conservative orthodox Christian writer Rod Dreher and theologian Michael Horton have argued that participants in the Jericho March were engaging in "Trump worship", akin to idolatry. In the National Review, Cameron Hilditch described the movement as:
a toxic ideological cocktail of grievance, paranoia, and self-exculpatory rage ... Their aim was to "stop the steal" of the presidential election, [and] to prepare patriots for battle against a "One-World Government" ...
In fact, there was a strange impression given throughout the event that attendees believe Christianity is, in some sense, consubstantial with American nationalism. It was as if a new and improved Holy Trinity of "Father, Son, and Uncle Sam" had taken the place of the old and outmoded Nicene version.
When Eric Metaxas, the partisan radio host and emcee for the event, first stepped on stage, he wasn't greeted with psalm-singing or with hymns of praise to the Holy Redeemer, but with chants of "USA! USA!" In short, the Jericho rally was a worrying example of how Christianity can be twisted and drafted into the service of a political ideology.
Emma Green in The Atlantic blamed pro-Trump, evangelical white Christians and the Jericho March participants for the storming of the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, saying: "The mob carried signs and flag declaring Jesus Saves! and God, Guns & Guts Made America, Let's Keep All Three."
Methods of persuasion:
Further information:
Sociologist Arlie Hochschild thinks emotional themes in Trump's rhetoric are fundamental, writing that his "speeches—evoking dominance, bravado, clarity, national pride, and personal uplift—inspire an emotional transformation," deeply resonating with their "emotional self-interest".
Hochschild's perspective is that Trump is best understood as an "emotions candidate", arguing that comprehending the emotional self-interests of voters explains the paradox of the success of such politicians raised by Thomas Frank's book What's the Matter with Kansas?, an anomaly which motivated her five-year immersive research into the emotional dynamics of the Tea Party movement which she believes has mutated into Trumpism.
The book resulting from her research, Strangers in Their Own Land, was named one of the "6 books to understand Trump's Win" by the New York Times. Hochschild claims it is wrong for progressives to assume that well educated individuals have mainly been persuaded by political rhetoric to vote against their rational self interest through appeals to the "bad angels" of their nature: "their greed, selfishness, racial intolerance, homophobia, and desire to get out of paying taxes that go to the unfortunate."
She grants that the appeal to bad angels are made by Trump, but that it "obscures another—to the right wing's good angels—their patience in waiting in line in scary economic times, their capacity for loyalty, sacrifice, and endurance", qualities she describes as a part of a motivating narrative she calls their "deep story", a social contract narrative that appears to be widely shared in other countries as well.
She thinks Trump's approach towards his audience creates group cohesiveness among his followers by exploiting a crowd phenomenon Emile Durkheim called "collective effervescence", "a state of emotional excitation felt by those who join with others they take to be fellow members of a moral or biological tribe ... to affirm their unity and, united, they feel secure and respected."
Rhetorically, Trumpism employs absolutist framings and threat narratives characterized by a rejection of the political establishment. The absolutist rhetoric emphasizes non-negotiable boundaries and moral outrage at their supposed violation. The rhetorical pattern within a Trump rally is common for authoritarian movements.
First, elicit a sense of depression, humiliation and victimhood. Second, separate the world into two opposing groups: a relentlessly demonized set of others versus those who have the power and will to overcome them. This involves vividly identifying the enemy supposedly causing the current state of affairs and then promoting paranoid conspiracy theories and fearmongering to inflame fear and anger.
After cycling these first two patterns through the populace, the final message aim to produce a cathartic release of pent-up ochlocracy and mob energy, with a promise that salvation is at hand because there is a powerful leader who will deliver the nation back to its former glory.
This three-part pattern was first identified in 1932 by Roger Money-Kyrle and later published in his Psychology of Propaganda. A constant barrage of sensationalistic rhetoric serves to rivet media attention while achieving multiple political objectives, not the least of which is that it serves to obscure actions such as profound neoliberal deregulation.
One study gives the example that significant environmental deregulation occurred during the first year of the Trump administration due to its concurrent use of spectacular racist rhetoric but escaped much media attention.
According to the authors, this served political objectives of dehumanizing its targets, eroding democratic norms, and consolidating power by emotionally connecting with and inflaming resentments among the base of followers but most importantly served to distract media attention from deregulatory policymaking by igniting intense media coverage of the distractions, precisely due to their radically transgressive nature.
Trump's skill with personal branding allowed him to effectively market himself as the Money-Kyrle extraordinary leader by leveraging his celebrity status and name recognition.
As one of the communications director for the MAGA super PAC put it in 2016, "Like Hercules, Donald Trump is a work of fiction." Journalism professor Mark Danner explains that "week after week for a dozen years millions of Americans saw Donald J. Trump portraying the business magus [in The Apprentice], the grand vizier of capitalism, the wise man of the boardroom, a living confection whose every step and word bespoke gravitas and experience and power and authority and ... money. Endless amounts of money."
Political science scholar Andrea Schneiker regards the heavily promoted Trump public persona as that of a superhero, a genius but still "an ordinary citizen that, in case of an emergency, uses his superpowers to save others, that is, his country. He sees a problem, knows what has to be done in order to solve it, has the ability to fix the situation and does so. According to the branding strategy of Donald Trump ... a superhero is needed to solve the problems of ordinary Americans and the nation as such, because politicians are not able to do so. Hence, the superhero per definition is an anti-politician. Due to his celebrity status and his identity as entertainer, Donald Trump can thereby be considered to be allowed to take extraordinary measures and even to break rules."
According to civil rights lawyer Burt Neuborne and political theorist William E. Connolly, Trumpist rhetoric employs tropes similar to those used by fascists in Germany to persuade citizens (at first a minority) to give up democracy, by using a barrage of falsehoods, half-truths, personal invective, threats, xenophobia, national-security scares, religious bigotry, white racism, exploitation of economic insecurity, and a never-ending search for scapegoats.
Neuborne found twenty parallel practices, such as creating what amounts to an "alternate reality" in adherents' minds, through direct communications, by nurturing a fawning mass media and by deriding scientists to erode the notion of objective truth;
- organizing carefully orchestrated mass rallies;
- bitterly attacking judges when legal cases are lost or rejected;
- using an uninterrupted stream of:
- lies,
- half-truths,
- insults,
- vituperation
- and innuendo
- designed to marginalize,
- demonize and eventually destroy opponents;
- making jingoistic appeals to ultranationalist fervor;
- and promising to slow, stop and even reverse the flow of "undesirable" ethnic groups who are cast as scapegoats for the nation's ills.
Connolly presents a similar list in his book Aspirational Fascism (2017), adding comparisons of the integration of theatrics and crowd participation with rhetoric, involving grandiose bodily gestures, grimaces, hysterical charges, dramatic repetitions of alternate reality falsehoods, and totalistic assertions incorporated into signature phrases that audiences are strongly encouraged to join in chanting.
Despite the similarities, Connolly stresses that Trump is no Nazi but "is rather, an aspirational fascist who pursues crowd adulation, hyperaggressive nationalism, white triumphalism, and militarism, pursues a law-and-order regime giving unaccountable power to the police, and is a practitioner of a rhetorical style that regularly creates fake news and smears opponents to mobilize support for the Big Lies he advances."
Reporting on the crowd dynamics of Trumpist rallies has documented expressions of the Money-Kyrle pattern and associated stagecraft, with some comparing the symbiotic dynamics of crowd pleasing to that of the sports entertainment style of events which Trump was involved with since the 1980s.
Critical theory scholar Douglas Kellner compares the elaborate staging of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will with that used with Trump supporters using the example of the preparation of photo op sequences and aggressive hyping of huge attendance expected for Trump's 2015 primary event in Mobile, Alabama, when the media coverage repeatedly cuts between the Trump jet circling the stadium, the rising excitement of rapturous admirers below, the motorcade and the final triumphal entrance of the individual Kellner claims is being presented as the "political savior to help them out with their problems and address their grievances".
Connolly thinks the performance draws energy from the crowd's anger as it channels it, drawing it into a collage of anxieties, frustrations and resentments about malaise themes, such as deindustrialization, offshoring, racial tensions, political correctness, a more humble position for the United States in global security, economics and so on.
Connolly observes that animated gestures, pantomiming, facial expressions, strutting and finger pointing are incorporated as part of the theater, transforming the anxiety into anger directed at particular targets, concluding that "each element in a Trump performance flows and folds into the others until an aggressive resonance machine is formed that is more intense than its parts."
Some academics point out that the narrative common in the popular press describing the psychology of such crowds is a repetition of a 19th-century theory by Gustave Le Bon when organized crowds were seen by political elites as potentially anarchic threats to the social order.
In his book The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895), Le Bon described a sort of collective contagion uniting a crowd into a near religious frenzy, reducing members to barbaric, if not subhuman levels of consciousness with mindless anarchic goals. Since such a description depersonalizes supporters, this type of Le Bon analysis is criticized because the would-be defenders of liberal democracy simultaneously are dodging responsibility for investigating grievances while also unwittingly accepting the same us vs. them framing of illiberalism.
Connolly acknowledges the risks but considers it more risky to ignore that Trumpian persuasion is successful due to deliberate use of techniques evoking more mild forms of affective contagion.
Falsehoods:
See also: Stop the Steal and False or misleading statements by Donald Trump
The absolutist rhetoric employed heavily favors crowd reaction over veracity, with a large number of falsehoods which Trump presents as facts.
Drawing on Harry G. Frankfurt's book On Bullshit, political science professor Matthew McManus points out that it is more precise to identify Trump as a bullshitter whose sole interest is to persuade, and not a liar (e.g. Richard Nixon) who takes the power of truth seriously and so deceitfully attempts to conceal it. Trump by contrast is indifferent to the truth or unaware of it.
Unlike conventional lies of politicians exaggerating their accomplishments, Trump's lies are egregious, making lies about easily verifiable facts. At one rally Trump stated his father "came from Germany", even though Fred Trump was born in New York City.
Trump is surprised when his falsehoods are contradicted, as was the case when leaders at the 2018 United Nations General Assembly burst into laughter at his boast that he had accomplished more in his first two years than any other United States president. Visibly startled, Trump responded to the audience: "I didn't expect that reaction."
Trump lies about the trivial, such as claiming that there was no rain on the day of his inauguration when in fact it did rain, as well as making grandiose "Big Lies", such as claiming that Obama founded ISIS, or promoting the birther movement, a conspiracy theory which claims that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii.
Connolly points to the similarities of such reality-bending gaslighting with fascist and post Soviet techniques of propaganda including Kompromat (scandalous material), stating that "Trumpian persuasion draws significantly upon the repetition of Big Lies."
More combative, less ideological base:
Journalist Elaina Plott suggests ideology is not as important as other characteristics of Trumpism. Plott cites political analyst Jeff Roe, who observed Trump "understood" and acted on the trend among Republican voters to be "less ideological" but "more polarized".
Republicans are now more willing to accept policies like government mandated health care coverage for pre-existing conditions or trade tariffs, formerly disdained by conservatives as burdensome government regulations.
At the same time, strong avowals of support for Trump and aggressive partisanship have become part of Republican election campaigning—in at least some parts of America—reaching down even to non-partisan campaigns for local government which formerly were collegial and issue-driven.
Research by political scientist Marc Hetherington and others has found Trump supporters tend to share a "worldview" transcending political ideology, agreeing with statements like "the best strategy is to play hardball, even if it means being unfair." In contrast, those who agree with statements like "cooperation is the key to success" tend to prefer Trump's adversary former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
On January 31, 2021, a detailed overview of the attempt by combative Trump supporters to subvert the election of the United States was published in The New York Times. Journalist Nicholas Lemann writes of the disconnect between some of Trump's campaign rhetoric and promises, and what he accomplished once in office—and the fact that the difference seemed to bother very few supporters.
The campaign themes being:
- anti-free-trade nationalism,
- defense of Social Security,
- attacks on big business,
- "building that big, beautiful wall and making Mexico pay for it",
- repealing Obama's Affordable Care Act,
- a trillion dollar infrastructure-building program.
The accomplishments being "conventional" Republican policies and legislation—substantial tax cuts, rollbacks of federal regulations, and increases in military spending. Many have noted that instead of the Republican National Convention issuing the customary "platform" of policies and promises for the 2020 campaign, it offered a "one-page resolution" stating that the party was not "going to have a new platform, but instead ... 'has and will continue to enthusiastically support the president's America-first agenda.'"
An alternate nonideological circular definition of Trumpism widely held among Trump activists was reported by Saagar Enjeti, chief Washington correspondent for The Hill, who stated: "I was frequently told by people wholly within the MAGA camp that trumpism meant anything Trump does, ergo nothing that he did is a departure from trumpism."
Ideological themes:
Trumpism differs from classical Abraham Lincoln Republicanism in many ways regarding free trade, immigration, equality, checks and balances in federal government, and the separation of church and state. Peter J. Katzenstein of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center believes that Trumpism rests on three pillars, namely nationalism, religion and race.
According to Jeff Goodwin, Trumpism is characterized by five key elements:
At the 2021 CPAC conference, Trump gave his own definition of what defines Trumpism: "What it means is great deals, ... . Like the USMCA replacement of the horrible NAFTA. ... It means low taxes and eliminated job killing regulations, ... . It means strong borders, but people coming into our country based on a system of merit. ... [I]t means no riots in the streets.
It means law enforcement. It means very strong protection for the second amendment and the right to keep and bear arms. ... [I]t means a strong military and taking care of our vets ... ."
Social psychology:
Dominance orientation:
Social psychology research into the Trump movement, such as that of Bob Altemeyer, Thomas F. Pettigrew, and Karen Stenner, views the Trump movement as primarily being driven by the psychological predispositions of its followers.
Altemeyer and other researchers such as Pettigrew emphasize that no claim is made that these factors provide a complete explanation, mentioning other research showing that important political and historical factors (reviewed elsewhere in this article) are also involved.
The academic peer-reviewed journal Social Psychological and Personality Science published the article "Group-Based Dominance and Authoritarian Aggression Predict Support for Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election", describing a study concluding that Trump followers have a distinguishing preference for strongly hierarchical and ethnocentric social orders that favor their in-group.
In a non-academic book which he co-authored with John Dean entitled Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers, Altemeyer describes research which reaches the same conclusions.
Despite disparate and inconsistent beliefs and ideologies, a coalition of such followers can become cohesive and broad in part because each individual "compartmentalizes" their thoughts and they are free to define their sense of the threatened tribal in-group in their own terms, whether it is predominantly related to their cultural or religious views (e.g. the mystery of evangelical support for Trump), nationalism (e.g. the Make America Great Again slogan), or their race (maintaining a white majority).
Altemeyer, MacWilliams, Feldman, Choma, Hancock, Van Assche and Pettigrew claim that instead of directly attempting to measure such ideological, racial or policy views, supporters of such movements can be reliably predicted by using two social psychology scales (singly or in combination), namely right-wing authoritarian (RWA) measures which were developed in the 1980s by Altemeyer and other authoritarian personality researchers, and the social dominance orientation (SDO) scale developed in the 1990s by social dominance theorists.
In May 2019, Monmouth University Polling Institute conducted a study in collaboration with Altemeyer in order to empirically test the hypothesis using the SDO and RWA measures. The finding was that social dominance orientation and affinity for authoritarian leadership are highly correlated with followers of Trumpism.
Altemeyer's perspective and his use of an authoritarian scale and SDO to identify Trump followers is not uncommon. His study was a further confirmation of the earlier mentioned studies discussed in MacWilliams (2016), Feldman (2020), Choma and Hancock (2017), and Van Assche & Pettigrew (2016).
The research does not imply that the followers always behave in an authoritarian manner but that expression is contingent, which means there is reduced influence if it is not triggered by fear and what the subject perceives as threats.
The research is global and similar social psychological techniques for analyzing Trumpism have demonstrated their effectiveness at identifying adherents of similar movements in Europe, including those Belgium and France (Lubbers & Scheepers, 2002; Swyngedouw & Giles, 2007; Van Hiel & Mervielde, 2002; Van Hiel, 2012), the Netherlands (Cornelis & Van Hiel, 2014) and Italy (Leone, Desimoni & Chirumbolo, 2014).
Quoting comments from participants in a series of focus groups made up of people who had voted for Democrat Obama in 2012 but flipped to Trump in 2016, pollster Diane Feldman noted the anti-government, anti-coastal-elite anger: "'They think they're better than us, they're P.C., they're virtue-signallers.'
'[Trump] doesn't come across as one of those people who think they're better than us and are screwing us.' 'They lecture us.' 'They don't even go to church.' 'They're in charge, and they're ripping us off.'"
Basis in animal behavior:
Former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich explained the central role of dominance in his speech "Principles of Trumpism", comparing the needed leadership style to that of a violent bear. Psychology researcher Dan P. McAdams thinks a better comparison is to the dominance behavior of alpha male chimpanzees such as Yeroen, the subject of an extensive study of chimp social behavior conducted by renowned primatologist Frans de Waal.
Christopher Boehm, a professor of biology and anthropology agrees, writing, "his model of political posturing has echoes of what I saw in the wild in six years in Tanzania studying the Gombe chimpanzees," and "seems like a classic alpha display."
Using the example of Yeroen, McAdams describes the similarities: "On Twitter, Trump's incendiary tweets are like Yeroen's charging displays. In chimp colonies, the alpha male occasionally goes berserk and starts screaming, hooting, and gesticulating wildly as he charges toward other males nearby.
Pandemonium ensues as rival males cower in fear ... Once the chaos ends, there is a period of peace and order, wherein rival males pay homage to the alpha, visiting him, grooming him, and expressing various forms of submission. In Trump's case, his tweets are designed to intimidate his foes and rally his submissive base ... These verbal outbursts reinforce the president's dominance by reminding everybody of his wrath and his force."
Primatologist Dame Jane Goodall explains that like the dominance performances of Trump, "In order to impress rivals, males seeking to rise in the dominance hierarchy perform spectacular displays: Stamping, slapping the ground, dragging branches, throwing rocks.
The more vigorous and imaginative the display, the faster the individual is likely to rise in the hierarchy, and the longer he is likely to maintain that position."
The comparison has been echoed by political observers sympathetic to Trump. Nigel Farage, an enthusiastic backer of Trump, stated that in the 2016 United States presidential debates where Trump loomed up on Clinton, he "looked like a big silverback gorilla", and added that "he is that big alpha male. The leader of the pack!"
McAdams points out the audience gets to vicariously share in the sense of dominance due to the parasocial bonding that his performance produces for his fans, as shown by Shira Gabriel's research studying the phenomenon in Trump's role in The Apprentice.
McAdams writes that the "television audience vicariously experienced the world according to Donald Trump", a world where Trump says "Man is the most vicious of all animals, and life is a series of battles ending in victory or defeat."
Collective narcissism:
Further information: Collective narcissism
Donald Trump on social media, and Post-truth politics
Cultural anthropologist Paul Stoller thinks Trump masterfully employed the fundamentals of celebrity culture-glitz, illusion and fantasy to construct a shared alternate reality where lies become truth and reality's resistance to one's own dreams are overcome by the right attitude and bold self-confidence.
Trump's father indoctrinated his children from an early age into the sort of positive thinking approach to reality advocated by the family's pastor Norman Vincent Peale.
Trump boasted that Peale considered him the greatest student of his philosophy that regards facts as not important, because positive attitudes will instead cause what you "image" to materialize. Trump biographer Gwenda Blair thinks Trump took Peale's self-help philosophy and "weaponized it".
Robert Jay Lifton, a scholar of psychohistory and authority on the nature of cults, emphasizes the importance of understanding Trumpism "as an assault on reality". A leader has more power if he is in any part successful at making truth irrelevant to his followers.
Trump biographer Timothy L. O'Brien agrees, stating: "It is a core operating principle of Trumpism.If you constantly attack objective reality, you are left as the only trustworthy source of information, which is one of his goals for his relationship with his supporters—that they should believe no one else but him." Lifton believes Trump is a purveyor of a solipsistic reality which is hostile to facts and is made collective by amplifying frustrations and fears held by his community of zealous believers.
Social psychologists refer to this as collective narcissism, a commonly held and strong emotional investment in the idea that one's group has a special status in society. It is often accompanied by chronic expressions of intolerance towards out-groups, intergroup aggression and frequent expressions of group victimhood whenever the in-group feels threatened by perceived criticisms or lack of proper respect for the in-group.
Identity of group members is closely tied to the collective identity expressed by its leader, motivating multiple studies to examine its relationship to authoritarian movements.
Collective narcissism measures have been shown to be a powerful predictor of membership in such movements including Trump's.
In his book Believe Me which details Trump's exploitation of white evangelical politics of fear, Messiah College history professor John Fea points out the narcissistic nature of the fanciful appeals to nostalgia, noting that "In the end, the practice of nostalgia is inherently selfish because it focuses entirely on our own experience of the past and not on the experience of others.
For example, people nostalgic for the world of Leave It to Beaver may fail to recognize that other people, perhaps even some of the people living in the Cleaver's suburban "paradise" of the 1950s, were not experiencing the world in a way that they would describe as 'great.'
Nostalgia can give us tunnel vision. Its selective use of the past fails to recognize the complexity and breadth of the human experience ... ."
According to Fea, the hopelessness of achieving such fanciful versions of an idealized past "causes us to imagine a future filled with horror" making anything unfamiliar the fodder for conspiratorial narratives that easily mobilize white evangelicals who cannot summon "the kind of spiritual courage necessary to overcome fear."
As a result, they not only embrace these fears but are easily captivated by a strongman such as Trump who repeats and amplifies their fears while posing as the deliverer from them. In his review of Fea's analysis of the impact of conspiracy theories on white evangelical Trump supporters, scholar of religious politics David Gutterman writes: "The greater the threat, the more powerful the deliverance."
Gutterman's view is that "Donald J. Trump did not invent this formula; evangelicals have, in their lack of spiritual courage, demanded and gloried in this message for generations. Despite the literal biblical reassurance to 'fear not,' white evangelicals are primed for fear, their identity is stoked by fear, and the sources of fear are around every unfamiliar turn.
Social theory scholar John Cash notes that disaster narratives of impending horrors have a broader audience than a single community whose identity is associated with specific collectively held certainties offered by white evangelical leaders, pointing to a 2010 Pew study which found that 41 percent of those in the US think that the world will either definitely or probably be destroyed by the middle of the century.
Cash points out that certainties may be found in other narratives which also have the unifying effect of binding like minded individuals into shared "us versus them" narratives such as those based on race or political absolutisms.
Cash notes that all political systems must endure some such exposure to the lure of narcissism, fantasy, illogicality and distortion. Cash thinks that psychoanalytic theorist Joel Whitebook is correct that "Trumpism as a social experience can be understood as a psychotic like phenomenon, that "[Trumpism is] an intentional [...] attack on our relation to reality."
Whitebook thinks Trump's playbook is like that of Putin's strategist Vladislav Surkov who employs "ceaseless shapeshifting, appealing to nationalist skinheads one moment and human rights groups the next."
Cash makes comparisons to an Alice in Wonderland world when describing Trump's adept ability to hold a looking glass up to followers with disparate fantasies by seemingly embracing all of them in a series of contradictory tweets and pronouncements.