Presidency of Donald Trump
U.S. presidential administration from 2017 to 2021 / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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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 Democrat 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 following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election to former Democratic vice president Joe Biden, after one term in office.
Presidency of Donald Trump January 20, 2017 – January 20, 2021 | |
Cabinet | See list |
---|---|
Party | Republican |
Election | 2016 |
Seat | White House |
Archived website Library website |
Trump was unsuccessful in his efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act but rescinded the individual mandate.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 and appointed 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 In economic policy, he partially repealed the Dodd–Frank Act and signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.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, starting in 2018. 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 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.
On November 9, 2016, Republicans Donald Trump of New York and Governor Mike Pence of Indiana won the 2016 election, defeating Democrats former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of New York and Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia. Trump won 304 electoral votes compared to Clinton's 227, though Clinton won a plurality of the popular vote, receiving nearly 2.9 million more votes than Trump. Trump thus became the fifth person to win the presidency while losing the popular vote.[1] In the concurrent congressional elections, Republicans maintained majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017. He was sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts.[2] In his seventeen-minute inaugural address, Trump painted a dark picture of contemporary America, pledging to end "American carnage" caused by urban crime and saying America's "wealth, strength, and confidence has dissipated" by jobs lost overseas.[3] He declared his strategy would be "America First."[2] The largest single-day protest in U.S. history, the Women's March, took place the day after his inauguration and was driven by opposition to Trump and his policies and views.[4]
The Trump administration was characterized by record turnover, particularly among White House staff. By early 2018, 43% of senior White House positions had turned over.[5] The administration had a higher turnover rate in the first two and a half years than the five previous presidents did over their entire terms.[6]
By October 2019, one in 14 of Trump's political appointees were former lobbyists; less than three years into his presidency, Trump had appointed more than four times as many lobbyists than predecessor Barack Obama did over the course of his first six years in office.[7]
Trump's cabinet included U.S. senator from Alabama Jeff Sessions as Attorney General,[8] banker Steve Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary,[9] retired Marine Corps general James Mattis as Defense Secretary,[10] and ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State.[11] Trump also brought on board politicians who had opposed him during the presidential campaign, such as neurosurgeon Ben Carson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development,[12] and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley as Ambassador to the United Nations.[13]
Cabinet
Days after the presidential election, Trump selected RNC Chairman Reince Priebus as his Chief of Staff.[14] Trump chose Sessions for the position of Attorney General.[15]
In February 2017, Trump formally announced his cabinet structure, elevating the Director of National Intelligence and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency to cabinet level. The Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, which had been added to the cabinet by Obama in 2009, was removed from the cabinet. Trump's cabinet consisted of 24 members, more than Obama at 23 or George W. Bush at 21.[16]
On February 13, 2017, Trump fired Michael Flynn from the post of National Security Advisor on grounds that he had lied to Vice President Pence about his communications with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak; Flynn later pleaded guilty to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) about his contacts with Russia.[17] Flynn was fired amidst the ongoing controversy concerning Russian interference in the 2016 election and accusations that Trump's electoral team colluded with Russian agents.
In July 2017, John F. Kelly, who had served as secretary of Homeland Security, replaced Priebus as Chief of Staff.[18] In September 2017, Tom Price resigned as Secretary of HHS amid criticism over his use of private charter jets for personal travel.[19] Kirstjen Nielsen succeeded Kelly as Secretary in December 2017.[20] Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was fired via a tweet in March 2018; Trump appointed Mike Pompeo to replace Tillerson and Gina Haspel to succeed Pompeo as the Director of the CIA.[21] In the wake of a series of scandals, Scott Pruitt resigned as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in July 2018.[22] Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis informed Trump of his resignation following Trump's abrupt December 19, 2018, announcement that the remaining 2,000 American troops in Syria would be withdrawn, against the recommendations of his military and civilian advisors.[23]
Trump fired numerous inspectors general of agencies, including those who were probing the Trump administration and close Trump associates. In 2020, he fired five inspectors general in two months. The Washington Post wrote, "For the first time since the system was created in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, inspectors general find themselves under systematic attack from the president, putting independent oversight of federal spending and operations at risk."[24]
Dismissal of James Comey
Trump dismissed FBI Director James Comey on May 9, 2017, saying he had accepted the recommendations of Attorney General Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to dismiss Comey. Sessions's recommendation was based on Rosenstein's, while Rosenstein wrote that Comey should be dismissed for his handling of the conclusion of the FBI investigation into the Hillary Clinton email controversy.[25] On May 10, Trump met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Based on White House notes of the meeting, Trump told the Russians, "I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job ... I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off."[26] On May 11, Trump said in a videoed interview, "... regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey ... in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story."[27] On May 18, Rosenstein told members of the U.S. Senate that he recommended Comey's dismissal while knowing Trump had already decided to fire Comey.[28] In the aftermath of Comey's firing, the events were compared with those of the "Saturday Night Massacre" during Richard Nixon's administration and there was debate over whether Trump had provoked a constitutional crisis, as he had dismissed the man leading an investigation into Trump's associates.[29] Trump's statements raised concerns of potential obstruction of justice.[30] In Comey's memo about a February 2017 meeting with Trump, Comey said Trump attempted to persuade him to abort the investigation into Flynn.[31]
After Republicans won control of the U.S. Senate in 2014, only 28.6 percent of judicial nominees were confirmed, "the lowest percentage of confirmations from 1977 to 2018".[32] At the end of the Obama presidency, 105 judgeships were vacant.[33] Senate Republicans, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, prioritized confirming Trump's judicial appointees, doing so rapidly.[34] By November 2018, Trump had appointed 29 judges to the U.S. courts of appeals, more than any modern president in the first two years of a presidential term.[35]
Trump ultimately appointed 226 Article III federal judges and 260 federal judges in total.[36] His appointees, who were usually affiliated with the conservative Federalist Society, shifted the judiciary to the right.[37] A third of Trump's appointees were under 45 years old when appointed, far higher than under previous presidents.[37] Trump's judicial nominees were less likely to be female or ethnic minority than those of the previous administration.[38][39] Of Trump's judicial appointments to the U.S. courts of appeals (circuit courts), two-thirds were white men, compared to 31% of Obama nominees and 63% of George W. Bush nominees.[37][40]
Supreme Court nominations
Trump made three nominations to the Supreme Court: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett:
- Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch in January 2017 to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016, which had not been filled by Obama because the Republican-majority Senate did not consider the nomination of Merrick Garland. The Senate confirmed Gorsuch in a mostly party-line vote of 54–45 in April 2017.[41] Gorsuch's confirmation was one of Trump's major first year accomplishments, made as part of a "100‑day pledge".[42]
- Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh in July 2018 to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was considered a key swing vote on the Supreme Court. The Senate confirmed Kavanaugh in a mostly party-line vote of 50–48 in October 2018 after allegations that Kavanaugh had attempted to rape another student when they were both in high school; Kavanaugh denied the allegation.[43][44]
- Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett in September 2020 to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Ginsburg was considered part of the Court's liberal wing and her replacement with a conservative jurist substantially changed the ideological composition of the Supreme Court.[45] Democrats opposed the nomination, arguing that the court vacancy should not be filled until after the 2020 presidential election. On October 26, 2020, the Senate confirmed Barrett by a mostly party-line vote of 52–48, with all Democrats opposing her confirmation.[46]
Trump's own staffers, subordinates, and allies frequently characterized Trump as infantile.[47] Trump reportedly eschewed reading detailed briefing documents, including the President's Daily Brief, in favor of receiving oral briefings.[48][49] Intelligence briefers reportedly repeated the President's name and title in order to keep his attention.[50][51] He was also known to acquire information by watching up to eight hours of television each day, most notably Fox News programs such as Fox & Friends and Hannity, whose broadcast talking points Trump sometimes repeated in public statements, particularly in early morning tweets.[52][53][54] Trump reportedly expressed anger if intelligence analyses contradicted his beliefs or public statements, with two briefers stating they had been instructed by superiors to not provide Trump with information that contradicted his public statements.[51]
Trump had reportedly fostered chaos as a management technique, resulting in low morale and policy confusion among his staff.[55][56] Trump proved unable to effectively compromise during the 115th U.S. Congress, which led to significant governmental gridlock and few notable legislative accomplishments despite Republican control of both houses of Congress.[57] Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin found Trump lacked several traits of an effective leader, including "humility, acknowledging errors, shouldering blame and learning from mistakes, empathy, resilience, collaboration, connecting with people and controlling unproductive emotions."[58]
In January 2018, Axios reported Trump's working hours were typically around 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. (a later start and an earlier end compared to the beginning of his presidency) and that he was holding fewer meetings during his working hours in order to accommodate Trump's desire for more unstructured free time (labelled as "executive time").[59] In 2019, Axios published Trump's schedule from November 7, 2018, to February 1, 2019, and calculated that around sixty percent of the time between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. was "executive time."[60]
False and misleading statements
The number and scale of Trump's statements in public speeches, remarks, and tweets identified as false by scholars, fact-checkers, and commentators were characterized as unprecedented for an American president[64][65] and even unprecedented in U.S. politics.[66] The New Yorker called falsehoods a distinctive part of his political identity,[67] and they have also been described by Republican political advisor Amanda Carpenter as a gaslighting tactic.[68] His White House had dismissed the idea of objective truth[69] and his campaign and presidency have been described as being "post-truth"[70] and hyper-Orwellian.[71] Trump's rhetorical signature included disregarding data from federal institutions that was incompatible to his arguments; quoting hearsay, anecdotal evidence, and questionable claims in partisan media; denying reality (including his own statements); and distracting when falsehoods were exposed.[72]
During the first year of Trump's presidency, The Washington Post's fact-checking team wrote that Trump was "the most fact-challenged politician" it had "ever encountered ... the pace and volume of the president's misstatements means that we cannot possibly keep up."[73] The Post found that as president, Trump made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims, increasing from an average of six a day in his first year as president to 39 claims a day in his final year.[74] The most common false or misleading claims by Trump involved the economy and jobs, his border wall proposal, and his tax legislation;[75] he had also made false statements regarding prior administrations[75] as well as other topics, including crime, terrorism, immigration, Russia and the Mueller probe, the Ukraine probe, immigration, and the COVID-19 pandemic.[61] Senior administration officials had also regularly given false, misleading, or tortured statements to the news media,[76][77] which made it difficult for the news media to take official statements seriously.[76]
Rule of law
Shortly before Trump secured the 2016 Republican nomination, The New York Times reported "legal experts across the political spectrum say" Trump's rhetoric reflected "a constitutional worldview that shows contempt for the First Amendment, the separation of powers and the rule of law," adding "many conservative and libertarian legal scholars warn that electing Mr. Trump is a recipe for a constitutional crisis."[78] Political scientists warned that candidate Trump's rhetoric and actions mimicked those of other politicians who ultimately turned authoritarian once in office.[79] Some scholars have concluded that during Trump's tenure as president and largely due to his actions and rhetoric, the U.S. has experienced democratic backsliding.[80][81] Many prominent Republicans have expressed similar concerns that Trump's perceived disregard for the rule of law betrayed conservative principles.[82][83][84][85]
During the first two years of his presidency, Trump repeatedly sought to influence the Department of Justice to investigate Clinton,[86][87] the Democratic National Committee,[88] and Comey.[89] He persistently repeated a variety of allegations, at least some of which had already been investigated or debunked.[90][91] In spring 2018, Trump told White House counsel Don McGahn he wanted to order the Department of Justice to prosecute Clinton and Comey, but McGahn advised Trump such action would constitute abuse of power and invite possible impeachment.[92] In May 2018, Trump demanded that the Department of Justice investigate "whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes," which the Department of Justice referred to its inspector general.[93] Although it is not unlawful for a president to exert influence on the Department of Justice to open an investigation, presidents have assiduously avoided doing so to prevent perceptions of political interference.[93][94]
Sessions resisted several demands by Trump and his allies for investigations of political opponents, causing Trump to repeatedly express frustration, saying at one point, "I don't have an attorney general."[95] While criticizing the special counsel investigation in July 2019, Trump falsely claimed that the Constitution ensures that "I have to the right to do whatever I want as president."[96] Trump had on multiple occasions either suggested or promoted views of extending his presidency beyond normal term limits.[97][98]
Trump frequently criticized the independence of the judiciary for unfairly interfering in his administration's ability to decide policy.[99] In November 2018, in an extraordinary rebuke of a sitting president, Roberts criticized Trump's characterization of a judge who had ruled against his policies as an "Obama judge," adding "That's not law."[100] In October 2020, twenty Republican former U.S. attorneys, among them appointees by each Republican president since Eisenhower, characterized Trump as "a threat to the rule of law in our country." Greg Brower, who worked in the Trump administration, asserted, "It's clear that President Trump views the Justice Department and the FBI as his own personal law firm and investigative agency."[101]
Relationship with the news media
Early into his presidency, Trump developed a highly contentious relationship with the news media, repeatedly referring to them as the "fake news media" and "the enemy of the people."[102] As a candidate, Trump had refused press credentials for offending publications but said he would not do so if elected.[103] Trump both privately and publicly mused about taking away critical reporters' White House press credentials.[104] At the same time, the Trump White House gave temporary press passes to far-right pro-Trump fringe outlets, such as InfoWars and The Gateway Pundit, which are known for publishing hoaxes and conspiracy theories.[104][105][106]
On his first day in office, Trump falsely accused journalists of understating the size of the crowd at his inauguration and called the news media "among the most dishonest human beings on earth." Trump's claims were notably defended by Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who claimed the inauguration crowd had been the biggest in history, a claim disproven by photographs.[107] Trump's senior adviser Kellyanne Conway then defended Spicer when asked about the falsehood, saying it was an "alternative fact", not a falsehood.[108]
The administration frequently sought to punish and blocked access for reporters that broke stories about the administration.[109][110][111][112] Trump frequently criticized right-wing media outlet Fox News for being insufficiently supportive of him,[113] threatening to lend his support for alternatives to Fox News on the right.[114] On August 16, 2018, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution affirming that "the press is not the enemy of the people."[115]
The relationship between Trump, the news media, and fake news has been studied. One study found that between October 7 and November 14, 2016, while one in four Americans visited a fake news website, "Trump supporters visited the most fake news websites, which were overwhelmingly pro-Trump" and "almost 6 in 10 visits to fake news websites came from the 10% of people with the most conservative online information diets."[116][117] Brendan Nyhan, one of the authors of the study, said in an interview, "People got vastly more misinformation from Donald Trump than they did from fake news websites."[118]
In October 2018, Trump praised U.S. Representative Greg Gianforte for assaulting political reporter Ben Jacobs in 2017.[120] According to analysts, the incident marked the first time the president has "openly and directly praised a violent act against a journalist on American soil."[121] Later that month, as CNN and prominent Democrats were targeted with mail bombs, Trump initially condemned the bomb attempts but shortly thereafter blamed the "Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News" for causing "a very big part of the anger we see today in our society."[122]
The Trump Justice Department obtained by court order the 2017 phone logs or email metadata of reporters from CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, and Politico as part of investigations into leaks of classified information.[123]
Trump continued his use of Twitter following the presidential campaign. He continued to personally tweet from @realDonaldTrump, his personal account, while his staff tweet on his behalf using the official @POTUS account. His use of Twitter was unconventional for a president, with his tweets initiating controversy and becoming news in their own right.[124] Some scholars have referred to his time in office as the "first true Twitter presidency."[125] The Trump administration described Trump's tweets as "official statements by the President of the United States."[126] The federal judge Naomi Reice Buchwald ruled in 2018 that Trump's blocking of other Twitter users due to opposing political views violated the First Amendment and he must unblock them.[127] The ruling was upheld on appeal.[128][129]
His tweets have been reported as ill-considered, impulsive, vengeful, and bullying, often being made late at night or in the early hours of the morning.[130][131][132] His tweets about a Muslim ban were successfully turned against his administration to halt two versions of travel restrictions from some Muslim-majority countries.[133] He has used Twitter to threaten and intimidate his political opponents and potential political allies needed to pass bills.[134] Many tweets appear to be based on stories Trump has seen in the media, including far-right news websites such as Breitbart and television shows such as Fox & Friends.[135][136]
Trump used Twitter to attack federal judges who ruled against him in court cases[137] and to criticize officials within his own administration, including then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, then-National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and, at various times, Attorney General Jeff Sessions.[138] Tillerson was eventually fired via a tweet by Trump.[139] Trump also tweeted that his Justice Department is part of the American "deep state";[140] that "there was tremendous leaking, lying and corruption at the highest levels of the FBI, Justice & State" Departments;[138] and that the special counsel investigation is a "WITCH HUNT!"[141] In August 2018, Trump used Twitter to write that Attorney General Jeff Sessions "should stop" the special counsel investigation immediately; he also referred to it as "rigged" and its investigators as biased.[142]
Twitter Safety @TwitterSafety After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.
January 8, 2021[143]
In February 2020, Trump tweeted criticism of the prosecutors' proposed sentence for Trump's former aide Roger Stone. A few hours later, the Justice Department replaced the prosecutors' proposed sentence with a lighter proposal. This gave the appearance of presidential interference in a criminal case and caused a strong negative reaction. All four of the original prosecutors withdrew from the case; more than a thousand former Department of Justice lawyers signed a letter condemning the action.[144][145] On July 10, Trump commuted the sentence of Stone days before he was due to report to prison.[146]
In response to the mid-2020 George Floyd protests, some of which resulted in looting,[147] Trump tweeted on May 25 that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." Not long after, Twitter restricted the tweet for violating the company's policy on promoting violence.[148] On May 28, Trump signed an executive order which sought to limit legal protections of social media companies.[149]
On January 8, 2021, Twitter announced that they had permanently suspended Trump's personal account "due to the risk of further incitement of violence" following the Capitol attack.[150] Trump announced in his final tweet before the suspension that he would not attend the inauguration of Joe Biden.[151] Other social media platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube and others also suspended the official handles of Donald Trump.[152][153]