Trump Summary

This document attempts to summarize all the things Donald Trump has done wrong. It’s a summary of a huge amount of information, so it is quite long.

It was created by an adult person and then edited by the author and an elementary school student. We removed some phrasing that was very inappropriate for kids, which is a little bit of a problem because it minimizes the impact of some of the horrible things Donald Trump has done. If you want clarification of anything here, you’ll probably be able to Google it, but please be aware that you may be exposing yourself to inappropriate or even disturbing content if you do so.

Before the 2016 election

In 1973, the US Department of Justice sued Donald Trump for violating the Fair Housing Act, after they found evidence that he had refused to rent to Black tenants and lied to Black applicants about whether apartments were available.

When Donald Trump and his wife came to any of his casinos in the 1980’s, the bosses would order all the Black employees to go hide in the back part where the Trumps would not see them.

In 1984, Russian gangsters began to launder money by buying and selling apartment units in Trump Tower.

In 1986, Mr. Trump was courted by Soviet diplomats, who suggested that a bright future awaited him in Moscow.

In 1987, the Soviet state paid for Mr. Trump to visit Moscow, putting him up in a suite that was certainly bugged

Donald Trump campaigned to have the Central Park Five executed, spending $85,000 of his own money to promote this idea. They were 5 Black and Hispanic teenagers who were falsely accused of brutally attacking a jogger in Central Park, New York City. They all falsely confessed to the crime because the police beat them until they thought they would not survive if they didn’t confess. Trump’s efforts significantly contributed to their 12 years of false imprisonment. Luckily, the real attacker confessed eventually.

In 2006, Russians and other citizens of the former Soviet Union financed Trump SoHo, granting Mr. Trump 18% of the profits — although he put up no money himself.

In 2008, the Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev in effect gave Mr. Trump $55 million in an unusual real estate deal. The same year, Donald Trump explained that the Trump Organization was dependent on Russia.

Donald Trump had racist ideas about who could be an accountant. “Black guy counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day [Jewish people]. … I think the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.” Later, Trump said that this quoted conversation was, “probably true.”

As part of his real estate business, Donald Trump routinely refused to pay hundreds of contractors forcing them to choose between going without payment or engaging in an expensive legal process to try to win payment through the courts. Trump found that he could make a bigger profit by investing in effective lawyers and not paying the contractors. Many companies that Trump treated this way were financially ruined and went out of business.

In 1992, the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino had to pay a $200,000 fine because it transferred Black employees off the gambling tables to accommodate a big-time gambler’s racism.

In 1993, Donald Trump tried to get Native American casinos shut down because they were his competitors; he did this by claiming that they were faking being Native Americans and that they were secretly running a criminal enterprise.

There are indications that Donald Trump’s real estate and casino businesses were used to launder money – i.e., they were a front for a criminal enterprise.

In 2004, in season two of The Apprentice, Donald Trump eliminated a Black contestant because Trump said he was too educated.

In 2005, Donald Trump suggested that they create a season of The Apprentice that placed a team of white contestants against a team of Black contestants.

In 2010, Donald Trump tried to stop the completion of a Muslim mosque near where the Twin Towers had been destroyed in 2001 because he believes that all Muslims are terrorists (according to his statements at the time).

Donald Trump claimed that “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey were cheering the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11/2001. There’s no evidence of this.

Donald Trump frequently spoke of his daughter Ivanka in a very, very creepy, objectifying way that is clearly inappropriate and wrong.

As of 2016, there were 200 mechanics liens that had been filed by contractors and employees against Trump, his companies, or his properties because Trump had failed to pay the people that worked for him. The purpose of these liens is a last-ditch way for workers to get some of the money owed by Trump through a legal process.

Between 2005 and 2016, Trump’s companies had been cited for 24 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act for failing to pay overtime or minimum wage.

Donald Trump’s marriage to Melania Knauss is his third marriage. Before that, he was married to Ivana Zelnickova (1977-1992) and Marla Maples (1993-1997). Republicans claim to favor monogamy and are opposed to divorce; Donald Trump clearly does not share those values. Donald Trump became the first President EVER to have two ex-wives.

During his divorce from Ivana (Zelnockova) Trump, Ivana testified under oath that Donald Trump had brutally attacked her in a fit of rage. He attacked her because she had recommended a surgeon for a  “scalp reduction” surgery, but it went very badly and he blamed her for it. Donald Trump’s lawyer responded to this issue later by saying that a man cannot brutally attack his wife, and Ivana later softened the allegation.

Ivana Trump once told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that Donald Trump kept a book of Adolph Hitler’s speeches (“My New Order”) by his bed. Trump admitted to having the book, but claimed he never read it.

Before marrying Donald Trump, Melania Knauss was a model who often posed nude, including sexually provocative scenes with other women. This kind of work is typically portrayed as extremely immoral by Republican voters and politicians.

Approximately 26 women have said that Donald Trump sexually assaulted them or committed other acts of sexual impropriety with allegations stretching back to the 1980’s. Some of them are: Jessica Leeds (he attacked her on a commercial flight), Kristin Anderson (he attacked her at a night club), Jill Harth (attacked her at Mar-a-Lago resort), Lisa Boyne (witnessed Trump looking up various women’s skirts at an event), Mariah Billado and Victoria Hughes (inappropriate behavior around children; Trump admitted to this on the Howard Stern Show), E. Jean Carroll (he attacked her in a department store dressing room), Temple Taggart (he kissed her without permission twice), Cathy Heller (he forcibly kissed her in front of her family at a Mother’s Day event at Mar-a-Lago), Amy Dorris (he attacked her in his VIP box at the US Open tennis tournament), Karena Virginia (he attacked her as she waited for her car at the US Open), Karen Johnson (he attacked her at a New Year’s Eve party at Mar-a-Lago), Tasha Dixon and Bridget Sullivan (inappropriate behavior around children), Melinda McGillivray (he attacked her backstage at a concert), Natasha Stoynoff (he assaulted her at Mar-a-Lago), Jennifer Murphy and Juliet Huddy (he kissed them without permission), Rachel Crooks (he kissed her without consent), Samantha Holvey (says Trump creepily inspected each contestant for the Miss USA pageant), Ninni Laaksonen (he attacked her backstage at the David Letterman show), Jessica Drake (he attacked her and made an inappropriate offer), Summer Zervos (he assaulted her at a work-related meeting at a hotel), Cassandra Searles (he attacked her and invited her to his hotel room), Alva Johnson (he kissed her without consent). No other candidate for President has ever had anywhere close to this volume of sexual assault allegations against him.

In 2005, Donald Trump bragged that he routinely attacks women in a conversation that was caught on tape. “Yeah, that’s her. With the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. … Grab ’em [inappropriately]. You can do anything.” The taped conversation matched perfectly with women’s accusations. (All this came up during the 2016 election, but Republican voters didn’t care.)

In 2006, during his marriage to Melania Knauss, Donald Trump had an affair with Stormy Daniels, a nude actor, and another affair with Karen McDougal, a nude model. Not to disparage these professions; the point is that Republican voters claim that those professions are immoral and also claim that they are champions of faithful, monogamous marriage.

Donald Trump was the single greatest promoter of the false idea that President Obama was not a US citizen, which would have made him ineligible to be President if true. Obama was born in Hawaii; his mother is a US citizen, and his father is a government economist in Kenya. By virtue of the location of his birth and his mother’s citizenship, Obama is a US citizen two different ways. Trump promoted this false idea for years in public and continued promoting it in private after that. The Russian propaganda outlet RT helped spread the lie.

Donald Trump lied and said that Barack Obama was a terrible student and demanded that he release his Columbia University and Harvard Law School transcripts to prove he was not a terrible student. Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School for 12 years. Meanwhile, Donald Trump was factually a terrible student. One of his professors at college would constantly tell people, “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had!” and say that Trump came to college thinking he already knew everything, that he was arrogant, and he wasn’t there to learn.

Donald Trump claimed he was “first in his class” but the program for his graduate commencement does not list him as having graduated cum laude (with honors), magna cum laude (high honors), or summa cum laude (with the highest honors), which means he was not “first” — not anywhere close.

A former classmate of Donald Trump’s son Don Jr. claims that he saw Donald Trump strike his son in the face, knocking him to the ground, because his son had chosen to wear a Yankee’s jersey to a baseball game. According to the story, Donald Trump ordered him to put on a suit.

Donald Trump and his companies had been involved in 3500 legal actions during the 30 years preceding the 2016 election. That’s more than 116 lawsuits per year.

Donald Trump claimed that “a well-educated black has tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market…. If I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage.’’ He’s saying that Black people are given advantages over white people, which is a common white supremacist claim.

In April 2013, the FBI busted two gambling rings inside Trump Tower, which according to authorities were run by a Russian citizen. (The US attorney who ordered the raid was later fired by Trump when he became President.)

Mr. Trump expressed the wish, on 18 June 2013, to be Mr. Putin’s “best friend.”

Mr. Trump was paid $20 million by Russians to spectate at a beauty pageant in summer 2013. The man who did the work, Aras Agalarov, would later help to arrange a meeting between the Trump campaign and Russians.

In October 2015, while running for president, Mr. Trump signed a letter of intent to have Russians build a tower in Moscow and put his name on it. The Trump Organization planned to give its penthouse to Mr. Putin as a present. In the same month, Trump tweeted, “Putin loves Donald Trump”.

During the 2016 election

Donald Trump used election donations to pay Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about their affair. Daniels chose to talk about it anyway. Another woman was paid and chose to remain silent. The man who set all this up for Trump went to prison and was recently released; using election funds in this manner was illegal.

In early 2016, the chair of the foreign relations committee of the Russian parliament said that Mr. Trump could “drive the Western locomotive right off the rails”. In February 2016, Mr. Putin’s cyber advisor boasted: “We are on the verge of having something in the information arena that will allow us to talk to the Americans as equals”.

Donald Trump had his doctor (Harold Bernstein) release a letter saying that Trump was in “astonishingly excellent” health, which was a lie. In fact, the content of the letter was so absurdly positive toward Trump’s health that it was comical; for example, “His physical strength and stamina are extraordinary,” and, “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” In fact, given his age, Trump would have been one of the least healthy individuals ever elected to the presidency. (To be fair, Biden is even older than Trump.) Later, we learned that someone had dictated the letter to Trump’s doctor and that it was not based on Trump’s actual health at all.

When announcing his candidacy for President, he made the following racist statement about Mexicans: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re [people who brutally assault women]. And some, I assume, are good people.” In truth, immigrants from across our southern boarder are less likely to be criminals than American citizens and are not usually Mexican citizens. He then promised to build a wall across the US-Mexico border and make Mexico pay for it. (He only built a small section of the border wall during his presidency, and Mexico did not pay for any of it.)

Donald Trump mocked a reporter with arthrogryposis (Serge Kovaleski) by imitating muscular palsy with his arms and talking in a funny voice. (Arthrogryposis is superficially similar to what you might see with cerebral palsy.)

Donald Trump hired anti-immigrant racist Stephen Miller to be one of his advisors. Miller promotes white nationalist ideas and publications, espouses conspiracy theories, and is on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of extremists. Miller continued to serve the Trump administration until it ended and contributed heavily to its extremist and sneaky nature.

Donald Trump claimed a net worth of $10 billion, but refused to show any documentation to support that. Later, we learned he had included what he imagines that the Trump brand is worth in his estimate. Then, we discovered it was probably $2.5 billion based on a more reasonable analysis of his assets. However, it is entirely possible that he has other debts that are not known. Interestingly, Trump was born rich and would be worth more now if he had simply invested his inheritance in the stock market instead of taking over the family real estate business.

After Megyn Kelly asked him tough question about the border wall during the first Republican presidential candidate debate, Trump said she might have been hard on him because she was on her period. He then refused to participate in the next debate unless Megyn Kelly was removed from the event; she was.

Donald Trump tried to put money in a communion platter in Iowa. The communion platter would be where you get the communion wafers. Money should be placed in the offering plate which is passed around during the sermon rather than the communion platter which would be at the front of the church (and you get up and go to it during communion) or passed along each row by deacons. In any case, it would be clear to anyone who had attended church regularly that these are different things. Trump is not a Christian but his supporters pretended he was because they thought it would get them power.

Donald Trump promoted the “deep state” conspiracy theory which posits that there is a secret group of people embedded in key positions in the government, and that these “deep state actors” are really the ones in control of government. When used by the far right, the deep state is presumed to be controlled by a sinister organization. The exact identity of the sinister organization is almost never mentioned explicitly, which allows the listener to imagine that whatever group they fear is the one controlling the “deep state”. Examples of groups that are sometimes thought to control the deep state include: Satanists, lizard people, Jewish people, communists, socialists, the Illuminati, the Masons. Often, those various groups are presumed to all be part of the same group.

Donald Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on” after a terrorist attack in Paris by Islamic State – i.e., a complete ban on Muslims entering the US for any reason. He also said he would create a nationwide database to keep tabs on all Muslims, including those who are US citizens.

Donald Trump claimed repeatedly that Hillary Clinton should be in jail. There was never any evidence that she had committed any crimes. We know that Trump’s vendetta against Hillary Clinton is consistent with the Russian government’s vendetta against her; the Russians felt like they deserved “revenge” against her and considered preventing her from becoming President to be a very high priority. It appears as if the Russians were coordinating with Trump even before he announced his candidacy, which would not be surprising given his history of working closely with them. Throughout 2016, Russian elites referred to Trump as “our president”.

Donald Trump repeatedly said he was opposed to marriage equality (i.e., that he is opposed to allowing same-sex couples to marry) and said he would choose Supreme Court justices that opposed gay marriage.

Donald Trump criticized openly gay football player Michael Sam and said that social pressure is preventing people from criticizing gay people.

In response to NFL player Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem to protest against racial discrimination and police brutality, Trump said Kaepernick should get another country. Kaepernick considers kneeling to be a peaceful, respectful alternative to other kinds of protests, but conservatives didn’t want there to be any protest at all and were incredibly angry about his kneeling.

Donald Trump promoted a conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton’s email. While she was US Secretary of State, she used a private (not government) email server for at least some of her correspondence. While this is sloppy, it was commonplace at the time and there’s no indication that there was any illegal purpose to this email server; many Republicans did the same thing, including President George W. Bush. (The FBI investigated the email server issue extensively after Trump became President, and they were not able to find any crimes associated with it; the FBI director rebuked Clinton for “carelessness”.)

Donald Trump suggested that Black people need to be “controlled” when he said, “President Obama has absolutely no control (or respect) over the African American community; they have fared so poorly under his presidency.” The part about “faring poorly” under Obama’s presidency is not accurate.

Donald Trump participated in a conspiracy theory blaming Hillary Clinton for an attack against a US government facility in Benghazi, Libya where 3 Americans died. Finally: “A two-year investigation by the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee has found that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees [including Clinton]. Debunking a series of persistent allegations hinting at dark conspiracies, the investigation of the politically charged incident determined that there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.” In addition, staffing levels (including security) at US embassies are limited by funding from Congress; Clinton requested additional funding from Congress for security after the attack.

Donald Trump called the following women ugly in a public forum: Arianna Huffington, Gail Collins, Bette Midler, Rosie O’Donnell, Hillary Clinton, Carly Fiorina, Heidi Cruz.

Donald Trump called a Latina pageant winner fat and referred to her as “Miss Housekeeping” referencing her heritage and the fact that a lot of Latina immigrants do that kind of work.

Donald Trump repeatedly said that climate change was a hoax and claimed that the hoax was created by the Chinese government to make US manufacturing less able to compete.

Donald Trump said that Americans who burn a US flag should serve a year in jail and/or lose their citizenship (i.e., even if they own the flag they burned).

Donald Trump claimed that all vaccinations are harmful and should not be given to children. (This is long before COVID-19; much later, Trump promoted the COVID-19 vaccines as a great accomplishment of his presidency.)

Donald Trump claimed that Ted Cruz (a Hispanic American politician that was running against Trump in the Republican primary) can’t run for President because he was born in Canada. Even though Cruz was born in Canada, Cruz’s mother is a US citizen, and Ted Cruz is therefore eligible to be President.

Donald Trump claims that Ted Cruz’s campaign committed fraud during the Iowa Caucus. There is no evidence of any fraud.

Donald Trump encourages Mitch McConnell to deny Barack Obama the right to choose the next Supreme Court Justice. (McConnell successfully prevented Obama from choosing the next Justice.)

Donald Trump claims he is a devoted Christian. There’s no evidence that he has ever been a Christian, that he goes to church, or that he has read the Bible. He plainly stated that he had never asked God for forgiveness even though the importance of doing so is a common thread among all types of Christians. Given his lifestyle, which is clearly immoral from a Christian standpoint, and his lack of asking for forgiveness from God, it seems very likely that he was lying about being a Christian at all. Pope Francis publicly criticized Donald Trump for his statements about Mexicans and suggested that Trump was not truly religious; Donald Trump told the Pope to stay out of politics.

Donald Trump began the 11^th Republican debate by bragging inappropriately about his masculinity. To be fair, another candidate had implied that Trump was deficient.

Donald Trump was pro-choice (supportive of the right of a woman to choose abortion or not) before running for President, but now claims to be pro-life (opposed to allowing women to choose abortion). He then kicked it up a notch by saying that “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who have had an abortion. People got mad, and he took it back several hours later.

Donald Trump starts claiming that the election process is rigged. At the time, it looked like he would lose, so he might have been using this as a strategy to keep from losing face.

Donald Trump claims that Hillary Clinton is a criminal and that she is somehow involved in rigging the election. There is no evidence of this.

Donald Trump’s wife Melania gave a campaign speech that stole key components from a speech by Michelle Obama in 2008.

The parents of a US soldier who was killed in combat criticized Donald Trump at a Democratic Party event saying that he had never had to make sacrifices and therefore could not be trusted to be President. Trump responded by saying, “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices … I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures. I’ve had tremendous success. I think I’ve done a lot.” He then implied that the mother of the dead soldier did not talk because her husband or her Muslim religion wouldn’t allow her to talk. She later said she chose not to speak because she was too emotional about her dead son to do so.

Donald Trump said that maybe the “Second Amendment people” (meaning armed conservatives) would have to stop (which here means “kill”) Hillary Clinton. This statement (from August 2016) might be the first time Trump incited violence.

During a debate with Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump threatened to have her jailed if he is elected. Again, there’s no evidence she had broken any laws. The chant “Lock Her Up” became a staple of Trump events for the remainder of the campaign and throughout his presidency.

During the final debate with Hillary Clinton, he called her a “nasty woman” and refused to say if he would concede the election if he lost.

Donald Trump claimed to be worth $3.5 billion but refused to provide documentation, even though candidates for President have been voluntarily releasing the tax returns since the 1970’s.

Donald Trump claimed that the Obama presidency was bad for Israel and insulted Obama at an event by AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee). This was not true and AIPAC apologized for the speech.

Donald Trump says that he will prevent Americans who immigrated from Mexico from sending money home to their families in Mexico in order to force the Mexican government to pay for his border wall.

Trump claimed that a judge had ruled against Trump University in a lawsuit because the judge was Mexican. (The judge was born in the US.) According to Republican Paul Ryan, Donald Trump’s attacks on the judge were, “sort of like a textbook definition of a racist comment.” The judge found that Trump University had defrauded its students by using misleading marketing practices and engaging in aggressive sales tactics. The lawsuit began before Trump was a candidate for President but resolved during the presidential campaign; the final settlement was $25 million.

The Trump campaign revoked the Washington Post’s press credentials because it didn’t like the questions their reporters asked.

Donald Trump implied that if elected, he would threaten to default on the US national debt in order to renegotiate the debt with lenders. This would have caused an economic catastrophe but did not happen.

Donald Trump used his Presidential campaign to promote his personal businesses.

The Trump campaign violated federal law by soliciting funds from foreign nationals. “The scale and scope of this does seem somewhat unprecedented,” said a spokesperson for the Campaign Legal Center. The purpose of this law is to prevent foreign interference in US elections.

Donald Trump publicly asked Russia to help him win the election by hacking Hillary Clinton’s email and said there would be a reward for assistance. This is a violation of federal election law since it involves a foreign nation. Russia did interfere with the election (mostly via social media) because it believed a Trump presidency would be more beneficial to it than a Clinton presidency. There are indications that the Russian government may have some kind of dirt on Trump. A “dossier” of such dirt was released during the campaign, but it isn’t clear if the contents were factual.

Donald Trump met with Russian officials, including Russian spies, at Trump Tower. Russia interfered in the election with the express goal of helping Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton, mostly through use of propaganda.

A tweet by Donald Trump claiming that Hillary Clinton is corrupt, featured a Jewish Star of David in the graphic. Since Clinton is not Jewish, the implication is that Hillary Clinton is secretly working for Jewish people (and not the rest of America). This was a clear anti-Semitic dog whistle.

Donald Trump released a campaign his ad attacking “a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities,” over images of Janet Yellen, George Soros, and Lloyd Blankfein, all of whom happen to be Jewish. Another clear anti-Semitic dog whistle.

Trump promised to literally make every dream Republicans have for the country come true. (Did not happen.)

Trump promised to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something that provided better healthcare for Americans. (Neither thing happened.)

Counties that hosted a 2016 Trump rally saw a 226% increase in hate crimes (hate crime rate more than doubled).

Donald Trump is the first President EVER to have refused to release any tax information.

After winning the election in November of 2016, Donald Trump called Vladimir Putin to be congratulated.

In December, Trump sent a representative to Moscow to discuss ways that the new administration could be more friendly to Russia because “Russia has just thrown the USA elections” to Trump.

Trump Administration – 2017 — Now he’s President of the United States.

On Inauguration Day, the Trump administration erased pro-LGBTQ policies and all mention of climate change from government websites. They attempted to erase those two things from literally everything in the government.

Donald Trump lied about the size of the crowd at his inauguration event. He lied about this to the US intelligence community at a meeting and to the public in general, and criticized the media for their (correct) portrayal of the attendance numbers (he said they lied).  Attendance at the event is difficult to quantify, but was probably about one third the size of the attendance at Obama’s first inauguration based on the photos.

Donald Trump had a button next to his phone in the Oval Office that would alert a staffer to bring him an ice-cold glass of Diet Coke immediately. The button was there before Trump and is still there now, but was used by other Presidents to summon a staffer, not for the specific purpose of summoning a Diet Coke.

Donald Trump started talking about banning trans Americans from serving in the US military.

Six members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS resigned saying that President Trump “simply does not care” about combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The Trump administration’s “President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief” gave a sizable grant to the anti-LGBTQ group Focus on the Family Africa, which spreads anti-LGBTQ hatred in Africa.

At the beginning of Black History Month, Donald Trump had to say a few words, but clearly didn’t know who Frederick Douglass was. He had been given a cheat sheet, but Trump’s vanity prevented him from seeing what was on it because he refuses to wear glasses in public. Since he did not know who Frederick Douglass is, he limited his comments to: “Frederick Doug — Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.” The tense of “who has done an amazing job” implies that Trump didn’t even know that Frederick Douglass had died (he died in 1895) and Frederick Douglass certainly has been recognized proportionate to his great contribution consistently throughout US history; the statement sounded like what a middle-schooler might write during a test when they don’t know the answer. Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement, becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to slaveholders’ arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Likewise, Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave. Following the Civil War, Douglass was active campaigner for the rights of freed slaves. Douglass also actively supported women’s suffrage, and held several public offices. Without his permission, Douglass became the first African-American nominated for Vice President of the United States. He was a friend of John Brown.

Donald Trump fired the entire White House Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. This group was created in 1995 to advise the President on the HIV/AIDS pandemic which is ongoing but much less impactful than it was in the 1980’s and 1990’s. While HIV/AIDS affected diverse groups of people globally, in the US, it primarily affected gay men at first, and so it was aggressively ignored by Republican Presidents; Trump’s firing of this advisory council is a return to that approach to that pandemic.

Colin Kaepernick (the NFL player who famously kneels during the national anthem to protest racism) was not signed to a team, and Donald Trump took credit for the man losing his job. Then, Trump said that any NFL player who kneels during the anthem should be fired. Then, he said that the kneeling protests were dramatically reducing the NFL’s advertising revenue. Then, Vice President Mike Pence attended an NFL game so he could make a show of leaving the game when players kneeled during the national anthem; Trump claimed Pence did this at his request. Trump said that the NFL’s decision to allow players to kneel during the national anthem reflected, “Total disrespect for our great country!”

Donald Trump’s advisors are finding it very hard to brief him because he doesn’t read anything they give him. He will, however, look at graphs, charts, and tables. During briefings, he gets bored, disagrees with experts, pivots to gossip he heard from his friends, and stops listening if he is told that he is mistaken.

The Trump administration advised staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention not to use the words “transgender,” “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” and “science-based” in official budget documents.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tells reporters that President Trump backs the position that businesses owners should be able to put up signs saying they won’t serve LGBT customers. (She left out the Q on purpose.)

The Trump administration’s Department of Justice argues in support of baker who denied service to a gay couple during the Supreme Court oral arguments for the case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

Donald Trump endorses Roy Moore, who has an anti-LGBTQ record and multiple well-documented accusations of brutal attack, abuse, and assessment (some against children), in the Alabama special Senate Election. (Roy Moore lost.)

President Trump delivers the keynote address at the anti-LGBTQ Heritage Foundation President’s Club annual meeting.

The Trump administration created a “gag order” on scientists and other employees of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which prevented them from communicating to the public.

The Trump administration replaced people in key leadership positions at various government agencies with people who had no expertise in that agency. For example, the head of the EPA was replaced with someone (Andrew Wheeler) who was not a scientist and did not believe in climate change. Other government agency heads were replaced with people who were experts at destroying the very thing the agency was supposed to be doing; for example, the head of the Department of Education under the Trump administration was Betsy DeVos, a right-wing billionaire who opposes public education.

In a profile on Vice President Mike Pence that ran in The New Yorker, President Trump reportedly joked of Pence when asked about LGBTQ rights: “Don’t ask that guy—he wants to hang them all!”

President Trump becomes the first sitting president to speak at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit, a convening of fringe groups united around discrimination against LGBTQ people.

The Trump Administration’s National Park Services withdrew its sponsorship of New York City’s first permanent Pride Flag, located outside of the historic Stonewall Inn, and dropped out of its pre-scheduled participation in the flag dedication ceremony. 

The Department of Justice issues a sweeping ”religious exemptions” guidance which invites taxpayer-funded federal agencies, government employees, and government contractors to legally discriminate against LGBTQ employees as long as they cite a religious belief as the reason for doing it.

The Department of Health and Human Services rolls back the Affordable Care Act’s birth control benefit, allowing the use of “religious exemptions” to deny health care to women, trans men, and gender non-conforming people who rely on the no-copay contraception benefit.

In a Department of Justice memo, the Trump Administration reverses a policy that provided non-discrimination protections for transgender people in the workplace under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Department of Health and Human Services erases all mentions of the LGBTQ community and their health needs in its strategic plan for the fiscal year 2018-2022.

The Justice Department files an amicus brief in support of “religious exemptions” to discriminate against LGBTQ customers.

The Education Department announces they will roll back Obama Administration-era Title IX guidelines which protected sexual assault survivors on college and university campuses, and rescinds the Obama Administration-era Title IX guidance on investigating campus sexual assault.

President Trump nominates Gregory Katsas, who worked behind the scenes to promote the implementation of the trans military ban and revoke federal guidelines that protect transgender students from discrimination, to the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals for the Circuit of D.C.

President Trump nominates Jeff Mateer, who has an extensive anti-LGBTQ record including calling trans children part of “Satan’s plan,” to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

President Trump ends the DACA program, which protected an estimated 800,000 young undocumented immigrants, including an estimated 39,000 LGBTQ DREAMers, from detention and deportation. “DREAMers” are people who were illegally brought to the US at a very young age by their parents; they grew up here and are functionally Americans even though they are not legally Americans.

Reporting reveals the CIA consulted with Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, an anti-LGBTQ hate group according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

President Trump pardoned former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio who was convicted of criminal contempt in his tactics targeting undocumented immigrants. A U.S. Department of Justice investigation concluded that Arpaio oversaw the worst pattern of racial profiling by a law enforcement agency in U.S. history.

President Trump refused to condemn white supremacists who chanted violently racist, anti-Semitic, and  anti-LGBTQ slurs during the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA. One white supremacist attacked a crowd of anti-racist protesters with a car, killing one person (Heather Heyer) and seriously injuring many others. In a statement, President Trump blamed the “egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides” implying that white supremacists are equivalent to the people who oppose them.

President Trump nominates L. Steven Grasz, who has close ties to the anti-LGBTQ group Focus on the Family, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

An official White House webpage directs readers to an article published by the anti-LGBTQ Heritage Foundation that calls being transgender a “psychological disorder.” 

The Justice Department files a brief opposing workplace nondiscrimination protections for the LGBTQ community under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the case Zarda v. Altitude Express.

President Trump nominates Mark Norris, who supported legislation that allowed mental health counselors to discriminate against LGBTQ clients during his time as a TN state senator, to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee.

President Trump grants a one-on-one interview with Pat Robertson, a longtime anti-LGBTQ activist and Televangelist. Pres. Trump said, “The Evangelicals were so great to me, and they did, they came out in massive numbers, and on top of that I got 83%… I’ve gotten rid of the Johnson amendment… so I can hear from you and others, Franklin Graham, Dr. Jeffress, Robert Jeffress, who is such a great guy.” Jeffress, an Evangelical pastor, has said: “What they [gay people] do is filthy. It is so degrading that it is beyond description. And it is their filthy behavior that explains why they are so much more prone to disease.” Gay people are not more prone to disease than straight people.

In a closed-door and unannounced opportunity, President Trump poses for a photograph with notorious anti-LGBTQ activists who wish to promote so-called “religious exemptions” that would harm LGBTQ Americans across the nation.

Reports revealed President Trump hired anti-transgender activist, Bethany Kozma, to the Office of Gender Equality and Women’s Rights at the US Agency for International Development.

The Trump Administration failed to mention the LGBTQ community in their National HIV Testing Day statement.

Reporting reveals President Trump hired a lawyer who openly supported Russian President Vladimir Putin’s anti-LGBTQ law banning so-called “gay propaganda” from Russia, a law that Europe’s top human rights court found to be illegal.

An obtained internal memo from the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights reveals guidelines to dismiss complaints about bathroom access filed by transgender students.

Department of Commerce removes sexual orientation and gender identity from the agency’s Equal Employment Policy; LGBTQ protections have been explicitly included since 2010. Only after fierce opposition did Department of Commerce Secretary Ross change it back.

The Department of Education invites Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, two anti-LGBTQ organizations, to be speakers for a day-long conference on engaging fathers in their children’s education and welfare.

The Department of Education rolls back the Office for Civil Rights’ expansive approach to investigating civil rights complaints that seek to protect LGBTQ students, and other marginalized communities, from discrimination at school.

President Trump nominates Stephen S. Schwartz, who worked with North Carolina legislators in support of the anti-trans legislation HB2, to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

President Trump declines to issue a presidential proclamation designating June as LGBTQ Pride Month, breaking with an eight-year precedent set by President Barack Obama to honor and support LGBTQ Americans.

The Trump Administration grants White House press credentials to a reporter from Infowars, a conspiracy outlet that regularly peddles dangerous, offensive, and anti-LGBTQ content. Examples of conspiracy theories promoted by Infowars include “lizard people” controlling the government and school mass shootings were all faked by the deep state using “crisis actors”.

Department of Agriculture issues new so-called “religious freedom” policy statement, a move praised by the anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council.

Donald Trump threatened North Korea with nuclear war.

President Trump signs a “religious liberty” executive order. Although this EO does not target any specific group, it is the first step in what could be a much broader permission slip for discrimination against the LGBTQ community, non-Christians, and any other group the religious right wants to harm.

The Trump Administration files to dismiss a lawsuit accusing North Carolina of discriminating against the LGBTQ community in response to HB2, despite the similarities of the HB142 replacement.

A ProPublica investigation reveals the Trump Administration appointed James Renne, a key staffer involved in the Bush-era anti-LGBTQ purge of gay government employees, to a senior role at the Department of Agriculture.

The Trump Administration cancels plans to add the LGBTQ community to the upcoming 2020 U.S. Census.

Under his proposed budget for the U.S. Congress, The Trump Administration offered to cut HIV and AIDS research funding under the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

President Trump appointed anti-LGBTQ activist and former Heritage Foundation employee Roger Severino to lead the Health and Human Services Civil Rights Office, putting the LGBTQ community at risk of losing access to critical and affordable health care.

Trump Administration erases the LGBTQ community from The National Survey of Older Americans Act Participants and the Annual Program Performance Report for Centers for Independent Living, key surveys that are used to help provide care to American seniors, including disability, transportation, and caregiver support needs.

With help of Attorney General Sessions, President Trump rescinded Title IX protections for transgender students in our nation’s schools.

After hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico (which is a US-occupied territory), Donald Trump visited and threw rolls of paper towels out to Puerto Ricans during a photo op. Rolls of paper towels were not at all appropriate supplies in the context of helping the people of Puerto Rico recover from a natural disaster that killed nearly 5000 people. This was the second hurricane to hit Puerto Rico this year, and they had not yet recovered from the previous one (Irma) when Maria hit.

ABC News reports that after previously committing to protecting LGBTQ Americans from discrimination, President Trump and his administration had drafted a “License to Discriminate” executive order which would usher in across-the-board discrimination against the LGBTQ community.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order to indefinitely suspend Syrian refugees from entering the United States (policy was created by Trump’s racist advisor Stephen Miller). Trump claimed this was to help “keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the US”. There were a lot of Syrian refugees because of a civil war that started in Syria around 2011, and then became a proxy war between western capitalists (supporting the current regime) and a coalition of Islamic countries and Russia (supporting the rebels). This war is ongoing, but Biden has not yet reversed Donald Trump’s limit on Syrian refugees.

Donald Trump claimed that because he had become President, people were no longer afraid to say Merry Christmas around the winter holidays. The truth is that people always said “Merry Christmas”, they were not afraid to do so, and there was no change in the frequency of people saying “Merry Christmas” after he was elected. His statement was a reference to the fictional “War on Christmas” that conservatives like to claim is happening; there is no such thing. Generally speaking, it is both nicer and smarter to say “Happy Holidays” because there are at least 2 holidays (Christmas and New Year’s) that the person you are talking to will likely be celebrating. Other winter holidays celebrated in the USA include: Hannukah (dates vary, but roughly late November to mid-December), Winter Solstice (aka, Yule; December 21, the shortest day of the year), Kwanza (December 26 to January 1), Los Posados (December 16-24), Soyal (December 22, the day after the shortest day of the year); saying “Happy Holidays” includes them all.

The number of hate crimes in the US increased by 17% during the first year of the Trump administration and remained relatively high (over 7000 incidents per year) through the rest of his administration. They were highest during the last year of Trump’s presidency (7759 documented incidents). In comparison, during the 5 years preceding the Trump administration, there were around 6000 documented incidents per year.

When Donald Trump is angry (which was apparently often during his presidency), he would tear up documents that made him mad, which is a violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978 and counter to a tradition of record-keeping that goes all the way back to George Washington. Staffers taped some of the documents back together, but filed some in their damaged state; this behavior continued throughout his presidency.

In May 2017, Donald Trump fired James Comey for taking part in an investigation of Russia’s cyberwar against the United States, and then bragged about doing so to Russian officials in the Oval Office. In June 2017, Putin essentially admitted that Russia had intervened in the election, saying that he had never denied that “Russian volunteers” had carried out a cyberwar on behalf of Mr. Trump. In June 2017, Mr. Trump ordered the firing of Robert Mueller, who had been tasked to carry out an investigation of Russian interference. The White House Counsel refused to carry out the order. Russia then began a campaign to slander Mr. Mueller. In September 2017, a Russian parliamentarian said on national television that the American security services “slept through” as Russia chose the US president. 

Trump Administration – 2018

The Department of Justice issued a “Statement of Interest” on a pending case involving the University of Iowa and an anti-LGBTQ student organization. The DOJ sided with the student group that indirectly bars an LGBTQ person from joining their organization. This indirect discrimination is known as a “disparate impact” form of discrimination.

Donald Trump resisted sending financial aid to Puerto Rico (remember the two hurricanes that happened in 2017), portraying it as a foreign country rather than a US-occupied territory. Puerto Ricans are technically Americans even though Puerto Ricans can’t vote in US national elections, including US Congress and the Presidency.

Mr. Mueller’s investigation led to the indictment of Russia’s Internet Research Agency, several Russian military intelligence officers, and multiple associates and campaign officials of Donald Trump. (Donald Trump was not indicted because, as President, he can only be indicted by the US Senate, which was controlled by Republicans.) It also produced a report that we have not yet been allowed to read. In June 2018, Putin confirmed before the international press that he had wanted Trump to win. At that same summit, in Helsinki, Mr. Trump said that he trusted Mr. Putin more than his own advisors.

The Trump Administration quietly shuts down a HIV research facility in Montana after the administration objected to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and its scientists using fetal tissue as a part of its research to find a cure for HIV and AIDS (typically, fetal tissue comes from excess embryos created during fertility treatments).

The Trump Administration signs a trade agreement with Canada and Mexico that makes it clear the United States doesn’t have to proactively combat anti-LGBTQ discrimination in order to adhere to the agreement.

The Philadelphia Eagles defeat the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII, but the Super Bowl winners’ traditional White House visit is canceled after a host of players decline to attend.

Trump officials at the United Nations are seeking to replace mentions of “gender” (e.g. “gender-based violence”), with alternative terminology, like “violence against women,” erasing all references to gender identity and the issues relating to trans and gender non-conforming people.

The Trump administration began a policy of “family separation” for immigrants at the US southern border under a policy created by racist senior administration advisor Stephen Miller. Under this policy, children were taken away from adult family members when the family tried to enter the US through the southern border. The children were then placed permanently with American families and the intent was that they would never get to see their real families ever again. Nearly 3900 children were stolen from their families in this way; Miller wanted to expand the policy in a way that would have separated 25,000 children from their families, but it was going to be too expensive so they didn’t take it that far. Later, many children were reunited with their families but over 2000 are still lost (having been placed with American families).

Regarding attendance at his rallies, Donald Trump indicated that attendance broke “records” (which isn’t true), saying, “I have broken more Elton John records, he seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record. Because you know, look I only need this space. They need much more room. For basketball, for hockey and all of the sports, they need a lot of room. We don’t need it. We have people in that space. So we break all of these records. Really we do it without like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical: the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth. Right? The brain, more important than the mouth, is the brain. The brain is much more important.”

Back to the border situation: The kids who were separated from their adult family members at the border were kept in these semi-outdoors cage-like structures made of 8ft steel fence walls and were given foil blankets to protect from the cold at night. While in custody, the children experienced abuse from the guards and from other children in the same pen with them. They were not given clean clothes, toothbrushes, proper beds, or access to showers. Illnesses quickly spread from child to child. Stephen Miller was reportedly pleased when he saw how horrible the facilities were. One 14-year-old girl said, “I was in the first cell for seven days, sleeping with no mattress. It is hard to sleep when you don’t have a mattress. I then came down with the flu. I then went into the flu cell for seven days. When you are in the flu cell, you also sleep on the floor, but you have a mattress. There were 21 other kids in that space with the flu. I had a fever in there and I was shaking. Some of the other kids were vomiting. They all had fevers. No one was taking care of the kids with the flu. … We were not allowed to leave the flu cell, ever. It was very boring. I did nothing to entertain myself, nor was anything offered. It was sad, very sad. I felt locked up and closed in.”

 ESPN chose to stop televising the national anthem portion of the beginning of football games due to the controversy over players kneeling to protest racism and Trump criticized them for that decision.

The Trump administration attempted to erase the existence of trans people by redefining gender as a simple binary that is determined by biological sex alone. In reality, biological sex is sometimes quite complex and ambiguous (specifically, around 1.7% of the population is intersex; that would be 5.4 million Americans and about the same as the number of people with naturally red hair) and scientists understand gender roles (and gender as a whole) to be a social construct that is partially mediated by and interacts with very long-term trends in sexual dimorphism. While intersex individuals are relatively unusual, the extreme form of today’s gender norms make it very difficult for anyone to fully conform to either a male or female gender role. The exact wording of the definition that the Trump administration used was: “Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth. The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”

During a negotiation over tariffs, Canada’s Prime Minister asked how the tariffs could be a US national security issue, and Donald Trump said, “Didn’t you guys burn down the White House?” implying that the US needs to protect itself from Canadian aggression. This is absurd. What really happened is that the British attacked the US during the war of 1812; they were based in what is now Canada, but Canada did not exist at that time (it was founded in 1867). The British burned the White House, not the Canadians.

The Department of Justice writes in a brief to the Supreme Court that it is legal to discriminate against transgender employees based on their gender identity, saying that banning sex discrimination under Title VII in the workplace does not extend to transgender workers.

The Department of Health and Human Services proposes in a new memo to change the legal definition of sex under Title IX, requiring individuals to identify according to their gender assigned at birth. This change in legal definition would remove nondiscrimination protections for transgender, nonbinary, and intersex individuals.

The Trump administration’s State Department announces a new policy that the same-sex, unmarried partners of United Nations employees will not be granted visas to stay in the U.S., effective immediately. In doing so, diplomats in same-sex partnerships who come from countries where same-sex marriage is illegal will either be forced to marry in the U.S. and risk repercussions, including threats, harassment, and even incarceration back home; quit their jobs; or separate for the sake of one partner’s career.

President Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions announces his new ‘Religious Liberty’ Task Force at the Department of Justice’s Religious Liberty Summit. As stated by Sessions, the group’s purpose is to ensure that the Justice Department upholds the administration’s guidance for religious (Christian) exemptions, which he released in October.

Donald Trump nominates Brett Kavanaugh for the U.S. Supreme Court seat made vacant by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kavanaugh has an extremely conservative record and has the support of Family Research Council (FRC), designated as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Kavanaugh also had a history of sexual misconduct toward women.

The Trump administration rolls back protections for incarcerated transgender people that were intended to mitigate their exposure to sexual assault and abuse, allowing the Bureau of Prisons to “use biological sex as the initial determination for designation” when placing trans people for housing, screening, and programs and services.

Reporting reveals that the White House is seeking to roll back vital data collection on LGBTQ youth by raising the minimum age that LGBTQ people can be asked questions about their sexual orientation and gender identity in the Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey.

Donald Trump looked directly at the solar eclipse on August 21, 2017. Yes, this is real. Not looking at the solar eclipse directly is literally the only rule of a solar eclipse, but Trump looked at it directly, without eye protection at least 3 times according to video documentation of the event.

Donald Trump nominated anti-LGBTQ and anti-Muslim bigot Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State.

The Trump administration hosted Brent Bozell, the anti-LGBTQ founder of the fringe right-wing group Media Resource Center, at a White House roundtable.

The Trump administration’s Department Housing and Urban Development Secretary moved to change its official mission statement by removing promises of inclusive and discrimination-free communities.

Donald Trump praised anti-LGBTQ religious leader Franklin Graham who wrote, “Indeed, the Scriptures reveal that when people forgo God’s truth for Satan’s lies, they become increasingly immoral. The consequences are frightening: ‘God gave them over to degrading passions’ including homosexuality, and ‘gave them over to a depraved mind’ (Romans 1:26, 28, NASB).”

The Trump administration’s Department of Education officially confirms they will not investigate or take action on any complaints filed by transgender students who are banned from restrooms that match their gender identity.

Though the US sent very little financial aid to Puerto Rico after hurricanes Irma and Maria relative to what it typically sends to official US states when they get hit by a hurricane, Donald Trump took credit for the recovery there, which he said was “A-plus” and “tremendously successful”. In fact, Puerto Rico is still recovering from these natural disasters today (in late 2021); there were also two earthquakes that caused further damage. Part of the problem was that the federal aid required Puerto Rico to spend money first to receive it, and Puerto Rico didn’t have that money to spend, so the federal money is still “stuck”.

Reporting reveals that Trump administration appointee Carl Higbie had made extreme racist, sexist, anti-Muslim and anti-LGBTQ comments on the radio. He was removed from his White House position but then hired by “America First Policies,” a nonprofit created by six of Trump’s top campaign aides to back the White House agenda.

The Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services created a new department that shields healthcare workers who refuse to treat LGBTQ patients or those living with HIV by claiming moral or religious objections.

Donald Trump promotes anti-LGBTQ religious exemptions in his Religious Freedom Day proclamation, which reads “No American—whether a nun, nurse, baker, or business owner—should be forced to choose between the tenets of faith or adherence to the law.”

Trump Administration – 2019

The Trump administration appointed notorious anti-LGBTQ activist Tim Wildmon to the White House’s Faith Advisory Council.

The Trump administration limited access to food for poor people by changing the regulations surrounding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, affecting about 755,000 Americans.

Donald Trump’s proclamations about World AIDS Day never mentioned the LGBTQ community. HIV/AIDS affected the LGBTQ community much more severely in the US than in other countries due to how it arrived here, and the response to HIV/AIDS was muted in the US due to homophobia.

Donald Trump brings up the thing about NFL players kneeling during the national anthem again.

The Trump administration announced its support of allowing faith-based schools to use religion as a right to discriminate against LGBTQ teachers and staff and removing pro-LGBTQ curriculum in classrooms.

The Trump administration’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) sent a letter to members of the Ames City Council asking the city to remove pro-LGBTQ themed crosswalks in the community, citing so-called “federal traffic control standards.”

The Trump Administration pens a “statement of interest” in support of granting the Indianapolis Catholic Archdiocese the ability to discriminate or even fire a person from their job because they are LGBTQ after they fired a gay Cathedral teacher.

The Trump administration’s Department of Education removed “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as terms to track bullying data for the agency, inserting “sex stereotyping” as a protected class instead. This eliminated any anti-LGBTQ bullying tracking data from the agency.

Donald Trump accidentally “liked” a tweet about Rihanna because he was using his official Twitter account to look at half-naked pictures of her.

While touring San Francisco’s Housing and Urban Development office, Trump’s HUD Secretary (Ben Carson) reportedly describes conversations about homeless women being traumatized if “big, hairy men” walk into shelters identifying as women. The Washington Post reports Carson said single-sex shelters should have the discretion to turn away transgender people.

The Trump administration submits an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to rule against workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.

Donald Trump said that congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe,” even though all but one of them were born in the United State. He went on to say that the four women have no right to weigh in on “how our government is to be run” and should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” Since they have been elected to US Congress, they do have a right to weigh in on those things.

The Trump administration’s Justice Department files a court brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the nation’s highest court to block transgender Americans from having nationwide workplace protections.

The Trump administration revealed they plan to grant federal contractors the ability to use “religious exemptions” (specifically, Christian belief) as an excuse to discriminate against LGBTQ Americans at the workplace.

The Trump Administration urged the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to reverse their Obama-era policy of providing workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.

Donald Trump took to Twitter to attack two openly gay news reporters, Shepard Smith and Don Lemon.

The Trump Administration’s State Department creates a “Commission on Unalienable Rights” aimed at providing “an informed review of the role of human rights in American foreign policy.” However, seven of the appointees have disturbing anti-LGBTQ records, putting acceptance for the global LGBTQ community at risk.

Donald Trump used a press conference at the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan to provide praise for Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right politician. Bolsonaro has targeted LGBTQ people in his nation since the day he took office, and is widely viewed to by anti-women, anti-abortion, anti-environment, anti-immigrant. He is also in favor of law enforcement using torture and the death penalty and has made statements that incited violence.

The Trump Administration announced they would cut federal funding for an HIV and AIDS research program conducted by the University of California that uses fetal tissue (typically from excess embryos created during fertility treatments) in its research.

During his visit to the United Kingdom, President Trump continued to use discredited information about transgender Americans—including categorizing trans people as drug users—as a means to justify his ban on allowing transgender Americans from openly serving in the country’s armed forces.

The Trump Administration announced a new policy stating transgender Americans would not be guaranteed health care protections under the Affordable Care Act, potentially harming 1.5 million trans Americans.

The Trump Administration announced plans to begin implementing a new policy which would allow adoption agencies to deny LGBTQ couples the ability to adopt based on so-called “religious exemptions.” Many adoption agencies are controlled by Christian religious institutions.

The Trump Administration announced plans to rescind Obama-era policy which asked homeless shelters receiving federal dollars to grant transgender Americans the ability to use facilities according to their gender identity.

Donald Trump declares his opposition to the Equality Act, a direct flip flop from his previous stance on the issue more than a decade ago.

The Trump Administration, via the Department of Health and Human Services, issued a new rule allowing doctors and physicians the opportunity to deny Americans health care services based on religious beliefs, including seeking a “religious exemption” to deny life-saving health care for LGBTQ Americans.

Donald Trump reversed the Obama-era decision that trans soldiers could serve in the US military, saying that they may not serve, “in any capacity.” Though the new rule was complicated and confusing – and Trump gave the order to enforce it via Twitter – the result was that trans service members had to choose between leaving military service or hiding their transness. All of the military service chiefs testified before Congress that they had seen no evidence of transgender service disrupting unit cohesion or the general functioning of the military, and 2/3 of US soldiers supported serving alongside transgender personnel. The ban affected more than 13,000 service members.

During a House Education Committee hearing, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos acknowledged that the administration’s choice to rescind the Obama-era bathroom guidance—which added protections for transgender students—exposed trans students to additional harassment and discrimination in schools across the nation.

Donald Trump congratulates election of Brian Hagedorn, an anti-LGBTQ activist who wants to ban LGBTQ children from schools and believes discredited accusations against LGBTQ Americans.

One day after defending a Michigan adoption agency during the National Prayer Breakfast, the Trump Administration confirms they intended to grant faith-based adoption agencies federal funds in its upcoming 2020 White House Budget.

At the annual National Prayer Breakfast, President Trump praised Second Lady Karen Pence for teaching at a private Christian school known openly to discriminate against LGBTQ students and teachers, and defended a Michigan adoption agency for refusing to serve an LGBTQ family based on so-called “religious exemptions.”

Donald Trump met with Ginni Thomas, wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and anti-LGBTQ group Groundswell at the White House. Participants at the meeting denounced transgender Americans and claimed the historic, nationwide marriage equality ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court was “harming the fabric of the United States.”

The Trump Administration approved a waiver request by South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, which could give faith-based adoption agencies the ability to deny LGBTQ couples adoption rights based on so-called “religious exemptions”—while being funded by taxpayers.

Donald Trump offered some ideas for the US southern border, including shooting migrants in the legs to slow them down and a moat with alligators. In 1984, Trump expressed that he wanted to put a moat with alligators in it around a new building called Trump Castle that he wanted to build in NYC (didn’t happen). Trump later denied that he wanted a moat with alligators for the border wall, but he did not walk back the suggestion to shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down.

As hurricane Dorian headed for the US, Donald Trump exaggerated how serious it would be saying it would hit Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. The National Weather Service corrected him, saying that it would not hit Alabama, but then the next day, Trump displayed a chart of the hurricane’s path and someone had used a Sharpie to make the path just a little bit bigger so it included Alabama. This is trivial, but illustrates the day-to-day absurdity of the Trump administration.

Donald Trump suggested that they use a nuclear weapon against the hurricane. (Using a nuke on a hurricane would not do anything to it and would release dangerous radioactivity.)

Donald Trump signed an executive order that pretended to protect Jewish people, but really worked toward two fascist goals. The first is that it declared Jewishness to be a nationality or race; this isn’t accurate and hasn’t been for a very long time. When Jewishness has been declared to be a nationality or race in the past, it has been used as an excuse to marginalize or even destroy Jewish people who do not live in Israel; see, for example, Nazi Germany. If Jewish people are a nation, then it follows that they should be physically located in a Jewish nation, which would be Israel, implying that they don’t have the right to live in other nations, like the United States. Jewish people in the US typically describe their Jewishness as a cultural or religious identity, not as a nationality or race. The second goal would be to attempt to make it illegal to criticize the nation of Israel; there’s a lot to criticize, but the most significant thing is the ongoing genocidal ambition the Israeli government has demonstrated against Palestinians (the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complex with both sides having done terrible things). The far right relationship with Israel is complex and weird; they like Israel because its military might threatens Muslims in the Middle East and because many of them believe that Jewish people must control that area so they can fulfill Biblical prophecy, but they also hate Jewish people and think they are conducting a global conspiracy that controls the world and marginalizes white people.

Donald Trump presided over the longest government shutdown in US history, caused by conflict between Republicans and Democrats over funding priorities.

In response to calls for Donald Trump to dismiss racist Stephen Miller from his position as senior advisor to the Trump administration, Stephen Miller claimed that he cannot be racist because he is Jewish. He is racist, though, as proven by the fact that he was promoting white supremacist material. Trump did not dismiss Miller and he remained with the administration to the end.

In a leaked memo by the Justice Department, the Trump Administration considers dissolving the “disparate impact” regulation, which grants marginalized communities (including LGBTQ Americans) legal protections from unintended discrimination in housing, education, and other ways of life.

The Trump administration’s NASA Administrator (Jim Bridenstine) invited Dmitry Rogozin, Director General of Roscosmos (Russian space program), to visit the United States. Rogozin, a politician, is vehemently anti-LGBTQ and even compared the LGBTQ community to ISIS (an organization of Muslim extremist terrorists).

Trump Administration – 2020

Donald Trump claimed that his advisors did not adequately brief him about COVID-19, but in fact they did; he just refused to read anything about it.

Donald Trump and his administration’s officials repeatedly implied that the Chinese government purposefully distributed COVID-19 in order to wreck the world economy, wreck the US economy in particular, and make Donald Trump look bad. The virus did originate in China, and certainly there’s some blame that can go to particular people in China who made bad decisions that contributed to the pandemic, but it is absurd to suggest that the Chinese government released COVID-19 on purpose; it has been as hard on China as it has been on other countries and the worldwide economic downturn has been a long-term economic problem for China. Whether the virus came from the practice of hunting and eating wild animals or from a lab mistake, such things happen everywhere, including the US.

Donald Trump’s continuous linking of COVID-19 to China created an enormous increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in the US, including violent crimes (with simple assault and intimidation being the most common types) and property crimes (arson, burglary, destruction, damage, and vandalism). Anti-Asian hate crime events commonly targeted individuals as opposed to organizations or businesses.

Donald Trump insisted that COVID-19 would just go away (without any effort) at least 38 times despite the fact that his advisors (including literally the world’s top experts in epidemiology) said it would require desperate measures and might never go away. February 2020: 4 times; March 2020: 4 times; April 2020: 5 times; May 2020: 4 times; June 2020: 5 times; July 2020: 4 times; August 2020: 8 times; September 2020: 1 time; October 2020: 3 times. Source is from the end of October 2020, so there were probably more times after that.

Donald Trump suggested that injecting bleach or Lysol into the bloodstream of a person who had COVID-19 might cure it. Doing this will severely harm or even kill you; after he suggested it, there was a dramatic increase in “accidental” poisonings relative to the same time period the previous year. The exact thing he said was: “I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. Is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning, because, you see, it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs? I’m, like, a person who has a good you-know-what. [pointing to his own head]”

For much of the first year of the pandemic, Donald Trump promoted hydroxychloroquine as a cure for COVID-19 – against the advice of the experts that were advising him. There was no evidence that it worked for COVID-19, and now we know for sure that it does not work for that purpose. (Trump had some shares in multiple pharmaceutical companies that produce hydroxychloroquine; those investments were part of mutual funds that are part of family trusts, so Trump did not have direct control over buying and selling those shares. However, he did benefit from recommending the drug.)

Donald Trump again rebukes NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem to protest against racial discrimination.

The US House of Representatives impeached Donald Trump in response to his solicitation of foreign interference in both the 2020 and 2016 US presidential elections, and his obstruction of the investigation into that solicitation. This was the first time Trump was impeached. The Republican-controlled Senate acquitted Trump of the charges. Of note, Trump had done many things that they could have impeached him for (e.g., various violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution); Democrats pursued this particular issue because Trump had tried to coerce Ukrainian government officials into providing damaging narratives about Joe Biden and his family, which might have threatened Biden’s ability to win the election.

The Trump administration’s Health and Human Services (HHS) department eliminated regulations barring discrimination against LGBTQ Americans seeking to adopt or be adopted, or health services (including HIV/AIDS prevention).

The Trump administration’s Labor Department changed policies in order to allow federal contractors to discriminate against LGBTQ workers via religious exemption.

The Trump administration’s State Department systematically omitted information about human rights abuses against LGBTQ, intersex, and female people from reports, which might prevent such people from seeking asylum in the US, forcing them to return to a dangerous situation in their home country.

At the request of anti-LGBTQ hate group “Concerned Women for America”, The Trump administration’s Department of Education pressured a university to drop its trans-inclusive policy in athletics.

At a campaign event, Donald Trump’s daughter Tiffany claimed that her father supported the “LGBQ” community (which is not true), omitting the letter T (for trans). This was part of a very long trend of Trump and his people lying about his support of LGBTQ people.

Trump’s Secretary of State (Mike Pompeo) appeared at an event with the anti-gay Florida Family Policy Council despite having been warned that there would be homophobic advertisement/flyers at the site and that the group promoted dangerous, debunked conversion therapy.

Donald Trump’s son Eric claimed that LGBTQ people “come out in full force” to support Trump; the truth was that 76% of LGBTQ people supported Biden at that time.

Donald Trump chose Amy Coney Barret to the US Supreme Court. She is a “dream candidate” for conservatives who oppose bodily autonomy for women and marriage equality, and based on endorsements from right-wing organizations, is likely also opposed to all LGBTQ civil rights, civil rights for ethnic minorities, and laws against hate crimes.

Due to lax protocols at the Amy Coney Barret announcement event at the White House, 11 people who attended the event came down with COVID-19, including Donald Trump. Trump received special anti-viral therapies that were not yet available to average people and recovered fairly quickly.

The Trump administration’s head of the Department of Education vowed to withhold $18 million in federal funds from Connecticut school districts that participate in an athletic conference that allows transgender athletes to compete consistent with their gender identity.

The Trump administration deployed a legal strategy to avoid enforcing the US Supreme Court ruling that extended protections for LGBTQ workers, pushing rules that allow shelters and schools to insist access be based only on gender assigned at birth.

The Trump administration filed a brief with Indiana Supreme Court to support a school’s right to fire a teacher for being gay.

The Trump administration’s State Department created a policy that denies citizenship to children of US same-sex couples if the child was born via surrogacy overseas. Trump’s press secretary then purposefully lied about the policy to make it sound like it was not targeted against LGBTQ people. The Trump administration actively intervened in the citizenship status of some of the children who were adopted by LGBTQ people, claiming that the children were, “born out of wedlock,” implying that the LGBTQ couple were not actually legally married and that the marital status of the couple matters despite the fact that it does not matter for straight people participating in a similar adoption.

The Trump administration’s US Agency for International Development published a new policy on gender and women’s empowerment that eliminated any mention of contraceptives (Trump’s far right constituents are opposed to birth control). It also eliminated any mention of transgender people.

The Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services systematically discriminated against LGBTQ families in federally supported foster care programs via waivers that allowed discrimination based on religion and sexual orientation.

Two Trump administration officials visited a private school in North Carolina in celebration of it re-opening for in-person classes despite the COVID-19 pandemic. The founder of the private school was a major donor to the Trump campaign and an anti-LGBTQ activist.

The Trump administration limited work permits for undocumented immigrants who were children when they were brought to the US, but the US Supreme Court blocked the change.

Donald Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, spoke out against him repeatedly, saying, for example, that it is “absurd” that her uncle believes he has support in the LGBTQ community, that he’s uncomfortable with gay people and trans people, because “he’s uncomfortable with anyone that’s different… differently-abled, different color of skin, and different beliefs… He’s not [an] ally of the gay community, or really any community for that matter. Donald doesn’t have any concern or beliefs beyond his own self-interest.”

The Trump administration revoked Housing and Urban Development regulations designed to eliminate racial disparities in the suburbs. Donald Trump’s claims about the regulation that was revoked were inaccurate and racist according to housing advocates.

Donald Trump twice said that he would “negotiate” a third term as President after winning the 2020 election, which would be a direct violation of the 22^nd Amendment to the US Constitution. He claimed that his first term shouldn’t count, “because they spied on my campaign.” They did not spy on his campaign; rather, the FBI conducted a counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s efforts to meddle in the 2016 election (see election year section).

Donald Trump’s senior legal advisor (Jana Ellis) repeatedly supported conversion therapy during her time with the Trump administration. Psychologists worldwide confirm LGBTQ people cannot change their gender identity or sexual orientation through conversion therapy. The American Psychiatric Association condemns such treatment and describes any attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation as unethical. Ellis has a long record of racist and homophobic rhetoric, including criticizing her own Republican party for any attempt to embrace LGBTQ rights after the Pulse massacre killed 49 people, many of whom were LGBTQ.

The Trump administration’s Defense Department banned the display of Confederate flags on military institutions, but also included LGBTQ pride flags in the rule change.

The Trump administration’s Housing and Urban Development authority issued rules allowing homeless shelters to prohibit transgender people in single-sex shelters based on how intake staff perceive an applicant’s gender.

The courts blocked a new rule by the Trump administration that would have prevented gender-based asylum (i.e., women and girls seeking asylum in the US because of abuse in their home country).

The Trump administration created something called the Commission on Unalienable Rights, which created a report criticizing efforts for racial justice, and prioritizing Christian religious freedom and property rights above all other human rights concerns. The report refers to abortion, affirmative action, and same-sex marriage as “divisive social and political controversies in the United States” rather than legally determined and settled rights. The event announcing the report featured Trump’s Secretary of State and was delivered to a large indoor crowd despite the pandemic.

The Trump administration’s Small Business Administration provided very low-interest loans to various anti-LGBTQ hate groups as part of the Paycheck Protection Program. Companies tied to Trump’s adult children, son-in-law, and millionaire friends also received money. Millions of dollars from this program also went to Catholic dioceses that were struggling due to lawsuits stemming from their covering up for pedophile priests, which is a major problem for the Catholic church; Pope Francis has explicitly directed dioceses to cease this kind of behavior.

Donald Trump expressed disapproval at a US Supreme Court decision that protected millions of Americans from being fired for being LGBTQ.

As COVID-19 cases explode, Trump comforts the nation with these words: “So showerheads – you take a shower, the water doesn’t come out. You want to wash your hands, the water doesn’t come out. So what do you do? You just stand there longer or you take a shower longer? Because my hair – I don’t know about you, but it has to be perfect. Perfect. Dishwashers – you didn’t have any water, so you – the people that do the dishes – you press it, and it goes again, and you do it again and again. So you might as well give them the water because you’ll end up using less water. So we made it so dishwashers now have a lot more water. And in many places – in most places in the country, water is not a problem. They don’t know what to do with it. It’s called rain.”

The Trump administration’s Justice Department supported Idaho’s new law barring transgender female athletes from competing consistent with their gender identity and included genital and genetic screenings for the purpose of enforcement. Same for Connecticut.

The Trump administrations Health and Human Services department removed protections for transgender Americans seeking healthcare under a new rule; i.e., making it legal for healthcare institutions to refuse them service.

The Trump administration’s State Department did not acknowledge LGBTQ Pride Month or the International Day Against Homophobia, which is something it had regularly done before the Trump administration.

The Trump administration’s Solicitor General filed an amicus brief to the US Supreme Court to defend an agency’s right to discriminate against same-sex couples looking to become foster parents in violation of Philadelphia’s anti-discrimination ordinances. The Solicitor General  and Department of Justice did the same thing in several different cases as well.

Donald Trump’s appointee to U.S. foreign aid agency USAID has history of online attacks against the “homo-empire” pushing “tyrannical LGBT agenda.” Merritt Corrigan formerly worked for the Republican National Committee and the Hungarian embassy in Washington. She has praised authoritarian Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

In May, protests over the murder of George Floyd (killed in Minneapolis, MN) began in many cities in the country, and some were basically continuous. The protests in Portland, Oregon were particularly constant and substantial. The Trump administration was opposed to the protests and portrayed them as unlawful. In late June, the Trump administration deployed a secret police force to Portland (without the permission of the local or state government). The secret police force was made up of federal police from federal law enforcement agencies that were both militarized (prior to the Trump administration) and loyal to the Trump administration. The officers had their faces covered and had no identifying information (e.g., name, agency) on their uniforms. They initiated violence against protesters (including shooting them with rubber bullets and tear gas) and kidnapped protesters off the street using unmarked vans; the kidnapped protesters were never told why they had been taken, were searched and detained for some time, and then eventually released without having been charged with any crime. They were not necessarily made aware that they had been kidnapped by law enforcement. The secret police attacked journalists in addition to protesters. Republicans often talk about how the US government is too powerful and promote the idea of “state’s rights” but were very happy with Trump’s secret police.

There was a fire caused by protesters demanding justice for George Floyd at a church near the White House. The church is supportive of anti-racist protests including these particular protest, and so it is unlikely that the fire was intentionally set. There was no arson trend associated with the protest but the protesters were using fireworks which are a clear fire hazard. Republicans set upon the fire as a symbol of how “the left” hates Christianity, so Donald Trump wanted to have a photo opportunity at the church but the protesters were still there and in the surrounding area. He had US Park Police and the National Guard clear away protesters using tear gas, concussion grenades, pepper balls (balls of pepper spray fired from a paint ball gun), and horses. Protesters were peaceful before they were attacked, but did become violent during the attack. Trump did not pray or quote from the Bible during the photo op, but did hold a Christian Bible up, which was provided to him by his daughter, who converted to Judaism when she married her husband. All the people in the photo were white. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff apologized for participating in the photo op and attack on the protesters. The church issued a statement condemning the photo op and the attack on protesters.

Again in Portland, Trump’s secret police attacked a line of protesting moms who called themselves the “wall of moms” while they were chanting “don’t shoot your mom”. The secret police hit them with batons and shot tear gas at them.

Donald Trump threatened to send his secret police force to other “left-leaning” US cities. Next on his list was Chicago. It’s not clear whether the secret police did anything in those other cities, but the list included Kansas City (Missouri), Albuquerque (New Mexico), Seattle (Washington), New York City (New York), and Washington DC.

The Trump administration’s Department of Education threatened to withhold federal education funding from states that allow athletes to compete under the gender with which they identify.

The Trump administration pushed religious exemptions for Christian property owners who wished to discriminate against LGBTQ people.

Video and audio evidence shows Trump campaign adviser and senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis grotesquely and falsely claim same-sex marriage will lead to legally and socially-accepted bestiality and pedophilia.

The Trump administration ended data collection on LGBTQ foster children, meaning that they will be randomly assigned to foster parents instead of assigned to foster parents who support their sexual and/or gender identity.

The Trump administration did a tremendous amount of damage to science, generally, and the journal Nature summarized this in their October 5, 2020 issue.

President Trump appointed Kayleigh McEnany, who has a history of using the press to attack LGBTQ people, as Press Secretary.

The Trump administration’s Department of Justice filed a “statement of interest” in a court case which stated that it has a “significant interest” in ensuring that civil rights are interpreted as excluding transgender female athletes and apply only to cisgender females.

A preacher who led weekly Bible study for Trump administration cabinet secretaries wrote that he believes the coronavirus pandemic is a “consequential” or “sowing and reaping” form of God’s wrath that directly stems from tolerance of “a proclivity toward lesbianism and homosexuality.” In reality, COVID-19 pandemic killed far more conservatives than any other group because they refused to protect themselves and their communities from the virus.

The Trump administration issued a directive to multiple government agencies to strengthen the ability of Christian organizations to access federal money even if that organization is anti-LGBTQ or has an anti-LGBTQ record.

The Trump administration’s climate science denial led to climate policies that have made the United States the worst performer in terms of the climate change mitigation indicators in the world, according to the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) 2020, released by non-profits Climate Action Network, German Watch and New Climate Institute.

Decades of Donald Trump’s tax returns were leaked to the press revealing that he pays almost no taxes despite being a billionaire. (This is very common for billionaires.)

Donald Trump pressured election officials in Georgia to ignore the results of the presidential election there and declare that Trump had won that state. Though they were Republicans, they chose to respect the results of the election. Trump supporter Lindsey Graham also called Georgia election officials and asked them to throw out ballots in Democratic areas of Georgia so that Trump could win. Again, they declined.

The Trump administration attempted to sow doubt regarding whether Joe Biden really won several states with the goal of either falsifying election results later or creating enough doubt and outrage among more vocal citizens that Trump could declare a State of Emergency and cancel the inauguration of the new President. This is a common strategy among dictators that often works.

Trump Administration — 2021

Donald Trump became the first President in 28 years to NOT serve a second term.

Donald Trump became the first President to lose the popular vote twice. (He lost the popular vote in 2016 but because of the way the electoral college is structured, managed to win by a technicality.)

Donald Trump became the first President in 89 years to lose the presidency, House and Senate during his term.

Donald Trump became the first President EVER to refuse to concede defeat.

Donald Trump became the first President EVER to not ensure a peaceful transfer of power.

Donald Trump casually told reporter Barak Ravid, “It used to be that Israel had absolute power over Congress,” that Jews run the New York Times, and that “the Jewish people in the United States either don’t like Israel or don’t care about Israel.” All of this is anti-Semitic, but the part about Israel addresses an important part of anti-Semitic belief in the US: That the “good” Jewish people live in Israel (and the rest of them are bad). Evangelicals believe that some of the good Jewish people in Israel will become Christians during the end times and the rest will side with Satan (and be destroyed), but that wouldn’t be part of Donald Trump’s beliefs about Jewish people since he is not a Christian. My point is that support of Israel by the far right — including Donald Trump — is usually connected to their anti-Semitism rather than being a sign that they support Jewish people.

Other anti-Semitic beliefs expressed by Donald Trump would be: That Jewish people are natural negotiators, that they buy off politicians, that they are more loyal to Israel than to the country where they live, and that they are inbred and selfish. Bigotry is often nonsensical, and that’s the case with Trump’s anti-Semitic bigotry; it makes more sense if you realize that he’s always assuming that Jewish people are sneaky monsters. Being a natural negotiator is a positive trait, but his view of this with Jewish people is that it makes them sinister as a group. Trump and his ilk buy off politicians, but their purchasing of politicians is OK, whereas when Jewish people do it, it is bad and he assumes that Jewish people are doing it more than other kinds of people. He criticizes them for not being loyal to Israel, but then also criticizes them for being more loyal to Israel than to the nation where they live.

Donald Trump incited a mob of idiots to violence on January 6, 2021 at the United States Capitol. Trump indicated to the crowd that the presidential election had been fraudulent (something he had said many times during and even before the election) and that the Democrats had engaged in a conspiracy to steal the election. He indicated that the crowd should interfere with the process of confirming the electors that was going to be taking place at the US capitol. Many of the supporters who saw his speech did attempt to interfere with the election procedure in an act of insurrection. One group of insurrectionists tried to find Mike Pence so they could kill him in retaliation for Pence refusing to go along with a scheme to grant electors to Trump even though he did not win those electors. Trump was asked to call the US National Guard to stop the insurrection, but he refused. Known fascist groups participated in the insurrection. All members of Congress escaped the attack. The building was ransacked by the mob and a total of approximately $1.5 million in damages occurred. One insurrectionist was shot to death by security as she breached the door into an area where members of Congress were hiding. One police officer died, and 138 others were injured. Four police officers who were present at the insurrection committed suicide shortly after the event.

Donald Trump is the first President EVER to incite a domestic terrorist attack.

Even after all that, Trump’s supporters continued trying to discredit the election. They successfully forced Georgia to recount all the votes in their state.

Biden Administration – 2021

Joe Biden was inaugurated on January 20, 2021, but the Biden administration did not try to quickly purge Trump appointees from US government positions, and so the Trump administration’s damage continued.

Donald Trump became the first former President in 152 years to boycott his successor’s inauguration.

The US House of Representatives impeached Trump for a second time due to the January 6 insurrection. Again, Republicans in the Senate acquitted him of the charges. This is the first time in history that a US President was impeach twice.

Two officials, David Legates, who served as the head of the United States Global Change Research Program, and Ryan Maue, a senior official at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, were demoted and moved to a different area after they posted climate change denial material to a public website and claimed that they represent the US government. Both had been given those positions by the Trump administration.

The Trump administration’s appointee to head the US Postal Service remains in that position despite the fact that he was chosen specifically to sabotage the functioning of the USPS and did so. He also slowed down the mail right before the 2020 election in what was likely an attempt to sabotage voting by mail; since Democrats were more likely to vote by mail, Republicans believed this might be a way to assure Trump (and other Republicans) a win in the election.

Donald Trump continues to claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent and that he won.

After a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee was removed from Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, Donald Trump praised Lee excessively. Trump overstated Lee’s military prowess, and made it sound like he was something other than a man who literally fought a war against the United States for the primary reason of maintaining chattel slavery based on race. Lee was an open racist even after the war. The statue was placed in Richmond after Reconstruction as a reminder to Black people of white supremacy.

Donald Trump and his supporters have been trying to prevent the government from releasing documents related to the January 6, 2021 insurrection. It looks like the documents will be released to the congressional committee investigating the insurrection, but there’s a legal process that is taking some time. The intent of the congressional investigation is to punish Trump and other people who incited the mob. Several of the people who were part of his administration are refusing to cooperate with the investigation and will probably be arrested.

In accordance with Trump’s 2020 suggestion that people might be able to use bleach to cleanse their bodies of COVID-19, Q-Anon cultists are drinking chlorine dioxide. Chlorine dioxide is used in water treatment but is kept below 0.8 parts per million and breaks down significantly before it reaches your home. Using it at significantly higher concentrations would cause cellular damage to your digestive system; common reactions to drinking chlorine dioxide include nausea, severe vomiting, and life-threatening low blood pressure caused by dehydration. There is no research that shows any benefit from drinking chlorine dioxide at any concentration.

Biden Administration – 2022

Trump continues to criticize Republicans who will not go along with his Big Lie that the election was stolen.

Trump canceled an event to mark the January 6, 2021 sacking of the US capitol because his advisors told him it would be politically damaging to his movement.

In January of 2022, an anti-vaccine leader named Christopher Key encouraged his followers to drink their own urine to combat COVID-19. He called “urine therapy” an “antidote” to COVID-19, and specifically said, “I drink my own urine!” While urine may not be harmful, there’s no proven positive effect, and the main effect is just to make the person pee more (one of the primary ingredients, urea,  is a diuretic). Urine rapidly grows bacteria in it, and is therefore quite dangerous if it has been sitting for any time at all. Also, drinking pee is gross. I know this isn’t really about Trump directly, but I thought it was pretty funny and Trump did embolden the conspiracy theory people, continues to support anti-vaxxers, and promoted several stupid alternative cures for COVID-19 (just not urine) which legitimized the whole “alternative medicine” (which is not actually medicine) world.

In January, National Public Radio made the mistake of interviewing Donald Trump. He again said that the election was stolen and implied that Republican candidates for other offices will have to publicly state that the election was stolen or he will not endorse their candidacy. The host countered that there was no evidence of election theft and that Republicans had reviewed the results in contested states, finding no foul play. Trump got unruly and ended the interview early.

In February, Donald Trump made a speech where he promised to pardon January 6 rioters (if he becomes President again) and asked his followers to riot if he is indicted. Both of these clearly qualify as “obstruction of justice” — it is illegal to attempt to subvert the course of a criminal justice proceeding or investigation. He could not be indicted while he was President (due to a Justice Department policy) but can be indicted now. In addition, people who were sent to collect various documents from the Trump administration in pursuit of the investigation into the January 6 riot and sacking of the US Capitol found that many of the documents had been ripped up by Trump himself; they were able to tape them back together.

In February, we learned that when Donald Trump was President, he repeatedly clogged a White House toilet by using it to dispose of documents, including classified and top secret documents. By law, the records of a presidential administration belong to the American people; there are strict laws about how they should be handled and preserved. We also learned that when he left office, Donald Trump took classified documents out of the White House; they were found stored at Mar-a-Lago, which is one of Donald Trump’s hotels for rich people but also his personal resort where he lives. The documents were not stored safely at Mar-a-Lago and were a threat to national security. If you compare this situation to the brouhaha involving Hillary Clinton’s emails, the hypocrisy is amazing; clearly, he never actually cared about national security, he just cared about smearing his opponent.

In mid-February, one of Donald Trump’s allies filed a lawsuit that said that Hillary Clinton’s campaign had illegally spied on the Trump presidential campaign in 2016. Donald Trump pretended that the filing of the lawsuit constituted proof that the Clinton campaign had committed the crime described in the lawsuit, essentially treating an accusation as a fact. Right-wing news outlets followed suit, pretending that the accusation was a statement of established fact.

In mid-February, Donald Trump’s business accountants said that the last 10 years of his financial reports are not true because the accountants received information from the Trump Organization that was not true, which means that they believe Donald Trump’ and the Trump Organization are guilty of financial crimes.

After Russia invaded Ukraine, Donald Trump blamed the invasion on Biden not being manly enough; however, not only did Trump spend his entire Presidency kissing up to Putin and complimenting him, but he solicited interference from Russia in the 2016 election — and Russia did provide that interference in the form of a propaganda campaign. Moreover, part of Trump’s statement about the invasion of Ukraine again complimented Putin by calling him “savvy” and saying that his initial moves were “genius”. Putin is the person who deserves the most blame for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and it is hard to say exactly how Biden might have contributed; however, it is clear that the Trump administration made the US seem weak and irrelevant due to the deep division it created in the country (including the January 6, 2021 sacking of the US capitol) , Trump’s constant kissing up to dictators, and Trump pulling out of international agreements. The withdrawal from Afghanistan (which was cited by Trump as proof that Biden is weak) was initiated by Trump.

On March 29, Donald Trump publicly called on Vladimir Putin to release “dirt” on President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. On the same day, Russian state TV called on the American people to depose Biden and reinstate Russia’s “partner”, Donald Trump.