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Shortly after his victory in the 2016 presidential election, many predicted that Donald Trump would be an anomalous president. During the last four years they have been right, but only partially: Trump was an unusual president in many ways, because of the thousands of lies he told and the racist and misogynistic ideas that he promoted, because of the impulsiveness with which he made important decisions. , for surrounding himself with loyal rather than competent, but also fairly ordinary folks: like many other Republicans before him, he has cut taxes on the rich and corporations, appointed hundreds of conservative judges, and made it more difficult to access the US territory for migrants.
For all these reasons, Trump has maintained a very broad consensus among Republicans throughout his term, which in some cases borders on the cult of personality that has helped both to disguise broken promises, about half of those made in in 2016, despite the fact that the average for a president is approximately one third, and it maximizes what he managed to maintain, even if only partially.
Take the construction of a wall on the border with Mexico to stop regular immigration, perhaps the most famous promise made by Trump in 2016. Recently, the New York Times He wrote that so far a kind of fence has been built over 700 kilometers – far less than the 1,600 kilometers promised by Trump during the election campaign. And, of course, it was paid by US taxpayers and not Mexico, as Trump promised. However, its supporters point out that the construction of the fence and especially the free hand given to ICE, the controversial federal agency that deals with irregular entries, and practices such as separating children from their parents at the border have reduced arrivals. irregular migrants at levels not seen since the 1970s.
Another partially fulfilled promise was the tax cut passed in 2017 and it is still widely cited today among Trump supporters and aides: It is estimated that around 60 percent of the money saved since then has been withheld by the wealthiest Americans and big business. But the reform has also benefited some small and medium-sized businesses, an electorate that is often more conservative than average. Contrary to what Trump had promised, however, the tax cut was not paid with the only increase in economic growth: during his term, the public debt – which Trump had promised to cancel – grew a lot, even before extraordinary expenses. required by the pandemic.
The electoral promise that Trump most faithfully respected was the appointment of hundreds of conservative judges in the federal courts and especially in the Supreme Court, where he elected up to three, moving the Court decidedly to the right for at least the next twenty. ‘ years. Those decisions have likely helped him with the more religious electorate and, in general, with conservative voters who are skeptical or critical of Trump’s personal and temperamental qualities – his tweets will also be embarrassing, many American conservatives think, but Trump did that. that was expected of a conservative president.
Trump has also largely fulfilled another promise, made primarily to convince America’s primarily white working class: to cancel trade deals that had exposed American companies to competition from foreign countries and, in some cases, had allowed to move factories to developing countries. Trump withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a major trade agreement between countries bordering the Pacific Ocean that was intended to curb Chinese influence, has changed parts of NAFTA, the trade agreement. with Mexico and Canada, and above all started a trade war with China that continues today. It’s currently unclear whether future benefits will outweigh current downsides, and the war is still open and far from resolved, with major consequences for the global economy – but many conservative voters have been calling for these moves for a long time, and Trump has. . satisfied.
Over the past four years, however, Trump has failed to deliver on many campaign promises, including canceling and replacing Barack Obama’s health care reform, pouring tens of billions of dollars into the country’s infrastructure network, ousting all immigrants. irregular, remove it just right, withdraw as many troops as possible from the Middle East. All this despite the fact that his party had controlled both the House and the Senate for two of the four years.
In addition, the management of the coronavirus pandemic will weigh heavily on his mandate, which Trump has downplayed from the beginning, refusing to promote conscious behavior and the use of the most common protective devices, starting with the mask, and has finally delegated substantially . to individual states, criticizing the confinements and promoting lax behavior and criticized as irresponsible. The United States is currently the country with the highest number of confirmed cases and deaths in the world.
So, somehow, Trump has forever changed the understanding of politics for a generation of Americans: He has spent four years telling lies like no other American president in the past: more than 22,000 in four years, according to an estimate by the Washington Post – spread conspiracy theories about their political opponents, defend against accusations of having harassed dozens of women and evaded taxes for many years, defend far-right neo-Nazi groups, simply say racist, misogynistic or xenophobic things: in short, do The American political debate is increasingly toxic and radicalizes the views of Americans.
– Read also: Could Trump still be president?
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