Top 10 Worst Things Trump Has Done in His Second Term
SAN DIEGO -- If presidencies were akin to attractions at Disneyland, President Donald Trump's second term would be Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.
When it comes to spreading demagoguery, creating mayhem, generating chaos and turning people against one another, Trump really is in a league of his own. He has a knack for doing the wrong thing.
Trump's second term in office is not yet 150 days old. Still, in that relatively short time, he has managed to do substantial harm on multiple fronts to the United States and some of its most valuable institutions.
Trump has made so many blunders, scrapped so many norms, created so much upheaval, ginned up so much confusion, fractured so many families and done such damage to America's soul that it seems impossible to count the broken dishes in the china shop.
In fact, some of my fellow journalists think that Trump's strategy is to overwhelm the Fourth Estate with news. He wreaks so much havoc on so many fronts that it makes it difficult for his critics to keep up, let alone point out what he is doing wrong. His most egregious infractions range from the unfair to the unconstitutional to the unconscionable.
For their sins against the American people, Trump and his administration must be held accountable. In the 2026 midterm elections, Republican members of Congress must answer for Trump's excesses. After all, for the last several months, they have stood silently by as the president defaced, defiled and destroyed the institutions and traditions that make America great.
Yet, we can't have accountability without first having a detailed accounting. Americans need to keep score at home.
I recently made -- largely for my own benefit -- a list of the top 10 worst things that Trump has done in his second term. The list is incomplete, because new items are constantly rolling in.
Even so, as of this moment, here's just some of what Trump and his administration have to answer for:
No. 1: Instituting a new and sweeping travel ban on citizens from 12 countries, hearkening back to the infamous "Muslim ban" that Trump launched during his first term.
No. 2: Weaponizing trade policy by imposing punitively high tariffs on imports from more than 50 countries, and then making matters worse by pausing them, restarting them, and pausing them again.
No. 3: Creating the Department of Government Efficiency and then giving billionaire Elon Musk virtual free rein to insult and lay off thousands of U.S. government workers.
No. 4: Damaging relations between Ukraine and the United States by publicly humiliating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a cringeworthy Oval Office meeting in February.
No. 5: Trying to do away with birthright citizenship to prevent the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants from becoming U.S. citizens as spelled out in the Constitution.
No. 6: Turning international students into collateral damage in its war against Harvard because the private university refused to bend the knee and surrender to a hostile takeover by the Trump administration.
No. 7: Unleashing, without due process, a flurry of legally dubious deportations, not just of undocumented immigrants but also of legal residents, green card holders, even U.S. citizens.
No. 8: Accepting from Qatar, a nation that bankrolls Hamas terrorists, the gift of a Boeing 747 for Trump to use as Air Force One, despite national security concerns raised by Senate Republicans.
No. 9: Hosting a private gathering in May of the highest-paying customers of his personal cryptocurrency business, despite bipartisan concerns that he's selling access to the White House for personal profit.
No. 10: Challenging the concept of judicial review by suggesting that presidents don't answer to the federal courts, and even threatening with impeachment judges that strike down his policies as unlawful.
Again, that's not all. Trump will go down in history as a morally defunct conman, carnival barker and convicted felon who left America worse off than he found it largely because he never asked what he could do for the presidency -- only what the presidency could do for him.
Trump deserves most of the blame for the mess he made. But he had unlikely accomplice: Democrats. They were so clueless, gutless and rudderless that they managed to lose the White House to someone like that. They should be ashamed. In 2028, they need to think about everything they've done up to now -- and then do the opposite.
In fact, now that I think about it, Democrats deserve their own list of mistakes, sins and failures. Coming right up, folks.
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To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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