President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

I think Trump was the worst president in U.S. history, although we tend to do hyperbole so often about things in the moment being the "best ever" or "worst ever" (and this is exactly what Trump does to create bullshit) that I think it's worth taking a step back and thinking it through before making the declaration.

The thing about those worst president (and best) lists is that it is partially circumstantial -- as in what happened during the time the person was in office, some of which may have gone wrong with or without him having been president.

I read "the economy" crap with regard to Trump and I shake my head, because he didn't do anything particular (he was an absentee president, a complete bullshit artist and incredibly erratic and insane) that juiced the economy except for a ridiculous tax cut that was more than offset by things, such as a trade war, that fiscally would have more than offset the tax cuts in terms of Keynesian score keeping.

The economy even preceding Trump has acually been almost entirely a function of monetary manipulation -- everything has been debt-fueled, based on the price of money being fixed in a Soviet-style way. Obama benefited from that beyond anything, Trump benefited from it, the stock market has benefited from it, and every debtor on earth has benefited from it, etc. We have an economy living on margin beyond anything the world has ever seen, to the point that we are propping up insolvency all around us. And none of this is because of Donald Trump.

In the case of Obama, he had the sense to stay quiet and let Ben Bernanke and then Janet Yellen do their thing (it is disastrous for the health of the country, but in the short term the destruction of the dollar creates a fantasy that they try to use to claim how great they have been for "the economy"). In the case of Trump, he was Trump -- he turned on Janet Yellen despite her being the best friend he was ever going to have (and him being too much of a moron to understand it), with what she does, and then endlessly criticized his own choice, Jay Powell, who ramped up the asset purchases, interest rate suppression, etc. If you think Trump was good for the economy or your 401(K), you are too clueless to understand that it has been Jay Powell and his immediately predecessors and had nothing to do with Trump. While they were creating the fantasy, at the same time, Trump was doing a string of mercurial things that were reckless and threatening to broad economic growth. He's an idiot.

As far as the worst president ever, though, I think one thing that it is pretty easy to argue is that Trump had the lowest character of anyone to ever hold that office. And that is what makes him by far the worst ever.