The crippled part of President Trump’s term is likely to be defined by his relentless attempt to overturn the 2020 election results, which culminated in the uprising at the US Capitol after Trump urged his supporters to go to Capitol Hill for the certification. of the results. But Trump’s fight against the election reality was not the only important thing that happened in his last two and a half months in office. Here’s a look at some key numbers of the great things Trump and his government have done and have not done in recent weeks …
6 executions
The use of the death penalty at the state level has decreased, especially in liberal states but also in conservative countries. At the federal level, the government has not executed anyone since 2003 – through most of George W. Bush’s presidency and the entire Barack Obama presidency – so far in July. But former Attorney General William Barr, backed by Trump, has made it a priority to pursue federal executions. The federal government has executed 13 people since July, including six people since it became clear that Joe Biden had won the 2020 election.
Put another way: Nearly half of the federal executions in the past 18 years have taken place in the last two months of Trump’s term.
These six executions in particular angered liberals, as Biden opposed the death penalty as a candidate and his team may have delayed these executions once in office.
77,000 deaths
More than 77,000 Americans died of COVID-19 in December, according to the COVID Tracking Project, the deadliest month of the virus outbreak in the United States to date. (December is notable because it was Trump’s last full month in office.) Coronavirus deaths have been rising since early November, rising from about 1,000 deaths a day to more than 3,000 a day in recent weeks. .
The increase was expected because people were more likely to retire indoors because it got colder during the fall and winter, and the increase was certainly not just Trump’s fault. But this level of daily death would probably be treated by another president as a major crisis. Instead, Trump was basically deprived of dealing with the virus in the post-election period.
3 million vaccinations
About 3 million Americans were vaccinated against COVID-19 in December, far less than the 20 million that were the Trump administration. Again, the fight to get more people vaccinated is not something that can only be based on the Trump administration, as state and local governments are heavily involved in the vaccination effort. And the rate of vaccinations is accelerating. But it is likely that another president, Democratic or Republican, would have made vaccinations his or her highest priority in a way that Trump did not.
13 reviews
Thirteen of Trump’s court candidates for federal district or district courts have been confirmed by the U.S. Senate since Biden was declared the winner of the election. (By contrast, no judicial nominee from Obama was confirmed after July 2016, before the end of his term, with Mitch McConnell and Republicans in the Senate in the majority.) Putting more conservatives on the bench was a top priority of both Trump and McConnell, and they continued to move forward even after the election.
The confirmation of Thomas Kirsch was particularly noteworthy. He replaced Amy Coney Barrett in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals following Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. With Kirsch’s appointment, Trump has appointed 54 judges in the country’s 13 federal appeals courts, roughly the same as the number (55) President Barack Obama has appointed to office in eight years. More than a quarter of the current active federal judges have been appointed by Trump, an impressive achievement considering he will serve only one term in office.
1776
In one of his last acts before leaving office, the Trump administration released a 45-page document entitled “The 1776 Report.” The report, written by conservative scholars and administrative figures, was intended to supplement The 1619 Project, published in 2019 by The New York Times Magazine, which argued that much of American history can best be understood is by thinking of the founding of the country as in 1619, when slaves from Africa were first brought to the United States. The White House report was a powerful accusation of so-called identity politics, criticism of America’s founders for the tolerance of slavery, and other ideas often espoused by liberal Americans.
Many scholars have refuted the findings of the 1776 report. But the content of the report and its release just before Trump left office was an appropriate conclusion for a government defined in many ways by its racial (and sometimes racist) policies.
5 forgiveness
In the post-election period, Trump convicted five people convicted of crimes as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible links between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. This waiver was the ultimate proof of presidential power – Trump basically eliminated the results of an investigation he had long complained about and wanted to undermine. And the pardon is one of the clearest examples of Trump’s willingness to break completely with democratic values. This pardon undermined the idea of equal justice under the law, as it was part of a broader pattern of Trump granting mercy to friends and allies. And Trump undermined the law enforcement process by pointing to former campaign president Paul Manafort that Manafort would get a pardon if he did not cooperate with Mueller.
Trump will leave office much more unwillingly than when Biden won the election. Trump’s net approval is now -19 (39 percent approve, 58 percent approve), compared to -7 (45 percent approved, 52 percent disapprove) on November 7. But much of the decline is likely due solely to Trump’s role in storing the Capitol attack, contrary to the things mentioned in this article. It is likely that many Americans do not even know that the Trump administration in the last few days has essentially started the federal death penalty, one of the most prominent projects of the country’s most important news institution trying to undermine and beliefs of the Mueller sin. Polls suggest that most Americans already thought Trump treated COVID-19 badly, so the high number of deaths and the low number of vaccinations may not affect the public’s view of Trump.
So Trump’s last days probably would not have mattered in terms of his poll numbers, even if it were not for the Capitol attack. But if you look at the Capitol attack and all the other things that happened, Trump’s last week in office was perhaps the most important of his entire tenure.