62 Comments

I always thought Warren G. Harding was the worst President until Donald Trump. Does Donald Trump have a presidential library yet?

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Sadly, tRump’s version of a “presidential library” was a bathroom and ballroom stacked with boxes of classified documents in his Mara Lago mansion, and elsewhere, where U.S. government security documents were part of the decor, without any security measures.

Those photos alone would have landed any other U.S. citizen in prison.

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I guess it is all relative-right? I never could have imagined anyone as horrible as Donald Trump. Even when he was elected, I never imagined how bad it could get.He outranked himself as the worst president each year since he was elected. If he wins I think we will actually be in hell.

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My wife and I were talking about this and if Hollywood came up with this plot of a reality star TV host becoming president, being impeached twice, being criminally indicted and then leading the field to be re-elected, we would have last at the absurdity. Not laughing now.

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So true.

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It's hard for me to understand why he's not in jail, NOW.

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After D.T, every president moves up in the ranks. I posit that he should not, or ever should be considered a legitimate president. Nothing about him is legitimate, except criminality. Perhaps the nerds who declined to participate simply don't want to play. Hindsight is 20-20 and relative to our current state of affairs, well......

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I ,,,,,Certainly would never vote for Trump but.....AGAIN, you continue fail to ask yourself this question' "Why did we elect a Trump'? Perhaps you need to conduct more recent history Ken. Bill Clinton's willingness to accept Wall Street donor money? His support of job killing NAFTA.Welefare reform, & deregulating the banks? (Biden as well). Working Americans finally figured out (Especially anyone under age 40) that BOTH political parties are beholden to the very wealthy investor/donor class. It's impossible to support THEIR demands while going to bat for the 80% who are wage earners. You understand this yet continue selling "Saving democracy" nonsense. Frustrated voters run to Trump not for change but to simply poke Both parties in the eye. The slide for the working class will continue in spite of the 2024 election..

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Saving democracy is not nonsense.

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Save democracy? re-read my above post. a REAL democracy=The will of the people. That was lost 20 years ago. You and Ken still promote/believe that tired line we hear every 2 years.."The next election is so important that_________ (fill in the blank). Remember when democrats ran on issues that helped the working class? Now it's Russians & Trump.. Try to remember what working class issues corporate Joe ran on 4 years ago. Bet you can't! Better yet, what did he deliver? All those indictments yet Trump leads by 5%. He lies is selfish and corrupt. Biden is the same. They BOTH work for the same 1%. Ken & corporate cable continue to gaslight with "good guys vs the bad guys" Stop taking the bait!

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Hmmm. I seem to recall Joe Biden walking the picket line with the UAW. I think that constitutes “working class”.

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Perhaps you should be railing against SCOTUS and their Citizens United decision?

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Absolutely against it BUT funny,,,, Where's the outrage from corporate funded Democrats & Republicans? You do realize that if any candidate ever made this argument their own party leaders would primary them?? Donor $$ is way more important then any candidate

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Like I said, protest the Republicans in SCOTUS. Pretending that big pocket donors don’t influence elections because funding doesn’t matter is being blind. Consider the policies a candidate has enacted. Huge funding coming to the capital district as a result of Biden’s CHIPS act.

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I suspect that once he understands he can fund raise for a library, he will announce plans and use the cash to pay legal fees.

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And what would he store there.. ann the documents he stole?

Or the documents that show he led an insurrection?

Or would it just be a shed filled with matchBOOKs used to burn down democracy?

But I am guessing, inherent in your question, the fundraising would not be for a building, but a wallet.

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Lots of pictures of Trump.

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ha ha

wanted to double like this

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How about special privileges in his jail cell? That's where he should spend the rest of his orange years.

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Not only does he not have a presidential library (why would a guy who doesn't read want a library), there are no plans for one.

And one just needs to look at a hmpy trmpy rally, those people aren't clamoring for a library.. they are trying to ban books, not support them

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Fans of Millard Fillmore are pleased he's not ranked last. Looking for the citation but allegedly the very conservative Oklahoma Supt. of Schools, Ryan Walters, disagrees with these rankings and wants to ensure Oklahoma students see a more favorable ranking of Trump.

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Well, he can use the same Republican rankings which had Trump 41st. By the way, Fillmore - a New York guy - was ranked 39th.

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More people should get their news from Last Week Tonight. John Oliver never disappoints.

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His deep dives can be extremely funny, but also quite educational. He must have journalists on his writing staff.

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I bet he has researchers and/or librarians..

Because there are definitely Lawyers involved and those doing the deep dives have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt they are right.

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Love him.

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How to get it?

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either add hbo to your cable package or download the MAX app. if you have hbo, you don’t have to pay extra for MAX.

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You can find it on YouTube .

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Aside from his attempt at insurrection Trump was a squarely bad president but not the worst. His most awful tendencies were often muted by his cabinet and advisors and by the moderating influence of Democrats in Congress. But his attempt at insurrection puts him in a category alone.

GWB would be my vote for the worst non-traitor president. He was installed as president by the thinnest of margins and a specious ruling by SCOTUS then rather than attempt to unite a divided nation he declared he had a mandate and proceeded to push hard a far right agenda. His administration’s focus on re-making America blinded him to warnings of potential terrorism and he presided over 9/11. Rather than taking the course of treating 9/11 as an international crime and rallying the world in support of justice, an inclusive gesture, he and his leftover Vietnam era advisors determined a course of war to prove America’s military might. The Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11. We had no beef with them. We just wanted bin Laden. GWB spent little effort to negotiate a handover.

Consider for a moment how history would have been different if Bush had given 6 months for a worldwide effort to bring bin Laden to justice through negotiation. Would negotiation have been successful? Perhaps not, but in that time a much more sophisticated plan could have been devised at a highly targeted mission to capture him.

But wait! There’s more! GWB lied to the world to start the Iraq 2 war. He signed documents the “legalized” torture, black sites, Guantanamo Bay… He is unquestionably a war criminal for authorizing all of that. It’s not even a close call. It is not a question of doing necessary bad things for the greater good of the nation. None of it was necessary. And it further divided us.

GWB ignored the many millions who took to the streets in protest of the Iraq War. He called them “focus groups,” and herded them into “free speech zones.”

He was an anti-Lincoln.

All of that set up for a Trump to come along. So when Trump signed an agreement, essentially a surrender to the Taliban, a group we consider terrorists, Americans were so weary of war that we hardly noticed that the USA surrendered to terrorists without even bringing the actual Afghan government into the talks.

My vote is for GWB as worst president ever.

Trump belongs on a list by himself. He should not, and cannot legally be president again - not because of the 14th Amendment, but straight up due to his violation of his oath of office.

My vote for the worst SCOTUS would be the Roberts Court.

EDIT: does everyone understand that the United States of America under Trump negotiated a surrender to the Taliban who were not even a nation state at the time? Because we should all know that. We surrendered in Afghanistan. That was not Joe Biden.

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I can’t imagine the Taliban wouldn’t have been susceptible to a bribe to turn over OBL to us. They could’ve essentially named their price and it would’ve been a bargain because it also would’ve prevented the hubris that led to the Iraq adventure.

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Religious arguments from ambassadors of our allied Muslim nations would have been even more powerful than what would appear to be outright bribes. The bribes would help close the deal but would have to be presented subtly and not directly by the US. They are fundamentalists and not moved by the idea of personal wealth.

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Bribes should’ve been in quotes. Thank you. They didn’t really seem to try the jaw jaw before the war war.

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Actually, I need to walk back my comment a bit.

The Taliban are a Pashtun group and are steeped in a set of cultural norms, rules, laws, traditions known as Pakhtunwali. While they are religious zealots their tradition is of protecting a guest or someone seeking their hospitality is even more powerful. So a religious argument to turn over bin Laden would have required a concurrent argument to supersede their word of honor by tradition. No amount of money would overcome that tradition without a strong argument that fit the cultural requirement.

After that promises of diplomatic and financial aid would have been accepted but putting money first would be seen as the work of uncultured barbarians, like Texans, either you’re with us or agin us. And for general benefit, Americans are seen across the world as uncultured and unsophisticated in general. Even by many in the Taliban.

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Dammit, they have principles!

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yes to the bribe, but making the Taliban more powerful (like hmpy trmpy did when he released 5,000 prisoners (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyDDHWg3Kls yet another reason to make hmpy the worst president)

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That was part of Trump’s surrender agreement to the Taliban. Negotiated by Mike Pompeo.

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and they were PROUD

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Mike you write “The Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11. We had no beef with them. We just wanted bin Laden. GWB spent little effort to negotiate a handover.”

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1267 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_1267

United States invasion of Afghanistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Afghanistan

Scroll down to Change in U.S. policy towards Afghanistan

It appears the US did have a problem with the Taliban before Bush.

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Excuse me. I meant we had no beef with them over 9/11.

Of course we were opposed to the Taliban, they were and are an absolutely awful group of religious fanatics, but it is hard for us to be too high and mighty about them since we along with Pakistan were surreptitiously involved with creating the Taliban. They are religious zealots persecuting anyone who disagrees with their extremist Abrahamic ideology and persecuting women in particular for simply being women.

So you should have a pretty good idea of why it was so terrible that Trump surrendered to them.

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And before you start scoring points on my knowledge of the Taliban you should know that it is very likely that a Talib murdered my cousin Kareem Sayeed, though his disappearance is a mystery.

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Also, if you have wondered why I dislike religious fundamentalist like those who support Trump or Netanyahu, now you know. But I have a grater degree of respect for the Taliban even though they are more radical than some of the Trump and Netanyahu supporters because the Taliban at least have some degree of integrity in their belief system. Unlike people like Joel Osteen, or Pat Robertson, or the thousands of other snakes misusing their religion for personal gain. The Taliban put their lives at stake with no hope for material gain.

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Your personal experiences, and those of your family, give you a level of expertise about the history of Middle East cultures, politics and horrific tragedies in a way none of us can even imagine, Mike. The value of everything you write is immeasurable, particularly on the manner in which international history impacts trends within our own country on a daily basis.

Don't let the provocations of a person who gets a cheap thril in creating divisiveness suck you in...that kind of baiting comes from a sadistic, twisted ego that doesn't deserve to be fed.

An insightful article can be found on salon.com today from Dr. John Gartner, a Johns Hopkins psychologist, who co-wrote the 2017 bestseller "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President." This lengthy interview is titled "Biden's brain is aging. Trump's brain is dementing." It addresses the phenomena of "malignant narcissism" and the chronology of Trump's sociopathic ascent to power. It's long, but worth the read, and validates what contributors to the Front Page have been discussing on a regular basis.

This is my attempt to help locate it if anyone is interested:

www.salon.com/2024/02/23/dr-john-gartner-on-a-tale-of-two-brains-biden's-brain-is-aging-trump's-brain-is-dementing

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Hi Susan since Mike is refereeing to me in his rant you must there for be refereeing to me. Care to reconstruct his agreement from my reply to his comment? The following is what he wrote, it was simply not true and I supplied him with links that supported my postion

Mike you write “The Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11. We had no beef with them. We just wanted bin Laden. GWB spent little effort to negotiate a handover.”

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Thanks Susan.

When I was a kid Afghanistan was a stand-in for a mythical sort of place, like Xanadu but not luxurious. Many times adults who asked where I was from assured me Afghanistan did not exist. It was a frustrating insight into the inflexibility of some people’s understanding of the world. Where I was born the landscape was dotted with ancient ruins thousands of years old. Cyrus the Great, Alexander along with Seleucus and Ptolemy, Genghis Khan, Marco Polo, Timur Leng, Babur all passed through and many of them record Afghanistan or places within it as their favorite places on earth, including Genghis Khan who slaughtered uncountable people there and laid waste to the ancient city near my home. Americans in general know little to none of that history. Nor do they know the friendly and hospitable nature of the vast majority, their good humor and generosity despite being among the poorest people in the world and among the most persecuted.

People like to quote the phrase “Afghanistan, graveyard of empires,” to which some Afghan wag replied, “No, Afghanistan, graveyard of Afghans.”

Eventually, of course, Americans came to Afghanistan. Many hippies in the 60’s came for the pot and opium. Then we came for war. Many fought there and returned. Some like Ben Osborn died there. And for what reason? Because GWB stoked a nation toward revenge rather than justice?

Anyway, I appreciate your kind comments.

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I vote to impeach Trump from the list entirely.

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John Oliver

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE-VJrdHMug

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Couple of things about the presidential ratings that I could glean from looking at it.

A lot of what makes someone a great president is happenstance.

What were the challenges of that president? Was there a war, a succession, a financial collapse.... a disease, etc. AND how did you handle it?

While I think CoVid moved Biden up higher than he should.. there is no doubt hmpy dmpy not only handled ever single change thrown at him in the worst possible way (people died because of handling of it. And clearly instead of solving problems, hmpy was committing crimes. MANY MANY crimes.

In my mind the way he left the office with CoVid deaths spiralling, with an insurrection, with more corruption in his administration than you could it with birdshot (see dr. feelgood - - - >ronny jackson and his drug scandal)

Of course, you really do have to give Joe Biden a lot of credit for cleaning up the Whitehouse.

Another thing that factors into greatness is morality and that is why Jimmy Carter continues to move up and why reagan has moved down and will continue to move down. Everything Jimmy did to head us to the future, reagan destroyed. From taking off solar panels from the Whitehouse roof, to stopping goals for vehicle miles per gallon, to allowing monopolies (see MicroSoft). reagan had almost as much corruption and dirty dealing as nixon and hmpy, he just didn’t get caught (he had control of the senate).

This is also why ‘approval rating’ doesn’t matter. The number one guy - Abraham Lincoln had half the country against him if not more... And his success didn’t make the country love him anymore.

I just read “All the President’s Men” and the more historians look at all the dirty tricks of nixon (look at what nixon did to Edmund Muskie), the more they will realize he was worse than Watergate.

Speaking of reading: read “Enough,” by Cassidy Hutchinson and some of the other books that tell us what was going on in the Whitehouse under hmpy, and he will continue to be the worst president

And if he is elected in 2024, hmpy will then become the worst dictator.

We only have to look at how pos_tfnkkk prostrates herself to him to know, we will have no Cassidy Hutchinsons in the Whitehouse to say evil is wrong. Right now, pos_tfnKKK is proving evil is the life she wants.

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Ken: one of your most hilariously written columns. I didn’t know that there were two Presidents Harrison. I only remember William Henry who died one month into his presidency.

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Appreciated your analysis of the recent presidential poll of respected historians. Right on! Reminded me once again of A. Lincoln’s observation: “History is not history unless it is the truth.”

Also, thanks for sharing your essay from The Free Speech Center. It was interesting to read about the evolution of The Front Page and added to my respect and gratitude for your and Will’s efforts.

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I hope and PRAY that he can do it again! And I’m am concerned about those anti-Israel. Supporters in Michigan who now oppose Biden.

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Perhaps we could call them pro-Gaza, rather than anti-Israel.

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John Oliver has a good idea. Let's get rid of the others too. But, I agree that BIden is doing well. He needs to reassure the doubting public by replacing his VP. She is not reassuring--for whatever reason. FDR made that decision and brought in Truman to replace Wallace. It proved to be an excellent decision. The public needs to know that IF Biden kicks off, then the country will be in experienced, capable hands. She may have it, but who knows? Certainly can't prove it by the past three years.

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