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1. Personally profiting from official business
Since Jimmy Carter, most presidents have used blind trusts or other means to separate themselves from active control or ownership of assets to assure the public that they would not make decisions out of financial self-interest. (Barack Obama did not set up a blind trust. His money was in mutual funds, Treasury bills and the like.)
2. Not releasing tax returns
The tax-release tradition began after Richard Nixon’s tax scandal in 1973, when he famously declared, “I’m not a crook.” Nixon released several years of returns in 1974, months before resigning amid the separate Watergate scandal. His successor, Gerald Ford, released years of summary tax data, including income, major deductions and taxes paid. Starting with Jimmy Carter, every president has released full tax returns — until President Trump.
3. Refusing oversight
This past spring, President Trump fired or removed five inspectors general: the internal watchdogs for the intelligence community, the Defense Department, Health and Human Services, the Transportation Department and the State Department.
4. Interfering in Department of Justice investigations
Since at least the 1970s, administrations have generally taken care to insulate the Department of Justice from presidential meddling and limit White House communications about investigative details.
Not the Trump administration.
5. Abusing appointment power
President Trump has flouted the constitutional appointments process to fashion a government reliant on acting officials who have not been confirmed by the Senate. He is the first president since before Ronald Reagan to have more acting than confirmed Cabinet secretaries…
6. Insulting allies while cozying up to authoritarians
To hear President Trump tell it… Trump has shown an affinity for strongmen such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro. He has spoken glowingly of the “love letters” he received from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. He called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “a tough guy who deserves respect.” He congratulated Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte for the “unbelievable job” he was doing on his country’s drug problem, despite reports of thousands of extrajudicial killings.
7. Coarsening presidential discourse
President Trump has communicated more unfiltered words to the public than any other chief executive — not just through Twitter, but via rambling rally speeches and impromptu jousts with reporters. This stream of presidential consciousness is like “a fireside rant, but one that has no beginning and no end,” Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes write in their book “Unmaking the Presidency.”
8. Politicizing the military
President Trump has trampled the line between politics and the military from the second week of his presidency, when he chose the Pentagon room dedicated to the most highly decorated military heroes as the setting to sign his controversial order barring refugees and blocking travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries. between our military and our foreign policy goals.”
9. Attacking judges
Past presidents have signaled displeasure with court rulings, but they have not challenged the legal system’s legitimacy as Trump has.
10. Politicizing diplomacy and foreign policy
All diplomacy carries a whiff of politics — Republican foreign policy is different from Democratic foreign policy — but President Trump has put a uniquely electoral stamp on foreign affairs. politicized not just the content of the policy, but the conduct of the diplomacy, to such an extreme extent.”
11. Undermining intelligence agencies
President Trump called the intelligence chiefs who served under Barack Obama “dirty cops” and “sleazebags,” while he has continued to feud with the agencies and his own appointed directors.
12. Publicizing lists of potential Supreme Court picks
President Trump took the novel approach of releasing lists of potential picks for the Supreme Court.
13. Making far more false or misleading claims than any previous president
Through Aug. 27, the sum was 22,247, to be exact, according to The Post Fact Checker’s database.
14. Abusing the pardon power
George H.W. Bush was criticized for pardoning Iran-contra figures, Bill Clinton for pardoning a fugitive financier, and George W. Bush for commuting the sentence of an official in a case related to the leak of an undercover CIA agent’s identity. But President Trump’s 44 pardons and commutations have been especially self-serving.
15. Using government resources for partisan ends
From his first full day in office, when President Trump ordered the National Park Service to produce photographic evidence that his inauguration crowd was larger than Barack Obama’s (it wasn’t), he has used the levers of government to score personal or political points.
16. Making racialized appeals and attacks
No president in the modern era has relied so heavily on racialized appeals to his base.
17. Dividing the nation in times of crisis
During national crises, presidents are expected to hold the country’s hand and pull us together, if only for a little while.
18. Contradicting scientists
Norms guiding the presidency are meant to ensure that decisions on policy aren’t arbitrary or overly political, and that the best expert guidance is heeded. President Trump’s rejection of these customs has been on display during the coronavirus pandemic.
19. Derailing the tradition of presidential debates
Presidential debates are not always illuminating, with candidates resorting to talking points and the occasional well-rehearsed zinger. But the first 2020 presidential debate was an unprecedented cacophonous fiasco, largely because President Trump ignored the agreed-upon rules and interrupted Joe Biden 71 times in 90 minutes. t
20. Undermining faith in the 2020 election results
Every incumbent president in American history has accepted the prospect of a peaceful transfer of power. No sitting president in modern memory has gone into an election predicting fraud and illegitimate results.
