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WhileFalseRepeat on
Selected excerpts…
> Time and again during the 2024 campaign, he’s promised to do something that he failed to do in his first term, that he didn’t bother to do during his first term, or is the opposite of what he did during his first term.
>
> Whenever he makes these claims, it’s worth remembering that Trump was president once—a fact he seems to hope you’ll forget. Maybe he doesn’t remember himself.
>
> “The most optimistic outlook from his most ardent supporters is, ‘Well, I’m sure he’ll do better in his second term,’” Geoff Duncan, a Republican former lieutenant governor of Georgia, told me in August, shortly after he endorsed Kamala Harris. “‘He won’t do another January 6. He’s not going to spend another $8 trillion. He’ll actually do something on the border, with the wall.’ It’s like, ‘All right, uhh …’”
>
> The gap between what Trump says he’ll do in office and what he actually did runs through nearly every subject.
>
> Start with immigration, Trump’s favorite issue. He’s still promising to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico. As president, he tried to do that, and found himself repeatedly frustrated; in the end, he was able to construct only small portions of a barrier, many of which have been easily breached.
>
> He keeps saying he wants to build the wall, but he hasn’t offered any new explanation for how he’d be able to do it this time.
>
> Instead, he’s spent more time in this election cycle talking about his plans for mass deportation—another reason for skepticism is that he made a similar promise to kick all unauthorized immigrants out of the country in 2016. In the end, though, he deported fewer people than Barack Obama did in either of his terms. Joe Biden has also deported more people than Trump did.
>
> The same gulf between promises and past actions exists on economic issues, too. Trump says that bigger tax cuts in his second term would lower the debt, though that’s not what happened when he cut taxes before.
>
> Trump’s 2024 platform promises to “stop outsourcing, and turn the United States into a manufacturing superpower,” but he was no more successful at returning manufacturing jobs to the United States than Obama had been, even before the enormous disruption of the coronavirus pandemic. He and Vance are also campaigning as a pro-worker ticket, and he managed to wrestle the Teamsters to a non-endorsement. But his National Labor Relations Board was business-friendly, and judges he appointed have consistently ruled against workers, including blocking a rule against noncompete agreements and siding with a company arguing that the NLRB itself is illegal.
>
> Trump also spent the 2016 campaign promising (as other Republicans did) to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Once in office, he tried, but did not succeed, in part because the GOP hadn’t managed to come up with something that would eliminate the law without being a huge political liability. Yet during the current campaign, Trump has insisted that he would preserve the ACA, unless he can come up with something better. When asked about this during the debate, he replied (unforgettably) that he had “concepts of a plan.”
>
> He has also tried to pull off a diametric shift on abortion. Having run promising to overturn Roe v. Wade and then appointed conservative Supreme Court justices who did just that, he is now trying to style himself as a defender of women’s rights. “YOU WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION,” he promised in a recent Truth Social post.
>
> In the realm of foreign policy, Trump says that he will “strengthen and modernize our military, making it, without question, the strongest and most powerful in the world,” but after promising to increase the size of the military in 2016, he did not.
>
> He is critical of the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, and said during the debate, “We would have been out faster than them, but we wouldn’t have lost the soldiers.” But Biden only oversaw the withdrawal because Trump committed to exiting Afghanistan but then didn’t do it while in office.
>
> As the election nears, Trump has warned, baselessly, that it may be rigged. He says he would “secure our elections, including same-day voting, voter identification, paper ballots, and proof of citizenship,” yet he did none of these things when he was president.
>
> One of the curious things about the gap between record and promise is that in some cases, Trump is promising to do more than he did before (deport immigrants, build the wall), and in others, he’s promising to do less (give power to employers, limit abortion).
>
> Trump critics have been frustrated by a certain amount of amnesia among voters about how chaotic and unpleasant the Trump years were—not just by the critics’ standards, but based on popular impressions at the time. This amnesia depends in part on voters being willing to believe promises that cut directly against what he did as president. No one could seriously argue that by the end of his term, Trump had managed to “unite our country by bringing it to new and record levels of success,” as his platform says he will this time.
>
> “I’m an open book,” Trump said during the debate. “Everybody knows what I’m going to do.” They certainly ought to. After all, he was president once.
Trump supporters who claim his presidency was a golden era aren’t remembering anything, they are forgetting everything.
“You know what’s at stake,” Elliot says. “One candidate promises a divided America filled with lies and hate, and one stands for change. Kamala Harris has more courage, more honor, more guts than this guy ever had.”
“So you decide: Are we really going back down that same f‑‑‑ing broken road? Or are we moving forward towards hope, towards freedom, towards change?”
Yousoggyyojimbo on
Isn’t having refrigerated trucks full of bodies because the morgues are too full a sign of success?
KnownAd523 on
The Trump dumpster fire is now trying to engulf everything in its path. My firehose is armed and ready.
>“She just started by saying she’s going to do this, she’s going to do that, she’s going to do all these wonderful things,” Trump said. “Why hasn’t she done it? She’s been there for three and a half years. They’ve had three and a half years to fix the border. They’ve had three and a half years to create jobs and all the things we talked about. Why hasn’t she done it?”
>The only problem with this attack is that it applies to another unpopular president as well: Trump himself. Time and again during the 2024 campaign, he’s promised to do something that he failed to do in his first term, that he didn’t bother to do during his first term, or is the opposite of what he did during his first term. Whenever he makes these claims, it’s worth remembering that Trump was president once—a fact he seems to hope you’ll forget. Maybe he doesn’t remember himself.
He probably doesn’t remember, not because of dementia, but there’s that to consider, but because as the malignant narcissist that he is, he can only see his first term as a glowing success, and himself as the greatest president ever.
12345Hamburger on
Surely *this* time we’ll get that $10 billion check from Mexico….
Cannibal_Yak on
I don’t get how many people say he was better on the economy. They pretend there wasn’t empty stores in 2020 when covid shutdown the supply chain. They try to say his first 3 years were good for the economy but I can’t remember making it any better than I am now. I’ve gotten more out of the biden administration then Trumps when it comes to the economy. Compared to 99% of the world we made it out of covid rather well. Other countries are still trying to get back on their feet.
People need to start bringing this up anytime they talk about Trumps “economy”. It’s a 24/7 365 thing not a stop during covid.
Antelope-Subject on
He will fix everything day one. We gave him like 1200 day ones already. Maybe in 2 weeks ?
Apprehensive-Mouse53 on
Trump doesn’t have standards. That’s the entire problem. People with standards don’t tell others on national TV in a presidential debate hateful lies against ethnic groups. Because they know idiots will believe and people might get hurt.
The worst part is that it seems none of the right wing has any standards either.
autotldr on
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/09/trump-erase-presidency-forget/680012/) reduced by 94%. (I’m a bot)
*****
> Donald Trump's best line in the September debate against Vice President Kamala Harris came near the end, when he sought to tie her to the unpopular president under whom she serves.
> The only problem with this attack is that it applies to another unpopular president as well: Trump himself.
> Trump critics have been frustrated by a certain amount of amnesia among voters about how chaotic and unpleasant the Trump years were-not just by the critics' standards, but based on popular impressions at the time.
I really miss the timeline when people weren’t infatuated with this ass clown.
ImmediatelyOrSooner on
Just like there’s no bottom to how disgusting, hateful and ridiculous the Republicans and their voters can get, there’s no standards bar low enough for what they’ll vote for.
Ok-Lynx-8387 on
No it wasn’t. It was the most successful presidency since the history of presidencies. He said so himself.
noforgayjesus on
WOULD SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE GAS PRICES!!! /s
IdahoMTman222 on
That is a photograph of mutts. Apologies to dogs everywhere. But nothing but treasonous mutts on display.
Leather-Map-8138 on
Does anyone remember when Trump insisted Obama should resign because two people died of a virus on his watch?
BbyJ39 on
How can they say it was a total failure when he is one of the only presidents in a very long time to enact criminal justice reform?
EmployeesCantOpnSafe on
Clap back at the media not doing its job properly
>But journalists have been overly credulous as well. In July, Harris said that Trump would cut Medicare. Politifact ruled that “mostly false” because Trump has said on the trail this year that he would not cut the program—even though, as the fact-checkers acknowledged, “during his presidency, Trump released four successive annual budgets that proposed cutting Medicare.” Careful parsing of the words of a prolific liar, at the expense of his demonstrated actions, is an exercise in futility, and does little service to readers.
earthgreen10 on
i mean if he wins like in 2016 , i will just live like 2016,same as every other day..
GenericBatmanVillain on
As a non American the biggest thing I remember about his “presidency” was looking like a spanked puppy while Putin make him his bitch on the international stage. I have never seen a country so humiliated.
Flat-Impression-3787 on
Dump and Kushner thought Covid would only kill Big City Libs. They killed hundreds of thousands of Americans by calling Covid a hoax.
flamewrangler12 on
If you ask my MAGA coworkers, his presidency was flawlessly executed. They can’t wait to go back to the good ol’ days.
CelticSith on
He himself set the bar super low and still managed to trip over it
24 Comments
This submission source is likely to have a hard paywall. If this article is not behind a paywall please report this for “breaks r/politics rules -> custom -> “incorrect flair””. [More information can be found here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/index/#wiki_paywalls)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Selected excerpts…
> Time and again during the 2024 campaign, he’s promised to do something that he failed to do in his first term, that he didn’t bother to do during his first term, or is the opposite of what he did during his first term.
>
> Whenever he makes these claims, it’s worth remembering that Trump was president once—a fact he seems to hope you’ll forget. Maybe he doesn’t remember himself.
>
> “The most optimistic outlook from his most ardent supporters is, ‘Well, I’m sure he’ll do better in his second term,’” Geoff Duncan, a Republican former lieutenant governor of Georgia, told me in August, shortly after he endorsed Kamala Harris. “‘He won’t do another January 6. He’s not going to spend another $8 trillion. He’ll actually do something on the border, with the wall.’ It’s like, ‘All right, uhh …’”
>
> The gap between what Trump says he’ll do in office and what he actually did runs through nearly every subject.
>
> Start with immigration, Trump’s favorite issue. He’s still promising to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico. As president, he tried to do that, and found himself repeatedly frustrated; in the end, he was able to construct only small portions of a barrier, many of which have been easily breached.
>
> He keeps saying he wants to build the wall, but he hasn’t offered any new explanation for how he’d be able to do it this time.
>
> Instead, he’s spent more time in this election cycle talking about his plans for mass deportation—another reason for skepticism is that he made a similar promise to kick all unauthorized immigrants out of the country in 2016. In the end, though, he deported fewer people than Barack Obama did in either of his terms. Joe Biden has also deported more people than Trump did.
>
> The same gulf between promises and past actions exists on economic issues, too. Trump says that bigger tax cuts in his second term would lower the debt, though that’s not what happened when he cut taxes before.
>
> Trump’s 2024 platform promises to “stop outsourcing, and turn the United States into a manufacturing superpower,” but he was no more successful at returning manufacturing jobs to the United States than Obama had been, even before the enormous disruption of the coronavirus pandemic. He and Vance are also campaigning as a pro-worker ticket, and he managed to wrestle the Teamsters to a non-endorsement. But his National Labor Relations Board was business-friendly, and judges he appointed have consistently ruled against workers, including blocking a rule against noncompete agreements and siding with a company arguing that the NLRB itself is illegal.
>
> Trump also spent the 2016 campaign promising (as other Republicans did) to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Once in office, he tried, but did not succeed, in part because the GOP hadn’t managed to come up with something that would eliminate the law without being a huge political liability. Yet during the current campaign, Trump has insisted that he would preserve the ACA, unless he can come up with something better. When asked about this during the debate, he replied (unforgettably) that he had “concepts of a plan.”
>
> He has also tried to pull off a diametric shift on abortion. Having run promising to overturn Roe v. Wade and then appointed conservative Supreme Court justices who did just that, he is now trying to style himself as a defender of women’s rights. “YOU WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION,” he promised in a recent Truth Social post.
>
> In the realm of foreign policy, Trump says that he will “strengthen and modernize our military, making it, without question, the strongest and most powerful in the world,” but after promising to increase the size of the military in 2016, he did not.
>
> He is critical of the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, and said during the debate, “We would have been out faster than them, but we wouldn’t have lost the soldiers.” But Biden only oversaw the withdrawal because Trump committed to exiting Afghanistan but then didn’t do it while in office.
>
> As the election nears, Trump has warned, baselessly, that it may be rigged. He says he would “secure our elections, including same-day voting, voter identification, paper ballots, and proof of citizenship,” yet he did none of these things when he was president.
>
> One of the curious things about the gap between record and promise is that in some cases, Trump is promising to do more than he did before (deport immigrants, build the wall), and in others, he’s promising to do less (give power to employers, limit abortion).
>
> Trump critics have been frustrated by a certain amount of amnesia among voters about how chaotic and unpleasant the Trump years were—not just by the critics’ standards, but based on popular impressions at the time. This amnesia depends in part on voters being willing to believe promises that cut directly against what he did as president. No one could seriously argue that by the end of his term, Trump had managed to “unite our country by bringing it to new and record levels of success,” as his platform says he will this time.
>
> “I’m an open book,” Trump said during the debate. “Everybody knows what I’m going to do.” They certainly ought to. After all, he was president once.
Trump supporters who claim his presidency was a golden era aren’t remembering anything, they are forgetting everything.
[As Sam Elliot says in a recent political ad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COTJMJRFX2w)…
“You know what’s at stake,” Elliot says. “One candidate promises a divided America filled with lies and hate, and one stands for change. Kamala Harris has more courage, more honor, more guts than this guy ever had.”
“So you decide: Are we really going back down that same f‑‑‑ing broken road? Or are we moving forward towards hope, towards freedom, towards change?”
Isn’t having refrigerated trucks full of bodies because the morgues are too full a sign of success?
The Trump dumpster fire is now trying to engulf everything in its path. My firehose is armed and ready.
Archive link: https://archive.is/IKuvr
>“She just started by saying she’s going to do this, she’s going to do that, she’s going to do all these wonderful things,” Trump said. “Why hasn’t she done it? She’s been there for three and a half years. They’ve had three and a half years to fix the border. They’ve had three and a half years to create jobs and all the things we talked about. Why hasn’t she done it?”
>The only problem with this attack is that it applies to another unpopular president as well: Trump himself. Time and again during the 2024 campaign, he’s promised to do something that he failed to do in his first term, that he didn’t bother to do during his first term, or is the opposite of what he did during his first term. Whenever he makes these claims, it’s worth remembering that Trump was president once—a fact he seems to hope you’ll forget. Maybe he doesn’t remember himself.
He probably doesn’t remember, not because of dementia, but there’s that to consider, but because as the malignant narcissist that he is, he can only see his first term as a glowing success, and himself as the greatest president ever.
Surely *this* time we’ll get that $10 billion check from Mexico….
I don’t get how many people say he was better on the economy. They pretend there wasn’t empty stores in 2020 when covid shutdown the supply chain. They try to say his first 3 years were good for the economy but I can’t remember making it any better than I am now. I’ve gotten more out of the biden administration then Trumps when it comes to the economy. Compared to 99% of the world we made it out of covid rather well. Other countries are still trying to get back on their feet.
People need to start bringing this up anytime they talk about Trumps “economy”. It’s a 24/7 365 thing not a stop during covid.
He will fix everything day one. We gave him like 1200 day ones already. Maybe in 2 weeks ?
Trump doesn’t have standards. That’s the entire problem. People with standards don’t tell others on national TV in a presidential debate hateful lies against ethnic groups. Because they know idiots will believe and people might get hurt.
The worst part is that it seems none of the right wing has any standards either.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/09/trump-erase-presidency-forget/680012/) reduced by 94%. (I’m a bot)
*****
> Donald Trump's best line in the September debate against Vice President Kamala Harris came near the end, when he sought to tie her to the unpopular president under whom she serves.
> The only problem with this attack is that it applies to another unpopular president as well: Trump himself.
> Trump critics have been frustrated by a certain amount of amnesia among voters about how chaotic and unpleasant the Trump years were-not just by the critics' standards, but based on popular impressions at the time.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/1fpcxd7/trump_was_president_once_and_it_was_a_total/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ “Version 2.02, ~694354 tl;drs so far.”) | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr “PM’s and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.”) | *Top* *keywords*: **Trump**^#1 **promise**^#2 **during**^#3 **term**^#4 **President**^#5
I really miss the timeline when people weren’t infatuated with this ass clown.
Just like there’s no bottom to how disgusting, hateful and ridiculous the Republicans and their voters can get, there’s no standards bar low enough for what they’ll vote for.
No it wasn’t. It was the most successful presidency since the history of presidencies. He said so himself.
WOULD SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE GAS PRICES!!! /s
That is a photograph of mutts. Apologies to dogs everywhere. But nothing but treasonous mutts on display.
Does anyone remember when Trump insisted Obama should resign because two people died of a virus on his watch?
How can they say it was a total failure when he is one of the only presidents in a very long time to enact criminal justice reform?
Clap back at the media not doing its job properly
>But journalists have been overly credulous as well. In July, Harris said that Trump would cut Medicare. Politifact ruled that “mostly false” because Trump has said on the trail this year that he would not cut the program—even though, as the fact-checkers acknowledged, “during his presidency, Trump released four successive annual budgets that proposed cutting Medicare.” Careful parsing of the words of a prolific liar, at the expense of his demonstrated actions, is an exercise in futility, and does little service to readers.
i mean if he wins like in 2016 , i will just live like 2016,same as every other day..
As a non American the biggest thing I remember about his “presidency” was looking like a spanked puppy while Putin make him his bitch on the international stage. I have never seen a country so humiliated.
Dump and Kushner thought Covid would only kill Big City Libs. They killed hundreds of thousands of Americans by calling Covid a hoax.
If you ask my MAGA coworkers, his presidency was flawlessly executed. They can’t wait to go back to the good ol’ days.
He himself set the bar super low and still managed to trip over it
This picture just gave me eye cancer