Just watched the Boy Boy video on George Bush’s Masterclass, and they made me think about which U.S. President was actually worse.
Trump. He tried to overthrow our democracy.
Don’t forget exposing national secrets. From satellite and submarine capabilities to nuclear capacity.
Trump is a traitor.
And we still have no idea how many people from the second and third world have had access to all of the top secret documents kept at Mar-A-Lago.
It may take a team of forensic investigators a decade to uncover how many American lives have been and might still be being lost directly because of his actions.
Okay but Bush actually stole a presidential election.
If Trump was competent, he’d have been much worse.
He tried to start a war in Venezuela and failed.I think their administrations likely had equally bad intentions. The incompetence of Trump’s administration just means they acted more erratically. They were also much worse at getting press on their side and worse at covering up their actions.
What?
Bush sued to stop a recount in Florida that would have likely led to Gore winning the 2000 presidential election. A conservative Supreme Court majority sided with Bush and stopped the recount. It makes Trump’s whole “STOP THE COUNT!” look amateurish in comparison. Bush actually was able to stop the count and got away with it.
Gore didn’t want Americans to start questioning the legitimacy of our democracy so he conceded. The rally around the flag effect after 9/11 helped quash any further criticisms of how Bush came to office.
People like to say this, and I get it, I get the controversy, and I get why, but Florida was a statistical tie. A thousand recounts would have ended at the same spot of more infighting. The supreme Court was conservative leaning and decided in favor of the conservative to no one’s surprise. If the supreme Court was 5-4 liberal, Gore would have won.
The whole issue is so much more two sided than people realize. For example, the person who invented the butterfly ballots was a Democrat politician.
I am not personally in favor of the court’s ruling, I wish Gore had won. The world would be a MUCH better place without GWB having won the presidency.
The electoral college stole them both an election, neither of them actually won their first term popular votes. With Bush it was just more screwed up because of it all coming down to a handful of votes in FL and however many recounts with the court eventually calling it quits. One of the few times where the popular and electoral votes didn’t agree but 2 withing 4 presidential terms isn’t a good sign. At some point we need to get rid of that arcane getup. Land doesn’t vote but those guaranteed 2 electors that every state gets ends up with places out in the middle of nowhere getting more votes per capita than actual population centers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_elections_by_popular_vote_margin
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Trump. He tried to overthrow our democracy.
Well, your democracy is already at its end
I see you’re from feddit.de. Didn’t Germany have to prevent a planned coup by literal Nazis in the military, government, and police in 2022?
I am not aware of anything really serious in Germany like with Trump in the US. What I alluded to was that in the US you only have the choice between bad and very bad in terms of parties. There are certain terrible things that nobody seems to be able to influence anymore like the problems with three-letter-agencies or gun control.
His handling of Covid and literally willfully allowing it to become a pandemic is far far worse than a failed insurrection.
That is a good thing though. America is trash, and so are you.
Oh no. Lemmygrad is leaking.
That’s a you problem, War crimes are bigger than you.
What until you hear about the war crimes of authoritarians. Just recently we have Assad gassing his own people, Russia stealing children, stealing land, and filling mass graves in Ukraine, Saudi Arabia murdering a journalist with a hacksaw. Bush may have started an illegitimate war, but the US military is comparatively very good when it comes to avoiding civilian casualties.
War in Ukraine stated in 2014
Way to downplay warcrimes and actual wars 👏👏👏
Nobody who understands what Bush did thinks Trump is worse.
Edit: ITT- People justifying senseless wars
Bush did a hell of a lot more harm with his war on terror and basically lying about why we wanted to go to war , but Trump single-handedly paved a very dangerous road for the US to become fascist and have crony capitalism (or at least, make it much more apparent and much worse).
Dubya was an asshole politician who wasted thousands upon thousands of lives for oil - and I would still say he’s less bad than Trump because Trump wanted to make the US into something more akin to China and Russia.
Trump wanted to make the US into something more akin to China and Russia
Don’t act like US didn’t want it. Almost half the population voted for it, dum dum. War crimes causing millions of deaths are a little important than your binge internal politics.
23% of the nation said true patriots will have to use violence to restore democracy last week. a non trivial chunk of this country has lost its mind
Blind unwavering nationalism is a cancer. The (North?) American Dream is one of individualism and corporate reliance. It’s slowly seeping north of our common border, too.
With a military as big and armed as the US, you can absolutely argue that our binge internal politics are actually worth taking into account for these sort of things. The fact that seemingly half of the US population voted for it (whether they were actually for it, or were just voting not Democrat to “own the libs” is another conversation) is fucking terrifying.
The reason I would say that Trump is worse than Dubya is because of the potential and horrific shitshow that could happen if the US became more like Russia or China. To help put it into perspective, imagine if Putin was in charge of the US army. It’s not too crazy of a stretch to say that he would probably invade all of his small surrounding neighbors and absorb them as Russian territories or make them become part of Russia itself. Take this example a step further - he has access to the US arsenal of nukes. How long would it be until he would fire nukes at other nations and invade them?
That’s not to say Dubya is better - like I said, starting a 20-year war for oil but masking it behind “removing WMDs” and “God told me to do it”, wasting lives pointlessly for greed is fucking disgusting. But it would legitimately pale in comparison to the damage somebody like Trump being in charge of a fascist US can and would do to the world for years to come.
Wait… you think Trump didn’t commit war crimes?
With a few thousand victims. Bush put at least a million on the already staggering US death toll.
But he also created a new quality, with running Guantanamo as a torture prison camp.
If it wouldn’t be for the military and economic power the US would be openly referred to as the shithole country it is on the international stage.
I think Trump did worse things than Bush did, but Trump’s rise to power would have never happened without the actions of Bush Junior and Bush senior and Reagan, so for me it’s kind of hard to say who did worse.
No one is downplaying what Bush did, we’re accentuating how excruciatingly bad Trump’s actions were. See you comprehend that Bush’s crimes were horrible, you’re simply incapable of understanding that Trump’s were much, much worse.
Many executives get their countries embroiled in foreign conflicts. Few actively attempt to subvert their own government upon their dismissal; they literally are the worst of the worst, and your inability to fathom this is either feigned or revealing.
How can what Trump did be worse than killing a million civillians, running torture camps, invading foreign nations, commitingto extrajudicial killings, and giving rise to the IS, who again killed hundreds of thousands of people, destroyed millenia of human history and culture and commited all imagineable atrocities?
Because Trump would normalize invading countries, running camps (he already kept kids in cages!), trying to get the government to commit extrajudicial killings, and idolizing tyrants like Putin, Orban, Kim, etc.,
This isn’t hyperbole, there’s examples plenty of each.
Bush did all of this 20 years ago. To be fair though invading other countries, putting fascist regimes into power there, extrajudicial killings and camps all have been part an integral part of american history. It became a new quality with Bush though as the world progressed to a more humane standard at the time and the veil put around these things by Bush was much thinner, than by his predecessors.
Still Trump is ultimately just continueing the work of Bush. It is just more noticeable as he is very loud and brazen about it, where Bush was only outspoken about it.
thanks for your stellar analysis, it’s factually incorrect and bereft of insight nuance or critical thought. keep trying to tie them together, it’s pointless but obviously keeps you very entertained.
The US deserves to fall, and I’m glad trump did so much damage on his way out.
lol someone just turned 13. that’s cute lil’ edge lord, your future is fucked regardless of politics.
Others have said that it depends on exactly what your standards are for defining “worse”. Broadly speaking, it seems to come down to whether you’re emphasizing foreign or domestic policy. It’s not necessarily because people don’t understand or are downplaying atrocities.
The question is vague enough that it’s entirely possible for informed, compassionate people to come to different conclusions. That’s why this is an interesting discussion.
Yeah, except a fascist US would be farrrr worse internationally and domestically than anything bush did in 8 years.
Right now it’s easy to say bush. 5 years from now, I’m not so sure
Everyone with a brain KNOWS trump is worse.
I’ll say the same thing to you as I did the other guy.
What until you hear about the war crimes of authoritarians. Just recently we have Assad gassing his own people, Russia stealing children, stealing land, and filling mass graves in Ukraine, Saudi Arabia murdering a journalist with a hacksaw. Bush may have started an illegitimate war, but the US military is comparatively very good when it comes to avoiding civilian casualties.
Yeah, it depends on perspective. Trump was probably worse for Americans but Bush was worse for those in the countries he invaded and ravaged.
This shows their priorities. They don’t care about war crimes.
I think it’s more a reflection of the media people consume. It’s easy for people to forget Bush’s war crimes when he’s been rehabilitated in part to make Trump look like an exceptional threat.
I feel like while bush was a much worse president then most people realize, with some of his policies and things like the patriot act still in effect and gumming up the works, trump did more damage in erroding the facade of democracy and empowering fanatics
Exactly: Bush pushed through evil policy that eroded rights and committed war crimes and such, but Trump attacked the very structure of the government.
Bush was bad in the way most world leaders and governments are, trump was impeached twiced and faced no consequences.
It’s pretty clear from all the responses here that the view is massively different depending on if you’re from the US, or not.
I’m not from the US - and Bush massively and irrevocably messed up a lot of things for me. And I’m just in the EU, not directly getting bombed by US military.
With Trump the consequences were pretty much all inside of the US, any fallout we felt over here were still from the Bush era, or to some extent Obama. Given all the damage that was done by those two maybe the structure of your government over there is shit and should be attacked - my hope from over here was that the whole Trump situation would lead to finally stuff getting fixed. It won’t be pretty for you guys - but from the outside I’d rather have someone incompetent like Trump mess up your stuff until the pain is big enough to actually do something than someone halfway competent break things on a global scale again.
Isn’t the Patriot Act void back in 2020?
I believe so. However, the NSA’s mass surveillance programs still are authorized under section 702 of FISA which is another Bush era law.
Which is a good thing. Liberals pretending Bush wasn’t so bad, is what is going to allow fascism to win.
Speaking as a Canadian, the Bush presidency was certainly wince-inducing. I was genuinely surprised he got re-elected after that clusterfuck of a first term. By the end of the 2nd, I was fairly convinced the best days of America were behind it.
But the difference between him and Trump is the wounds were more self-inflicted on the country with Bush. Still not great for Canada, whose fortunes rise and fall on what happens on the other side of the border.
But Trump had a genuine animosity for freedom-loving, democracy-respecting American allies and a love for oppressive dictatorships. He tore up trade agreements, levelled tariffs, etc. against Canada and Europe while advancing diplomacy in person in the likes of North Korea.
And on a more social level, he poisoned public discourse and stoked right-wing authoritarianism all over the world. I have family members I can’t talk to anymore. And the lunatic fringe came out of the woodwork under his term. We even had a mosque shooter here in Canada who was quite candid about Trump being his inspiration.
Within the US, Americans hate Americans with a passion. What a mess. Another civil war is not out of the question. As such, I am coming down on Trump being far, far worse.
Thank you for your perspective.
“no brainer” said one paper the morning after.
Even worse, George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection was the only time a Republican president has won the popular vote since the Cold War.
Bush was like a bad bout of alcoholism, bad, but treatable. Trump was like doing two kilos of fentanyl at once.
I agree with lots of what you said, but lots not pretend like Quebec doesn’t already have an existing culture of Islamophobia and racism.
I think all those things are good. Trump didn’t cause any of those, he exposed them to naive liberals like you.
Reagan. He set the conservative party and the USA on a dark path where Bush and Trump were the inevitable result.
I would argue Nixon really started that path with his Southern Strategy. Reagan, Bush 2, and Trump were all consequences of Nixon
Watergate overshadows how Nixon’s Vietnam War inflation started the death of the American middle class. In 1968, a High School graduate with a union job could expect to buy a house and a car with one salary. By 1976, two incomes was the norm for lower income families, and it was enshrined by the time Reagan/Bush Sr. were done.
Agreed, but Reagan popularized the ideas that it is elitist to expect a president to be competent, that complex legislative topics should make sense at the dinner table, and that government is the enemy of freedom. Both Nixon and Reagan were willing to trade in bigotry for political gain, and both were the sort of cynical “me-first” conservatives that taught boomers to mortgage the future. But Reagan had the charisma that Nixon lacked.
Reagan for the USA and Thatcher for us in the UK. The things they did still have impact to this day.
Great answer
Well said. A product of the past.
I think Trump will have done the most damage when the dust settles. We’ve had almost 20 years to see the effects Bush had on our country but only about 3 years since Trump left office. He packed the Supreme Court, made people proud to be racists, destroyed our electoral system, gutted the EPA, sold our secrets to our enemies, and made fascism popular.
I agree with a lot of what you say but our electoral system was fkd way before him. People were already proud of being racist he just gave them a microphone. The EPA still gets me though. We have been moving more and more to a fascist government for years now since the event of 2001 when we gave up privacy for security.
I think it’s more what happened under the cover of Trump, ie what Republicans do, which is where the damage was in Trump’s presidency. He was basically a smokescreen and scapegoat for all manner of interests, but as an individual almost completely vapid aside from his narcissistic drive for attention, which all mainstream politics was more than happy to provide him with.
After Bush’s presidency I thought “Phew, glad that’s over. I bet that’s the worst president I’ll experience in my lifetime.” After nine months of Trump in office I was longing for the good old days of Dubya and Chainsaw Cheney.
Trump’s presidency did far more for Bush’s legacy than any whitewashing by time could have done.
This also leads me to believe Trump is the worst American president we’ve seen so far.
Exactly. Imagine how bad it would have been if he were competent. Someone who combines his ideology and rhetoric with actual competence is undoubtedly festering somewhere.
Bush was an absolute monster, but Trump literally broke brains. America will never be the same.
Not an American but Trump was far more embarrassing to your international reputation than Bush. They’re both 2 of the worst presidents you’ve ever had but Trump is a whole different level of shitty. He’s like fascist shitty, whereas Bush was neo-con shitty.
Also not American. People who were anti-bush had at least some kind of greater belief about capitalism, politics, etc. Literally everyone knew trump was a buffoon.
As an American, Bush is so much less bad than Trump to me that I find this question confusing. It’s so obvious that Trump is the worst thing that’s ever happened to the US. He literally attempted to overthrow an election to stay in power.
No other president has come close to that. It’s an absolute joke that Bush is considered in the same breadth.
Another Trump term could very likely be the last presidential election we have or it could result in another attempted coup. How fucking scary is that?
Bush actually stole the election lol
There’s at least a veneer of legitimacy over the Florida supreme court deciding to award the state’s votes to Bush in 2000. Does it suck and should it be fixed? Yes. Was it illegal and dangerous to democracy? No, or at least not as bad as Jan 6 and the other crimes Trump and friends committed to try to steal the 2020 election.
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Yeah but he didn’t incite an insurrection like Trump did.
Found the liberal. Sorry the worst thing to have ever happened to you was trump being mean on the internet. I’m sure Millions of Iraqis understand your pain.
He’s like fascist shitty, whereas Bush was neo-con shitty.
Corporate would like you to find the difference between these two pictures.
Look they both don’t fall far from the shit tree, but the political philosophy nerd in me still does think there’s some key points of difference. And these points of difference are useful in recognising and responding to fascist ideology because it’s inherently parasitic and spreads by latching itself onto other ideas. That’s why you can have things like eco-fascism and atheist fascism, which don’t traditionally align with conservatism. Umberto Eco actually outlines the specifics of fascism and how it’s a uniquely shitty ideology that can work it’s way into any dark corner of complex human societies.
Bush was the worse president, Trump is the worse person.
I can see a lot of potential presidents in 2001 act the same way as Bush did, especially any other Republican. Even Gore would have gone to war in Afghanistan. Unless of course we go down the rabbit hole of could he have prevented the 9/11 attacks. The Iraq war probably would have been avoided under Gore.
But I don’t see any other president doing the same damages that Trump did. While the current status of the Republican Party has many people just as bad as Trump, I don’t think they would have the same traction today without Trump.
And let’s not forget the worst of Trump was prevented. If his coup would have succeeded, he would even be the worse president.
Disagree. For all his faults and for all the Iraq fiasco I truly believe that George bush respected the office of president. There was a line even he wouldn’t cross. He wouldn’t attack democracy itself. I think he would have resigned if Kerry had won. That alone is massive
Trump has no respect for the office beyond what it can get him personally. He will trample every vestige of the Constitution if it makes him a dollar
I don’t believe Bush was really running things and deferred most decisions to Cheney who is about as deplorable as one can get.
The respect for the office is worth very little the million Iraqis killed and millions of people suffering under the IS terrorists that raise thanks to Bushs invasion of Iraq.
Also it showed to another generation of people that the US does not uphold international law and order. Instead they commit the most heinous of atrocities if it helps to funnel money to their oligarchy.
Also fiscally Bush turned the US away from reasonable fiscal policy into incurring ever more debt without investing into the future of the country. The current republican party wouldn’t be half as bad if Bush didnt open the floodgatey.
Now watch this drive
Yeah, the worst of Trump isn’t limited to what political actions he took as President, but also the wider cultural impact he directly spawned, escalated and continues to propogate even outside of office. He contributed so much to this cultural shift that has provided legitimacy to crooks, crackpots, and literal nazis. And worse, he’s pushed the Republican party to coddle those people, capitulate to their whims, promote their voices, and endorse their views and elections. Not that the Republican party had been respectable in a generation, but 20 years ago, they weren’t publically allied with open fascists, far-right militia groups and domestic terrorists. They are now, though.
Trump tried to start a civil war, overthrow democracy, and install himself as king. Trumpism is tearing the country apart and trying so very hard to burn it all down. There’s no contest.
*Another different way to word it: Bush made terrible decisions. Trump wants to burn it all down.
Potentially? Trump. Factually? Bush. However, to be honest, the American political system seems to be fucked up to the point it doesn’t resemble a democracy. Currently, their population suffers from this situation with poverty, addiction to drugs, a corrupt healthcare system, inability to own a home, shitty jobs, etc. So, it really doesn’t matter too much which one is worse. Biden or nobody else can fix this from within. But yeah, a second term of Trump would be definitely catastrophic and would compete with Bush’s levels of destruction. Right now, the only thing containing Trump is his short term period in power.
The most depressing and convincing theory I’ve read about the state of American democracy is Sarah Kendzior’s book “They Knew”.
The tl;dr is that the US is ungovernable. The ruling classes don’t have the will to fix the economic and cultural divides that split the country and there’s an unspoken understanding between them all that the only way is down.
So they’re letting it run its course, letting the weakest fall into the gears and skimming off what wealth they can, to insulate themselves from the inevitable chaos.
I like Gaslit nation.
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Bush was worse for the world, Trump was worse for the US.
That remains to be seen. Ukraine is largely Trump’s fault, and flushing all the progress made with Iran will have consequences for decades
How is Putin deciding to invade Ukraine (which he started in 2014 btw) largely Trumps fault?
I’m genuinely curious.
The most likely argument I see is that Trump severely strained diplomatic bonds both between North America and Europe and also within North America and Europe. Additionally, he heralded in a new degree of isolationist policy and created doubt about the resilience of NATO. Furthermore, he tried to blackmail the Ukrainian government.
In summary: Not his fault directly but his politics led to a situation where Russia/Putin saw it as likely that they could invade without facing significant backlash from Europe + North America. That probably would have worked out as well if Ukraine had folded within the first couple of weeks. The argument is essentially that by convincing Russia that they could get Ukraine without significant consequences, his administration contributed to the invasion happening.
Make of that argument what you will. Personally, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say “Trumps fault”, but reasonable to think that another administration might have been able to deter the invasion.
So, Obamas fault?
One attacked an innocent nation, the other attacked their own people.
It’s hard to say. Bush Jr. gave us both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, both of which stretched into decades and cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, however, I’n not sure that any other Republican wouldn’t have done the same. Within 48 hours of 9/11, it seemed like they were already discussing how to tie it to Iraq, which made it seem like it was the plan all along. 9/11 just provided a convenient excuse. Those conflicts also stretched across multiple presidencies, Obama didn’t actually end either one.
Trump, on the other hand, could potentially spell the end of the US as we know it. The court cases against him give me some hope that he himself will be stamped out, but even without him, his followers are still just as dumb and malicious and they’ve infested every nook and cranny of the government like maggots.
The deeper problem is the Russian propaganda machine that helped a dipshit like Trump rise to power in the first place, which is what makes Ukraine so important. If we can break Russia’s back, we can potentially disrupt it at its source, but maybe the vacuum would just get filled by some other foreign power looking to destabilize the US. Trump is a symptom of a deeper issue in America, that someone like him even had a chance in the first place. If anything, we actually got lucky he’s as incompetent as he is and that we’re not already living under a dictatorship.
It’s not just Russian propaganda unfortunately.
Conservative media as a whole is in a self destructive feedback loop in which -> the craziest lunatics and the angriest ideas get the most market engagement -> thus the media gives them the biggest platform, so they can make the most money -> thus those guys get elected and get talk shows-> thus rewarding both politicians and media companies for spreading anger and madness -> that made us money -> DO IT 10 TIMES MORE -> we found even crazier, angrier lunatics to run for office and host talk shows -> repeat. I’m not sure how to break this. It’s profit driven, like so many of our problems that we can’t solve.
Meanwhile, there are literally well funded, well organized conservative conspiracies to take over the world. NOTHING like that exists on the left. I wish it did. I wish we had an alliance of monied interests on the left who were like “We need to fight these assholes!”
his followers are still just as dumb and malicious and they’ve infested every nook and cranny of the government like maggots.
Wow mate, let’s not go so far… Maggots are at least good in some situations, as they can remove rotten flesh and speed up recovery, saving people’s limbs and sometimes lives under the right circumstances. If anything, I would say we need maggots in there, to get rid of the rotten ones.
They were planning to invade Iraq way before 9/11 actually. When bush told the Saudis and even Tony Blair that Iraq was behind this (were talking September 12th) they were super perplexed.
Memos came out in early 2000s showing that post-saddam Iraq was already planned for.
Yeah, I remember watching a documentary video that showed alot of the discussions that were happening in the administration right on and after 9/11. Iraq was brought up pretty quickly, within 24 hours of the Towers coming down. It was pretty clear that while the rest of the world saw a huge tragedy, the Bush Administration saw a huge opportunity.
Depends on the metric. Direct threat to democracy, increasing violence and dangerr for millions of Americans, harming economic futures for Americans, etc.: probably Trump.
Sheer body count: maybe Bush, but don’t forget about all the people who would still be alive or more healthy if Trump had not actively sabotaged COVID response.
Okay I’m back to Trump.
