Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (1946-?) was the President of the United States of America from January 20, 2017, to the same date in 2021. He is the 45th[1] U.S. president and was previously a businessman and television personality. The Trump presidency was notable for its unpredictability and reneging on prior international commitments, upending diplomatic conventions, embracing political and economic brinkmanship with most adversaries, Trump's significant use of social media such as Twitter to embarrass his political opponents, and a harsh and intolerant approach to immigration. His term was also marked by a concerted attempt by the president and his appointed officials to demonize and reduce the powers and size of domestic federal agencies such as the EPA and the U.S. Geological Survey and many other agencies involved in things such as financial oversight, census-taking or weather monitoring.
Trump was the presidential candidate for the Republican Party in 2016, defeating Hillary Clinton of the Democrats on November 8, 2016.
Trump unsuccessfully ran for a second term in 2020, losing to the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden. Trump may have lost, at least in part, because of his failures in managing the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, in which he failed to take any substantive actions himself and then attempted to punish states for taking necessary public safety measures into their own hands. Trump vigorously contested the result, without apparent reason (as determined by numerous lost lawsuits) but had to leave office when his term expired on January 20, 2021. Trump's one-term presidency ended on a sour note with the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot, a violent assault by Trump supporters organized by high-level members of the Trump administration and incited publicly by Trump himself via Twitter and other social media. The attack is widely regarded as an insurrection or attempted coup d'etat because it was intended to prevent the historically peaceful transfer of power between presidents. Per the "January 6th Report" later issued by Congress, the riot was only one of several invalid attempts by Trump to get the election results overturned, and it was his last-ditch effort when previous attempts to intimidate, bully or command various state and federal officials into invalidating the election unlawfully failed to bear fruit.
Trump is the only president in U.S. history to have been impeached twice.
Footnotes
- ↑ By the normal American way of counting, which reckons Grover Cleveland twice as he served two non-consecutive terms.