How History Will Remember Trump

I happened to read this CNN article and this part struck me for how accurately it summed up the horrors of Trump's lone (blessedly) term (emphasis mine):

When people look at Trump and say, "This is not America," they are wrong. His presidency personified a gap between America's liberal, urban, multiracial citizens and their White, rural, conservative counterparts. And his great sin as President was that he didn't try to build common bonds and language between an internally estranged people. Instead, he exploited the divide.

These facts are indisputable: Trump destroyed millions of people's faith in the US political system by refusing to accept his election defeat and inciting an insurrection against Congress. He inspired radical, far right White nationalists. He lied every day. His "beautiful" health care plan was a sick myth. He torched America's global reputation. And he incessantly exploited his job to boost his business, reversing President John Kennedy's admonition, "Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country."

Trump did often raise questions that conventional politicians dodged: Shouldn't the US be tougher on an increasingly hostile China? When will someone actually help ghost towns in the Midwest and the South where industries died at the hands of elite free traders? Why don't prosperous Europeans pay more for their own defense? What is the sense in sending heartland Americans to die in the Middle East?

But he never answered these questions. And for all Trump's championing of "forgotten" Americans, his sole big legislative win was huge tax cuts for corporations and his rich cronies.

Trump mythologizes his skill as a builder, but he will be remembered for destruction. After losing the White House, the House and the Senate, being impeached twice and throwing tens of thousands of lives into the teeth of the pandemic, this one-termer has earned his inevitable historic ignominy as one of the worst US presidents, if not the worst.

Hopefully the nightmare really is over . . .