On Tuesday November 15th, former president Donald Trump announced his 2024 presidential campaign, aiming to be the second commander-in-chief ever elected to two nonconsecutive terms. While many of his long-lasting supporters are looking forward to the journey to bring him back to office, many others have taken in consideration the troubling marks he left on his name during his presidency in the 2016 term. Trump has routed the limits of presidential power unlike any of his recent predecessors, leaving behind a legacy of unmatched abuses that range from violations of longstanding norms to potentially criminal behavior.
He left a legacy of dispute, breaking apart the country in ways that Americans never thought possible, ultimately leaving behind a divided country. From the very beginning of his presidency it was declared Donald Trump abused his powers for political and personal gain, but threatening American democracy through the January 6th insurrection right at the end of his presidency was an alarming level of abused power that no other president has attempted. It was hard to keep track of the misconduct during his presidency amid the daily chronicle tweets and distractions that were a TV show of the Trump presidency. Although there are almost too many to recall worth of reasons why Donald Trump should not be re-elected for the 2024 presidential term, here are just three severe and important reminders that should be enough to reassure the average American why he would do more harm than good if re-elected.
#1: He attempted to overturn the election because he was sad he lost
Throughout the 2020 campaign, Trump spread false information about the voting process. He floated the idea of unconstitutionally delaying the election, leading to a bipartisan rebuke. After Trump lost, he falsely claimed victory and pressured election officials in battleground states to fraudulently throw out millions of votes for President Joe Biden. The most memorable example was Trump’s hour-long call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, when he harangued the GOP official to “find” just enough votes to nullify Biden’s narrow victory in that state.
Trump’s legal team filed dozens of lawsuits alleging fraud, which were rejected by a bipartisan array of federal and state judges, and the Supreme Court. When these efforts failed, Trump unsuccessfully tried to coerce then-Vice President Mike Pence to unlawfully override the Electoral College process and block Biden’s victory in Congress.”Nothing remotely compares to this,” said Akhil Amar of Yale Law School, who is among the most-cited constitutional scholars in the country. “His actions since the election have threatened the very existence of our constitutional democracy. This looms large in the history of not just this administration, but the history of America. This is what history will remember most harshly.” Along the way, the Trump administration dragged its feet on the formal transition of power, which was delayed for weeks while Trump refused to acknowledge defeat. Biden said his team was met with “obstruction” from Trump appointees at the Pentagon and White House. Trump’s efforts to undermine the transition are unprecedented in modern American history. Trump has put more pressure on the integrity of the election process than any individual in modern American history.
#2: He is currently facing serious criminal investigations and civil lawsuits
Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing with four investigations going on at the moment. The first is a Justice Department probe into potential violations of the Espionage Act. After leaving the White House, Trump took hundreds of documents that contained classified information with him to his Florida residence. Federal officials spent over a year trying to retrieve those materials and after it was clear that the government was unlikely to be able to secure the documents’ safe return, federal prosecutors obtained an unprecedented search warrant. The FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.The Justice Department has also said it will include Trump in its criminal probe of the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. In New York, Atty. Gen. Letitia James sued Trump and his company in September of 2022 over allegations of fraud. James said at a news conference that Trump had “falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself, and cheat the system, thereby cheating all of us.” James said the civil investigation uncovered multiple potential crimes, including insurance fraud, conspiracy and falsifying business records and that she had referred these alleged crimes to federal prosecutors and the Internal Revenue Service. In Georgia, a special grand jury is looking into whether Trump and his allies illegally interfered with the 2020 election. Before Congress certified federal election results, Trump phoned Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and implored him to “find” enough votes to undo the victory of then-candidate Joe Biden. Fulton County Dist. Atty. Fani Willis seated a special grand jury to look into Trump’s and his allies’ actions to determine if a crime was committed.
#3: He abused the bully pulpit. A lot.
Experts say that Donald Trump abused the bully pulpit by using his platform to openly spread lies and conspiracies, attack political opponents of all stripes, and praise bad actors like white nationalists and authoritarian leaders. CNN and other news outlets fact-checked thousands of lies that Trump told during his tenure, far surpassing the cherry-picked political spin or occasional whoppers told by past presidents.”Trump abused the bully pulpit to intimidate witnesses, literally bully people and spread disinformation. It’s never been done on the scale that he did it,” said Michael Gerhardt, a law professor at the University of North Carolina who testified as a Democratic witness in favor of impeachment in 2019. Many of Trump’s comments debased the public discourse and were blatantly racist or fanned the flames of extremist groups. Others were detrimental to public health. In the year of the pandemic Trump would often downplay the risks of Covid-19 and promote unproven treatments. Requesting people to not wear masks or refusing to give out vaccines by agreeing with conspiracy theorists who believed they were dangerous only put Americans at risk. Trump had a massive responsibility for creating normal grounds for respected extremism, hatred, and racial bigotry. Initiating his campaign with advertisement for a stricter immigration system, calling for a wall to divide two countries who have historically helped each other in a country where immigration thrives, stereotyping and minimizing the value in the work immigrants put in to better the American economy completely explains his viewpoint on those who don’t have it as easy as a white son of a millionaire. Announcing his plan for the “Muslim Ban” was one of Trump’s most disturbing and controversial plans as a newly elected president. Calling for a stricter police department following the Black Lives Matter movement, who protested for a less abusive police force while bringing awareness on the level of killings white police officers commit on black people without remorse also says a lot about his character. Refusing to call the Covid-19 the coronavirus instead of the China virus, allowing his supporters to follow in his footsteps and discriminate as well as mistreat chinese americans through believing it was their fault the pandemic erupted, is yet again a troubling part about his persona. For all these observations and more, it would be hard to find anyone who is confident enough to believe he is running for president to better the lives of all Americans- Whites, Hispanics, Blacks, Asians? But the answer is not only unsettling but quite obvious. Trump is running for himself and to protect himself. Re-electing him would provide for another comical joke for the rest of the world, but a stressing and failing one to the American people. It’s time to realize that re-electing Donald Trump would be one of America’s biggest failures and voting for him is a risk no American should be ready to face. Again
