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Donald Trump might not be the worst president of all time
He's still, like, really bad, though
Alex Galbraith
August 14, 2025
The news, in brief …
Trump’s Soviet slip revives concerns about his mental acuity
The president threw out a name that hasn’t been heard since before the advent of the Dream Team. Read more.
Democrats demand to know what’s up with Ghislaine Maxwell
The convicted sex offender was recently transferred to a minimum-security prison. Read more.
Amid deep cuts, USDA spent thousands on 31-foot Trump banners
The department also ordered but never displayed a banner that featured Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins behind Trump. Read more.
In redistricting clash, Texas GOP flexes power to shut down Democrats’ last tool of resistance
The Texas Supreme Court could permanently kill Texas Democrats' ability to stall legislation. Read more.
Make me smarter …
The Christian right claims marriage equality is persecution
Conservative justices are aching to declare that Christians are oppressed by other people's marriages. Read more.
Forever? Forever ever?
There’s a teeny kernel of narcissism buried in every declaration that any one thing is the worst ever example of the form.
The statement comes with an inherent confidence in your own authority. Anyone stating that something is the worst of all time is projecting the idea that they’ve done the research. They are familiar with all of history, and it’s never been worse than right now.
Some of this is understandable. Every new generation believes that the world is coming to an end. This is partly true. For them, it very much is. The idea that life will go on without us is too tough to stomach, so we imagine asteroids crashing into the Earth, tidal waves smashing into the Statue of Liberty and the undead roaming the Earth at ever-faster speeds. Since we know our time is short, we like to fill it with arguments about exactly how terrible things have become, confident that we’re bearing witness to the absolute nadir of human history.
This is only a little bit about “Home” by Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros. A clip from a performance of the 2009 song kicked up a week-long discussion of the worst music of all time, and the discussion skewed heavily toward the last 20 years of pop. Again, this is understandable. That aforementioned myopia makes it a near certainty that someone in 1941 was boldly declaring the “Chattanooga Choo Choo” to be the worst piece of music ever written.
Delving too deep into the facts of the past or straying too far off the beaten path of acceptable answers sucks the fun out of the WOAT discussion. No one on social media going to have anything to say if you argue that “The Ballad of the Green Berets” is the worst song of all time. It’s a fight-terminating anti-cliche.
Which brings us to the widely accepted appellation of President Donald Trump. He’s mishandled a pandemic, orchestrated a failed coup and taken a blowtorch to the protections granted by the Constitution in the very near term. So, it’s easy to see why people would rush to declare him the worst president of all time.
They aren’t thinking about James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce setting the stage for the Civil War or Warren G. Harding’s rampant corruption. They weren’t alive for Herbert Hoover’s mishandling of the Great Depression and know no one they talk to would have particularly strong feelings about it. They’re just feeling that things are worse than ever and having a little fun by venting that frustration, hoping someone agrees or disagrees strongly.
No one can say that Trump is objectively the worst president ever. We aren’t qualified to make that call. If we accept that our perspective is limited by our short time on Earth, however, it makes for a fun argument in the meantime.
What do you think? Is it fair to call Trump the absolute worst? Sound off in the comments.
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Before you go …
Ahead of the Trump-Putin summit, don’t forget what we owe Ukraine
The U.S. has an obligation to defend Ukraine — and democratic values. Read more.
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