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By nearly every objective metric Trump's presidency has been a failure, and he has contributed to this country's partisan division perhaps more than any single person over the past decade, from his birther slanders to his idiotic anti-mask posturing.  Trumpists wear magic glasses that make them see his presidency as successful.  To the outwardly reluctant Trumpist fact-based indictments of Trump's disastrous presidency are merely the rantings of deranged socialists. These anti-anti-Trumpers fancy themselves the enlightened seers of Trump's establishment-obliterating 4-D chess strategy. But there are more important distinctions among the pro-Trump camps.  Some Trump voters see in Joe Biden a "Weekend at Bernie's" candidate. He's a walking corpse, a puppet of the socialist left that will be the real power behind his presidency. (There are exactly five self-described democratic socialists in the 535-member Congress.)  "The unqualified — and indefensible — case for Trump goes: 'Donald Trump's presidency has been good for America — positively, on its own merits, rather than merely relative to what we might have expected from Mrs. Clinton.' That argument is partly dishonest, partly delusional." Put another way, there is no real case for a second Trump term, no matter how liberal or conservative you may be, except for — say it with me — "Orange Man Good."  Trump's got a record now. And in its totality it's an indefensible record.

·       Trump is flagrantly corrupt  Ever since Trump burst into the national conscious in the 1980s he's stiffed hundreds of other working people — from construction companies to dishwashers — on countless occasions over the years. He's also dripping with a history of corrupt chicanery.  So while Trump desperately wants to talk about Hunter Biden, Burisma, and some guy named Bobulinski, the last thing he wants to talk about is how he and his talentless children have shamelessly used his presidency to enhance their own financial interests. It's an election year, so it's probably worth recalling that time he was impeached for trying to strong-arm a foreign leader into investigating a political opponent. Even honest Republicans admitted that was corrupt as hell but had to qualify that it wasn't "remove from office" corrupt.  Books will be written detailing just how many conflicts of interest Trump has exploited as president, but none is more in-your-face than the Trump International Hotel — a veritable swamp of influence-peddling, heavily subsidized by the American taxpayer, barely more than a mile from the White House.

• Trump's coronavirus response was, and continues to be, criminally negligent.  Trump initially denied the coronavirus existed.  Then he said it would go away like magic. Then he said we have it under control. Then he explicitly said we should slow down testing because the numbers were making him look bad.  Then he attacked the scientists and suggested that injecting bleach might be a good idea. Then he said masks were bad and lockdowns tyrannical. Then he said we're "rounding the corner," which he's insisted over and over and over for the past eight months. Then he got COVID.  Now his chief of staff Mark Meadows admits they've just given up.  In between all that, Trump put his son-in-law Jared Kushner in charge of securing the nation's restocking of personal protective equipment.  Kushner in turn tasked a small group of resourceless 20-somethings with personal laptops and Gmail accounts to do all the work. It didn't go well.  A recent study out of Columbia University estimated that at least half of the US death toll could have been avoided if the US had used the same COVID-mitigating policies and protocols as Canada. That didn't happen, and now 220,000 Americans and counting have died of the virus, and we couldn't escape to Canada if we tried.  As Trump said at the onset of the pandemic, in March, "I take no responsibility." To drive the point home, he's been purging inspectors general — the independent watchdogs of government — for months. And as he says now, with the country still a COVID basket case, "The Fake News Media is riding COVID, COVID, COVID, all the way to the Election. Losers!"
• Objectively, Trump is a liar, and he's incompetent, and he's caused untold destruction to his country. You'd have to be deranged to look at the available evidence and come to a more charitable conclusion. Trump is the greatest promoter of left-wing identity-politics-driven 'wokeness'  If "wokeness" didn't exist we'd have to invent it because Donald Trump is president.  Trump has facilitated, exacerbated and legitimized wokeness more than any other figure on the right or left. He has made anti-wokeness toxic by association."  That's because, unlike some of the wrongly cancelled, Trump is indeed a racist, a misogynist, and a xenophobe.  In a world where this guy is the president, of course woke opposition would gain greater credibility and influence.
• Trump is a sadistic thug and a sniveling coward
• Trump White House alumni, including decorated generals, have described their former boss as a walking disaster. But among the few senior staffers to survive the entire administration is the white-nationalist Stephen Miller. Trump put him in charge of directing immigration policy and border enforcement, which included zero-tolerance prosecution of the misdemeanor crime of illegal border crossing, and the deliberate separation of children from their parents. Now we know that the Trump administration lost track of 545 of those kids' parents. (If you're a "Save the Children" pro-life conservative for Trump, maybe read the previous sentence again.) His ham-fisted "Muslim ban" disrupted thousands of lives, including American citizens', for no other reason than because the administration hoped — as Steve Bannon put it — "the snowflakes would show up at the airports and riot."
• Trump is also your dangerously gullible uncle on Facebook. It doesn't matter how implausible the conspiracy theory, he's the target audience. His Twitter account is a national embarrassment, larded with hysterical tantrums, hoax conspiracy theories, and retweets of QAnoners, anti-Semites, and miscellaneous internet scumbags. A book can be written on all the asinine conspiracy theories Trump has tacitly endorsed — and how much damage was wrought by violent idiots who believe in the church of Trump. But among the most despicable lies Trump has propagated is the slanderous accusation that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough murdered an aide two decades ago — who in fact tragically died at 28 in a freak accident as a result of an undiagnosed medical malady. The deceased woman's family has kept mum about the leader of the free world pushing the theory that a famous man murdered their loved one, because they know how vicious and legitimately dangerous Trump's online minions can be.
• Trump's brand is cruelty, but what his myopic supporters miss is that, like all bullies, he is a sniveling coward who rejects any honest inquiry that might reveal his lies, corruption, and incompetence.  That's why he panicked when faced with Lesley Stahl's basic questions in the "60 Minutes" interview he fled last week. He's been running from fair but critical questions for decades. Trump's idea of what makes America 'great' is un-American.  Sure, Trump started and lost a pointless trade war with China, then used taxpayer money to bail out the American industries battered by his trade war of choice.  And yes, he might disrespect the military by insulting veterans as "suckers," disparaging the generals under his command as "pussies," and using the armed forces as political props for a pre-election stunt.
• Trump has been an opponent of the First Amendment for his entire public life, openly musing that it should be easier to sue journalists for libel, while his campaign attacks media outlets with potentially ruinous lawsuits for running unflattering op-eds and political ads.  Even his nominal attempts at protecting speech are Trojan horses for censorship, such as his executive orders protecting conservative speech on college campuses while labeling other speech as beyond the pale. Trump's goal, though, is not honest debate. It is censorship. If the tech companies do not promote his propaganda, or maintain his exemption from their own rules, they will be punished.

The president has enough self-awareness to know he has no political principles or guiding philosophy besides his own personal enrichment. Trump knows he can only appeal to fear and anger. That's why the supposed "American carnage" of 2016 is now packaged to the MAGA masses as the terror of antifa, wokeness, and lockdowns.  Trump doesn't want us to talk about his record. Or his businesses. Or COVID. He is constantly throwing up manic smoke bombs to keep us focused on anything else.  That's his only move because his presidency has been catastrophic and the damage he has done to this country is incalculable.