Donald Trump was one of the most controversial presidents in our history. In fact, as we take a look back at his four years of presidency, there are countless dangerous remarks and decisions.
However, the real danger is right here, in our society: we had ended up electing as our president a person whose personal history revealed mostly lies, pride and strange connections (Jeffrey Epstein anyone?).
Now, we’ve embarked on a new era which seems to be much more quiet, calm and determined to do the right thing. However, we can’t help but have one last look at 5 key lessons we’ve actually learned from Donald Trump over the past 7 years:
There’s no ‘new’ Trump.
Few people still remember this because it happened many years ago while Trump was campaigning for the presidential election. Now, I want to shed a light on his statements from April 2016, for example:
‘I will be so presidential you will be so bored. You’ll say, <Can’t he have a little more energy?>’
Putting aside that the statement itself sounds beyond strange, Donald Trump was promising his people that once he gets to the White House he will turn into a different person… a more ‘presidential’ one apparently. And to him, it seems that ‘presidential’ would translate into a lack of energy and boredom.
Trump definitely did have plenty of energy during his years of presidency, perhaps a little too much – or perhaps he just didn’t know how to use it. However, if there’s one thing we’ve learned during this time, it’s that Donald Trump only has one way of being whether he’s the U.S. President or not.
He was never hiding a grand plan.
In my two-part article on Donald Trump’s most notable lies as president, I’ve written about how he always used to say that his grand healthcare plan would come ‘in two weeks’ (Hint: it’s a lie). You can read the full post right here if you’re curious.
Now, since we have traveled back to Trump’s election days, let’s stay there for a bit and remember how stunning his victory against Hilary Clinton was for most of the country. Since many people simply couldn’t comprehend the thought of Donald Trump at the White House, many conspiracy theories had begun to emerge.
One of them claimed that Trump was in fact hiding a grand strategy way beyond the rest of the political world, that his baseless words were nothing but a façade to distract us from what he was really up to. As much as we may have enjoyed this movie, the first months of his presidency proved exactly the contrary.
Trump was never part of a big scheme. He has never had a grand plan of action or hide his own interests. It was all right in front of us the entire them. Even Trump himself says that in the opening pages of his book The Art of the Deal: ‘Most people are surprised by the way I work. I play it very loose. I don’t carry a briefcase. I try not to schedule too many meetings. I leave my door open. You can’t be imaginative or entrepreneurial if you’ve got too much structure. I prefer to come to work each day and just see what develops.’
Now, if that quote doesn’t describe exactly the way he has been taking most major decisions while at the White House, I don’t know what does.
It’s always been about him.
I think that, in order to become the President of the United States, one must have the perfect balance of ego: confident enough to believe he can represent 300+ million people, yet humble enough to acknowledge that he’s just like them too and was elected to serve them.
It’s a delicate matter and not every president has balanced things perfectly. For Donald Trump, though, there has never even been a balance at all as his main interest has always been (and still is) himself.
From his anger that the Justice Department didn’t act on his behalf all the time to referring to important institutions as ‘my generals’ or ‘my military,’ Donald Trump has only used his position of power for his very own interests.
Remember that leaked call when Trump was literally threatening Georgia state officials to ‘just find 11,780 votes’ in order to overturn the election results? Does that sound like something a proper president would ever do?
He can turn on anyone anytime.
It seems that Donald Trump finds the concepts of friendship and loyalty very confusing – or at least that’s what his attitude indicated while at the White House.
Here is a shortlist of people Trump has turned on over the past few years: Rudy Giuliani, Michael Cohen, Steve Bannon, Bill Barr, Jeff Sessions, Anthony Scaramucci, Tom Bossert and most recently his own loyal VP Mike Pence, the list could go on endlessly.
Regardless of our personal opinion on them, these people have sacrificed and risked many things (their careers included) in order to please the former president. Unfortunately, their efforts have never been rewarded, or not properly. Now, most of Trump’s former allies have a stained reputation that they may never be able to improve again.
He can be a bully.
I think one of the most appealing things about Donald Trump has always been the impression of a man who finds a way to get everything he wants. Many times, that’s exactly what happens – although the things he does and says in the process are usually beyond disgraceful.
Back in 2017 during a NATO summit in Brussels, Trump was captured literally pushing Dusko Marcovic (the Montenegro leader) away so he could move to the center of the group for a photograph. You may think it was a mistake or a gesture made out of hurry – but we all know the truth.
Donald Trump essentially matches the definition of the word ‘bully,’ which, according to Dictionary.com, is as following:
Bully: a blustering, mean, or predatory person who, from a perceived position of relative power, intimidates, abuses, harasses, or coerces people, especially those considered unlikely to defend themselves.
And there are countless Trump quotes we can use to prove this statement. Like that time in 2013 when he talked about the 26,000 unreported se*ual assaults in the military and only 238 convictions saying ‘What did they expect when they put men and women together?’
I think it’s needless to even begin discussing his response to the Black Lives Matter protests compared to the Capitol Hill riot from January 6th.
It may not seem like we have learned a lot from our former U.S. president. However, there are plenty of lessons we can take into account as to what we should not do and in whom we should place our trust next time we vote.
For now, though, all eyes are on the 46th president of the country, Joe Biden, who had to face, whether he liked it or not, a series of challenges few presidents in our history have faced: a raging pandemic, a developing economic crisis and a divided country filled with frustration and racism. We got rid of the pandemic, and now…he has two other monsters to defeat.
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