Survey of 154 scholars places 45th president behind even ‘historically calamitous chief executives’ linked to civil war
Donald Trump finished 45th and rock bottom of a list ranking US presidents by greatness, trailing even “historically calamitous chief executives” who failed to stop the civil war or botched its aftermath.
Worse for the likely Republican nominee this year, his probable opponent, Joe Biden, debuted at No 14.
“Biden’s most important achievements may be that he rescued the presidency from Trump, resumed a more traditional style of presidential leadership and is gearing up to keep the office out of his predecessor’s hands this fall,” Justin Vaughn and Brandon Rottinghaus, the political scientists behind the survey, wrote in the Los Angeles Times.
People who should be lower: Jackson, Wilson, and Reagan. Fuck those guys.
Reagan can be next to last. He’s done more damage to modern America than all others but Trump
He was tough on the USSR, at least. Obama and Biden not arming Ukraine enough before the conflicts caused Russia to be more successful than it has any right to be
Obama tried, they passed multiple aid packages. Trump withheld the aid, which was the cause of his first impeachment.
Obama could have directly slapped Russia down in 2014, but didn’t do shit. Russia was not punished enough and got more bold in 2022
Except Republicans were polled as well, and then the rankings combined, whereas e.g. Trump is more universally hated by all sides (independents too).
Trump’s so much worse than any of those guys. He’s literally promising to end democracy in the USA and to imprison his political opponents if he wins the next election. None of those others went that far.
Not to mention him being convicted of massive fraud while in office and fomenting a riot against the capitol to try to prevent the democratic election process from occurring. I mean this stuff is absolutely nuts and unlike anything any other president has done.
Jackson committed genocide against native Americans, so I think that’s worse.
I could go on and on about all of Jackson’s atrocities from stealing babies to skinning Native people alive to make bridle reins. But I think it’s enough to say that Jackson was Hitlers wet dream. He quoted him often and even ripped off Jackson’s speech called the Final Solution to the Indian Problem. Yea, Jackson goes last even over Trump.
jackson not being dead last just completely ruins the entire integrity of the list. how can genocide against native americans be better than trump? seriously?
I mentioned in a comment a bit further up but thought I’d offer it here too:
that’s worse than literal genocide of an entire race of people? do you really think so?
Not necessarily, but my point was to try and guess what they may have been considering. And if the absolute number of people killed is larger… that could have swayed their thinking there.
Also, you expect more from adults - so if we really have learned from our history and thus are more culturally experienced now vs. hundreds of years ago, then is killing people nowadays “worse” or “better” than to do so back then? It’s really quite a shitty situation that we are in, and my main point is that it it not like we are comparing genocide to no genocide, but rather one form of genocide vs. another form of genocide.
And yet… at the risk of offending you further, an argument can be made that indeed killing your OWN PEOPLE really is on a somewhat different level, as far as genocide is concerned, than killing the OTHER, outside-of-group people.
Not that any of this is remotely “good”, when we are comparing dead last to second to dead last. But… it is somewhat understandable I mean, that the entire list may not need to be thrown out, just b/c the two last places both have genocidal people in them, but with whichever one or the other happens to be one rank higher or lower. :-(
I suppose the argument might be that Trump attempted to ferment a war, and still to this day attempts to do so, that would kill his own countrymen.
Which while morally probably isn’t worse than crimes against natives, is probably worse for a president to do?
Also of course if Trump gets his way he’ll start world war 3, (because that’s a vote winter I’m sure) which would kill a lot more people.
then by all rights lincoln should probably be dead last, a war in which most if not all causalities were americans, regardless if at the time they “werent”
That is Trump’s favorite president unsurprisingly.
Yeah honestly I fucking hate Trump but Jackson should be the worst simply because of this. This kind of voids the entire reputation of these scholars in my view.
Trump also committed genocide against poor people by lying to them that a global pandemic was not airborne, when it actually was. In the Bob Woodsworth interview, he admitted it. In advance. He KNEW, and he did it anyway.
Plus he led a coup to overthrow the nation so… there’s that too.
I think part of the problem is intent versus what he got done so far.
If you want some ammunition in your statement though, add in the bungling of COVID and his anti-vax leadership he probably killed at least a couple hundred thousand Americans.
can they just be tied for last?
FDR should be much much lower
Because of the internment camps?
Yes, and agricultural adjustment act. Bribing voters with social security. Attempted court packing. Support of Mussolini. Created UNICOR. Corporatism. To name just a few things.
“Being a traitor to his class, and empowering peasants.” Fixed that for you.
Fuck Ben Shapiro.
Yeah no that’s not what I said. He actually empowered corporate technocrats more.
I’m confused.