- Title: PART TWO: A look back at Trump: The president that threw away the playbook
- Date: 14th January 2021
- Summary: WASHINGTON, D.C., UNTIED STATES (FILE - SEPTEMBER 10, 2013) (REUTERS) ***WARNING: CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY*** WASHINGTON D.C.'S OLD POST OFFICE BUILDING THAT TRUMP WILL DEVELOP INTO THE TRUMP INTERNATIONAL HOTEL WASHINGTON, D.C., UNTIED STATES (FILE - JULY 23, 2014) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF DONALD TRUMP AND HIS THREE CHILDREN BREAKING GROUND ON THE TRUMP INTERNATIONAL HOTEL
- Embargoed: 28th January 2021 22:34
- Keywords: Trump archive Trump file Trump lookback Trump presidency Trump profile inauguration preview
- Location: VARIOUS
- City: VARIOUS
- Country: USA
- Topics: Government/Politics,United States
- Reuters ID: LVA00JDV7EBEV
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: EDITORS NOTE: FOR PART ONE, PLEASE SEE 8720-USA-TRUMP/PROFILE PART 1
Donald Trump comes to the end of his presidency against the back drop of a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol his supporters and his long refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election, and a raging pandemic that has killed hundreds and thousands of Americans and fractured parts of the economy.
Trump supporters broke into the Capitol, pushed past police, and roamed through the building, forcing lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to evacuate. One woman died after being shot by police; three other individuals died of medical emergencies. And a law enforcement officer died in the melee.
The end of his term may have jeopardized the president's political future and tainted prospects for his top lieutenants and family members, current and former administration officials said.
The Republican president has dangled the possibility of running for president in 2024, and political operatives had expected him to exert influence over the Republican Party for years to come.
But his behavior of goading supporters to march on the Capitol to encourage lawmakers to overturn Democrat Joe Biden's win in the Nov. 3 election, and then failing quickly to call on them to stand down after violence ensued - has sickened people who work and used to work for him and, they said, changed the equation for his post-presidential relevance.
Pugnacious and boastful businessman-turned-politician Trump's first term as U.S. president was marked by tumult and controversy as he promoted an "America First" message, stoked divisions over race and immigration, survived an impeachment drama with received unwavering support from many fellow Republicans. Trump entered the final year of his first term as the coronavirus pandemic blanketed the country killing hundreds of thousands of Americans and infecting millions of people, including himself. .
Trump's first term in office came during a time of political polarization across America and dysfunction in Washington, making his presidency among the most contentious in U.S. history.
He curtailed immigration, abandoned international treaties, alienated longtime U.S. allies, praised authoritarian foreign leaders, exhibited deference to longtime American adversary Russia, secured deep tax cuts that especially benefited the rich and corporations and vilified opposition Democrats.
Trump led a disjointed U.S. government response to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic - downplaying its seriousness, casting doubt on protective masks and predicting the pathogen's miraculous disappearance - that many medical experts said worsened the public health crisis and cost lives. Trump ultimately was diagnosed with the virus and spent three nights in a military hospital. Still, Trump has given himself high marks for his actions.
Before the pandemic hit the country in March, Trump had a clear argument for reelection. Record-low unemployment and rising wages were helping the less well-off, while a record stock market buoyed richer Americans.
The real estate developer and former reality TV personality, born and raised in the New York City borough of Queens, has drawn passionate support from many Americans, including white men, religious conservatives, rural residents and those without a college education.
Trump became known for leading raucous rallies full of ardent supporters. His admirers cheered his taunts against Democrats and on the news media. His presidency also was buttressed by allies in conservative news outlets.
He had a knack for biting nicknames for adversaries, like "Crooked Hillary" and "Lyin' Ted." He also use Twitter often, firing off posts at all hours of the day and night, sometimes with spelling and grammatical errors, but succeeding in communicating directly with the public.
Trump won the 2016 U.S. election in an upset over Democrat Hillary Clinton, losing the nationwide popular vote by about 3 million votes but prevailing in crucial battleground states that helped him amass an Electoral College majority.
On Jan. 20, 2017, he was sworn in as the first U.S. president with no political or military experience and, at age 70, the oldest man to take on the job.
U.S. intelligence agencies and a special counsel appointed by the Justice Department, Robert Mueller, concluded that Russia in 2016 engaged in a campaign of hacking and propaganda to sow discord in the United States, denigrate Clinton and boost Trump's candidacy. Mueller detailed extensive ties between Trump campaign figures and Russians.
Trump called investigations by the FBI and Mueller into his campaign's Russia contacts "a witch hunt." He declared "complete and total exoneration" in 2018 after Mueller's report stopped short of accusing him or his campaign of a criminal conspiracy with Russia. Mueller did not exonerate Trump of committing obstruction of justice in trying to impede the special counsel investigation, but Attorney General William Barr, a Trump appointee, subsequently cleared him.
Trump avoided condemning Moscow's election interference, giving credence publicly to Russian President Vladimir Putin's denials while doubting American intelligence conclusions. He praised Putin for strong leadership and intelligence, part of Trump's predilection for complimenting foreign authoritarian leaders including North Korea's Kim Jong-un and Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines.
Trump in 2019 became the first sitting American president to set foot in North Korea as he met Kim at the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone, but that and other get-togethers failed to yield a nuclear agreement.
He led an erratic policy toward China, sometimes praising its leader Xi Jinping but engaging in a trade war and labeling the coronavirus, which emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the "China plague."
IMPEACHMENT AND ACQUITTAL
Trump in December 2019 became only the third U.S. president to be impeached, following Bill Clinton in 1998 and Andrew Johnson in 1868. Like the other two, Trump remained in office after a Senate trial ended in acquittal on charges brought by the House of Representatives, illustrating the high burden for removing a president set out in the U.S. Constitution.
The charges brought by the Democratic-led House accused him of abuse of power and obstruction of justice stemming from his request that Ukraine, a vulnerable U.S. ally facing Russian aggression, pursue an investigation into his eventual Democratic presidential challenger Joe Biden and Biden's son Hunter.
Democrats accused Trump of placing himself above the law and disregarding norms of conduct and constraints on presidential powers set out in the U.S. Constitution in acts such as ignoring congressional subpoenas, assailing the integrity of the FBI and American intelligence agencies and refusing to commit to a peaceful transition of power if he lost the 2020 election.
He received unstinting support and virtually no criticism from fellow Republicans in Congress even as he regularly defied political norms.
'AMERICA FIRST'
Trump denounced "globalism" and focused American foreign policy around an "America First" worldview.
Trump succeeded the nation's first Black president, Barack Obama, and proceeded to erase central parts of his Democratic predecessor's legacy. He walked away from an international treaty over Iran's nuclear program and a global accord to combat climate change, reversed environmental protections and rolled back warmer ties with Cuba.
U.S. racial tensions simmered under Trump, with civil unrest flaring after incidents such as the police killing of a Black man named George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020. Protests against racism and police brutality spread to many cities, sometimes accompanied by violence and looting.
Trump promised to maintain "law and order." He called the protesters "thugs" and seemed to threaten violence, writing on Twitter, "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." He also sent camouflage-clad federal agents into the streets of Portland, Oregon, to confront protesters.
Clearing the way for Trump to pose in a photo opportunity clutching a copy of the Bible in front of a church near the White House, security personnel forcibly scattered peaceful protesters using tear gas and other means.
Trump raised his profile on the political right in 2011 when he propagated the baseless "birther" theory that Obama was not born in the United States, an allegation critics called racist.
Critics also accused Trump of pursuing policies built around "white grievance" in a nation with a growing non-white population. After a 2017 rally by neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia led to clashes with counter protesters, Trump said there were "very fine people on both sides."
Trump took a hardline stance toward legal and illegal immigration, including imposing a travel ban on people from several Muslim-majority countries, blocking asylum seekers, slashing the number of refugees admitted and separating detained immigrant children from their parents.
In launching run for the White House in 2015, Trump accused Mexico of sending rapists and drug dealers over the U.S. border and promised a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border - paid for by Mexico. Mexico refused to pay. After Congress declined to give him money he sought for the wall, Trump in 2019 declared a "national emergency" and diverted funds already allocated by lawmakers for the U.S. military.
Trump succeeded in moving the U.S. Supreme Court to the right, appointing Neil Gorsuch in 2017, Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 and nominating Amy Coney Barrett to fill a vacancy in 2020.
His administration was like a revolving door in top positions especially in foreign policy and national security, either firing or watching senior officials quit including the secretaries of state, defense and homeland security and the directors of national intelligence and the FBI.
He managed to secure little in the way of major legislation, though in 2017 he signed the largest U.S. tax code overhaul in 30 years including slashing the corporate tax rate.
A major legislative priority - repealing the Affordable Care Act that was his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama's signature domestic policy achievement - failed in 2017 when Republican Senator and Trump antagonist John McCain voted "no," delivered with a thumbs-down gesture.
Several people close to Trump were convicted by juries or pleaded guilty to criminal charges brought in Mueller's Russia investigation, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn, 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and longtime adviser Roger Stone. Trump commuted Stone's prison sentence.
Numerous women accused him of sexual assault, allegations he denied. He bragged in a 2005 audio tape made public in 2016 that he could grab women by their genitals with impunity because he was a star.
His personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to charges related to hush money paid to two women before the 2016 election who said they had sexual encounters years earlier with Trump, adult-film actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy playmate Karen McDougal, when he was married to third wife Melania. He denied the relationships.
Trump carefully cultivated an image of a wildly successful celebrity businessman and deal-maker, but experienced chronic financial loses, bankruptcies and business failures and regularly avoided paying taxes. Tax documents revealed by the New York Times in September 2020 showed he paid a mere $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and again in 2017 - and no income taxes in 10 of the previous 15 years - mostly because he reported losing much more money than he made.
TYCOON ABOUT TOWN
Trump was born on June 14, 1946, the fourth of five children and the son of real estate developer Fred Trump, who specialized in building and running middle-income apartments. His parents sent him to military school at age 13 to instill discipline. He later earned an economics degree from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.
As a young developer in New York, Trump took a $1 million loan from his father in the 1970s and moved into Manhattan, leaving behind the drab apartment blocks he had overseen in Queens as part of the family business.
Trump erected his golden flagship building on Fifth Avenue in 1983 and called it Trump Tower. He would go on put up other residential and office buildings around the city - and the world - all with his name prominently affixed.
As his notoriety grew, Trump became a celebrity who fed New York's tabloid newspapers gossipy items about himself as a brash swashbuckling billionaire. His personal life became the talk of the town, exemplified by a tabloid headline about one relationship: "BEST SEX I'VE EVER HAD."
In 2005, he married former Slovenian model and future U.S. first lady Melania Knauss - more than 23 years his junior. Trump had five children with his three wives.
Trump put his name on neckties, steaks, bottled water, cologne, an airline and even a "university" that a few days before his inauguration in 2017 would pay $25 million to settle fraud claims that it did not give students the money-making real estate tips they had been promised.
Ever the showman, he proclaimed everything with the Trump label to be the greatest, the biggest, the best. But three casinos bearing his name in Atlantic City, New Jersey, nearly took him down.
The burden of the casinos and a sagging real estate market pushed Trump's world to the brink of collapse. There were multiple corporate bankruptcies, although he never pursued personal bankruptcy protection.
Starting in 2003, Trump found broader fame on television with the reality TV shows "The Apprentice" and "Celebrity Apprentice." Teams of contestants were given tasks to perform and episodes concluded with Trump dramatically firing the member of the losing team who displeased him the most.
Trump had teased about running for president as far back as 1988 and he had been registered in New York as a Democrat, an independent and as a member of the Reform Party before joining the Republican Party in 2012. Trump vanquished a field of 16 major Republican candidates to win the party's nomination in 2016.
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