Trump has removed those with expertise from all levels of government. In their place he has given foxes the run of the hen house hiring fossil fuel industry advocates rather than qualified individuals. He has fought with allies like the leaders of Canada and New Zealand while praising the dictators in Russia, North Korea and Brazil. Why collapsing
Support for systemic racism
As reflected by the protests across the U.S. it would appear that the systemic racism in Trump's America is being challenged by a vast swath of Americans. This is a president who has told his supporters to beat up protesters and called neo-Nazis and white supremacists "good people". In his fourth of July speech Trump denounced protestors while supporting monuments to Confederates who fought to defend their right to own slaves. Trump is trying to brand himself as the "law and order" president. However, drawing on Richard Nixon political tactic from 1970 may not be the most effective strategy in 2020. America is far less racist than it was in 1970, but Republicans are collectively making a mockery of the constitution. Polls show a majority of Americans including white people approve of the BLM protests inspired by George Floyd’s death. The polls also show a strong disapproval of Trump’s response.
Abject failure to manage the pandemic
Trump has systematically opposed science and this contempt has been shown to undermine the national interest. Trump's disdain for truth has been challenged by COVID-19 which has spurred renewed interest in facts. Trump's failure to contain Covid-19 is adding to his political woes. He gutted the nation’s preparations to deal with pandemics like the coronavirus. Trump shut down the entire Global Health Security and Bio-defense agency and he fired Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossart, whose job was to coordinate a response to global pandemics. As the virus hit Trump proposed a 19 percent cut to the budget of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, a 10 percent cut to Public Health Services and a 7 percent cut to Global Health Services. Trump also directed the CDC to stop funding epidemic prevention activities in 39 out of 49 countries including China. He then ignored repeated warnings about COVID-19 and denied its existence calling it a hoax. When he could no longer deny the pandemic he slow-walked testing and encouraged opening the economy without the proper safeguards. Trump is trying to wish the coronavirus away repeatedly saying the situation is under control even though the American public knows the rates of infection are skyrocketing.
Environmental rollbacks
Trump's eradication of environmental protections have contributed to his abject failure to manage the coronavirus pandemic. Trump's gutting of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is a reflection of an administration at war on wildlife. Trump and Republican's support for the fossil fuel industry further undermine the health of Americans and biodiversity. As reported by Outside Online, "Trump has led the most anti-nature presidency in U.S. history". That is the conclusion of an analysis published on May 21 by the Center for American Progress (CAP). The CAP analysis of the Trump presidency indicates that the total area of public lands that have already lost protections or which his administration is working to reduce protections for, amounts to almost 35 million acres. "President Trump is the only president in U.S. history to have removed more public lands than he protected," reads the analysis.
To add insult to injury, Trump is using the pandemic to help polluters. A recent executive order allows polluting projects like power plants and pipelines to forego proper environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act.
In April Trump formally began to repeal the Clean Water Rule, that same month the EPA began allowing polluters to use COVID-19 as an excuse to stop monitoring and reporting on their pollution. In May Trump rolled back fuel efficiency standards known as "clean car standards". In June, EPA finalized a rule that will gut critical elements of the Clean Water Act and make it much more difficult for Indigenous groups, states, and the public to fight back against polluting projects like pipelines. At the same time the U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue ordered the U.S. Forest Service to expedite environmental reviews which will increase logging and oil development on public lands. Also in June the Trump administration moved forward with its plans to remove wild bird protections thereby imperiling the lives of billions of birds. Finally, EPA chief Andrew Wheeler proposed weaker guidelines for industry under the Clean Air Act
Meanwhile the president continues to hire those who are at odds with the mandates of the agencies and departments they are supposed to represent. Most recently Trump announced he will formally nominate William Perry Pendley to serve as director of the Bureau of Land Management. Pendley has extreme anti-environmental views and a long history of advocating the sale of federal lands.
Tax cuts for the wealthy
Trumps only legislative accomplishment is a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. In their book, The Triumph of Injustice, the University of California at Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman indicate these tax cuts pushed down the rate of taxation for the wealthiest Americans below the lower 50 percent of US earners. This means that rich people now pay less tax than poorer Americans.
A nonpartisan congressional body found that 81.8 percent of benefits from the Republican tax provision in the coronavirus relief package go to the nation's millionaires and billionaires and cost taxpayers an estimated $90 billion this year alone.
Corruption, lies and immorality
The corruption of Trump and the GOP is increasingly a matter of public record. The Trump administration and their supporters have amassed a slew of criminal indictments and convictions. This includes 37 criminal indictments, 7 criminal convictions, and 6 prison sentences. Obama and his administration had none.
As a businessman Trump is a sham. This is a man who ran a fraudulent University, defrauded his own charity, made a business practice of stiffing his creditors. He is a con man, who has left a trail of bankruptcies in his wake. He has bragged about sexually abusing women and he mocked the disabled. He has called Latinos murderers and rapists and he handed out paper towels to people in dire need in Puerto-Rico after Hurricane Maria. This is a man who separated children from their families at the border and put them in cages.
Trump tried to stop books about him from being published, just as he his trying to conceal his taxes and his grades. The reason that Trump has lied more than 20,000 times since becoming president is because the truth is damning. The facts reveal his profound ineptitude and moral turpitude.
A growing number of Republicans feel it is safe to oppose Trump
The president is focused like a laser on his base hoping that they will turn out in droves to support him in November. However, there are signs that this support is slipping too. Republican voters and lawmakers have been increasingly disagreeing with Trump. At his most recent rally in Tulsa there was a very disappointing turnout. For years Trump has had the Republican party under his thumb. However, voters are growing tired of his incompetence and lawmakers see his weakness and fear for their political futures.
This waning support is apparent in several ways. Despite Trump's refusal to tell Americans to wear a mask, Republican lawmakers are calling on Americans to do so. This includes one of Trump's most stalwart supporters Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. During a press conference announcing a package of police reforms, every Republican senator wore a mask
Recently three candidates endorsed by Trump lost their bid to seek the Republican nomination for their states. Rep. Scott Tipton in Colorado was defeated by his far-right challenger, in North Carolina Lynda Bennett was defeated by a political newcomer and in Virginia Rep. Denver Riggleman also lost. This suggests that Trump is out of touch even with his own constituents.
Republican enthusiasm is down by five points since March according to polls from Fox News and Marist College. Republican senators and House members are likely to pass a popular bill that would rename military bases currently named for Confederate soldiers even though Trump has promised to veto the bill. The bill will likely pass with a veto-proof majority. A Fox poll further confounds the president's reelection hopes. Democratic voters fear Trump much more than Republican voters fear Biden. Trump will need every vote he can get to have a chance of winning in November and at this point the president's prospects for a second term are not looking very good.
The courts, former employees, the military and veterans are turning against Trump
Despite appointing a record number of conservative judges, the courts have turned against Trump.
Those who have worked with him are among his most vocal critics. This list includes everybody from John Bolten, his former National Security Advisor to his secretaries of defense. Trump’s effort to use the military to respond to nationwide protests has caused his current and former secretaries of Defense to publicly denounce the now infamous action in Lafayette park. Current Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he opposed using active-duty troops against protesters seeking justice after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police. Former Defense Secretary James N. Mattis accused the president of ordering the military to "violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens."
Trump has also lost the support of some veterans. Most recently a veterans group called Trump a "traitor" over his failure to respond to Russian bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. "Putin owns Donald Trump," the organization wrote on Twitter, along with the #TRE45SON hashtag. The group also released a new video in which they said, "If you’re going to act like a traitor, you don’t get to thank us for our service."
Collapsing support
Trump has lost the support of women, and his support from Latinos, and Blacks has declined even further. As reviewed in an Atlantic article, even white voters are abandoning this president. Trump promised national pride and now a bit more than three years into his presidency polls reveal that national pride is at an all time low. Only 20 percent of Americans said they are satisfied with the way things are going.
In an interview on MSNBC, Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain's 2008 campaign for president, reviewed the Trump presidency saying:
"Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And I don't say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable....When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don't use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We've never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country whose ever been charged with substantial responsibilities...[T]he man who said he would make the country great again [has] brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale. And let's be clear. This isn't happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you're the most likely to die from this disease. We're the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk."More recently Schmidt said Trump's failure to respond to Russia paying bounties for American troops in Afghanistan "is the greatest dereliction of duty in the history of the United States by anybody charged with responsibility".
Trump and the GOP depend on disinformation to control the narrative, however, there is reason to believe that their efforts to game the system are faltering. Renewed interest in facts and science do not bode well for this president's bid for a second term. Trump's support is waning as it is becoming more and more obvious that this is a president who puts his own political and financial well-being ahead of the national interest. This constellation of factors suggest that Trump's presidency will come to an end in November.
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