In the future...
October 14, 2294
UCLA
A History Department classroom
"Good morning ladies and gentleman and thank you for attending today's lecture in our series "Failed Presidencies. My name is Morgan Stewart and today we will be looking at the 45th president of the United States, and one of the most controversial presidencies in our nation's history.
No examination of the colorful tenure of Donald J. Trump in the Oval Office would be complete without first reviewing the events of the election where he managed to win the electoral vote while losing the popular vote. In point of fact, his defeat in the popular vote was by the largest margin of any president in history where the winner of the electoral vote lost the popular vote.
Why did he win the election? Some say it was the fact that the now non-existent Democratic Party nominated a woman who was simply unelectable. Hillary Clinton had been the First Lady, a United States Senator from New York and later on the Secretary of State during the administration of Barrack Obama.
There had been so many unfounded allegations made against Secretary Clinton during her husband's presidency and her own political career after he left office, resulting in a very negative perception of her among a large segment of the population. Her truly horrible choice to use a private email server for her work emails during her time at Foggy Bottom along with the attempt by the Republican controlled House to make the events at Benghazi, Libya did not help her cause. Nor did the disclosure that the leadership of the Democratic National Committee conspired to deny Senator Bernie Sanders, founder of today's Progressive Party any chance at the nomination. These negatives, along with several key planning blunders by the Clinton campaign put a man with absolutely no political experience and no real qualifications into the White House.
The wheels began to fall off of the Trump train almost immediately after his inauguration. Rather than get to work, he continued his pattern of attempting to shift focus from the real issues to nonsensical ones, he engaged in a specious claim that the audience at his inauguration was larger than that of President Obama. Photographic and video evidence proved this to be a complete falsehood and rather than admit the error, 45 sent his White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer to tell even more lies about inauguration attendance. This led to the coining of the phrase "alternative facts" as a euphemism for falsehoods.
Then came the very brief tenure of National Security Advisor, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn. His 24 day time in the position remains the record for the shortest time in that job. And it was Flynn's involvement with Russia that would ultimately lead to the demise of 45's presidency.
There was the executive order signed by 45 that was quickly ruled unconstitutional by the federal courts. An order to exclude people from seven nations with mostly Muslim populations seemed to make sense to 45 and his favorite advisor, Steve Bannon. However, given that no resident of any of those nations had previously participated in any terrorist actions on U.S. soil, one has to wonder what was the impetus behind choosing those nations. Was it the fact that 45 had no business interests in those countries, while he had significant business interests in other nations that had been home to people who had actually undertaken terrorist actions on our soil? I leave that to you to decide.
45's hypocrisy heightened when after severely criticizing President Obama for his frequent golf outings prior to his own election; followed by 45 spending nine consecutive weekends at his Mar-a-Lago home/golf resort. His aides went to great lengths to conceal the fact that 45 played at least one round of golf each weekend, and often two.
But eventually, the combination of the General Services Administration determining that 45 was in breach of his lease for his Washington, D.C. hotel; the imminent release of the report from the independent counsel who had investigated his alleged violations of the Constitution's emoluments clause; the reports that there was evidence that members of his campaign had colluded with Russian intelligence in the hacking of the DNC email system and TMZ.com obtaining a copy of what was described as proof of 45 engaging in "water sports" with Russian prostitutes finally convinced 45 that it was time to resign. And so he did.
In a ranking of U.S. presidents put out by 100 leading historians on the 500th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Donald Trump was rated the worst president in history by every single member of the panel.
Thanks for coming to today's lecture and I hope to see some of you here next month when we review the Andrew Johnson presidency.
UCLA
A History Department classroom
"Good morning ladies and gentleman and thank you for attending today's lecture in our series "Failed Presidencies. My name is Morgan Stewart and today we will be looking at the 45th president of the United States, and one of the most controversial presidencies in our nation's history.
No examination of the colorful tenure of Donald J. Trump in the Oval Office would be complete without first reviewing the events of the election where he managed to win the electoral vote while losing the popular vote. In point of fact, his defeat in the popular vote was by the largest margin of any president in history where the winner of the electoral vote lost the popular vote.
Why did he win the election? Some say it was the fact that the now non-existent Democratic Party nominated a woman who was simply unelectable. Hillary Clinton had been the First Lady, a United States Senator from New York and later on the Secretary of State during the administration of Barrack Obama.
There had been so many unfounded allegations made against Secretary Clinton during her husband's presidency and her own political career after he left office, resulting in a very negative perception of her among a large segment of the population. Her truly horrible choice to use a private email server for her work emails during her time at Foggy Bottom along with the attempt by the Republican controlled House to make the events at Benghazi, Libya did not help her cause. Nor did the disclosure that the leadership of the Democratic National Committee conspired to deny Senator Bernie Sanders, founder of today's Progressive Party any chance at the nomination. These negatives, along with several key planning blunders by the Clinton campaign put a man with absolutely no political experience and no real qualifications into the White House.
The wheels began to fall off of the Trump train almost immediately after his inauguration. Rather than get to work, he continued his pattern of attempting to shift focus from the real issues to nonsensical ones, he engaged in a specious claim that the audience at his inauguration was larger than that of President Obama. Photographic and video evidence proved this to be a complete falsehood and rather than admit the error, 45 sent his White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer to tell even more lies about inauguration attendance. This led to the coining of the phrase "alternative facts" as a euphemism for falsehoods.
Then came the very brief tenure of National Security Advisor, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn. His 24 day time in the position remains the record for the shortest time in that job. And it was Flynn's involvement with Russia that would ultimately lead to the demise of 45's presidency.
There was the executive order signed by 45 that was quickly ruled unconstitutional by the federal courts. An order to exclude people from seven nations with mostly Muslim populations seemed to make sense to 45 and his favorite advisor, Steve Bannon. However, given that no resident of any of those nations had previously participated in any terrorist actions on U.S. soil, one has to wonder what was the impetus behind choosing those nations. Was it the fact that 45 had no business interests in those countries, while he had significant business interests in other nations that had been home to people who had actually undertaken terrorist actions on our soil? I leave that to you to decide.
45's hypocrisy heightened when after severely criticizing President Obama for his frequent golf outings prior to his own election; followed by 45 spending nine consecutive weekends at his Mar-a-Lago home/golf resort. His aides went to great lengths to conceal the fact that 45 played at least one round of golf each weekend, and often two.
But eventually, the combination of the General Services Administration determining that 45 was in breach of his lease for his Washington, D.C. hotel; the imminent release of the report from the independent counsel who had investigated his alleged violations of the Constitution's emoluments clause; the reports that there was evidence that members of his campaign had colluded with Russian intelligence in the hacking of the DNC email system and TMZ.com obtaining a copy of what was described as proof of 45 engaging in "water sports" with Russian prostitutes finally convinced 45 that it was time to resign. And so he did.
In a ranking of U.S. presidents put out by 100 leading historians on the 500th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Donald Trump was rated the worst president in history by every single member of the panel.
Thanks for coming to today's lecture and I hope to see some of you here next month when we review the Andrew Johnson presidency.
posted by me at 11:38 PM
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