Donald Trump is not the only “bad” president this country has had in office, but from one historian’s perspective, he’s certainly one of the worst.
“This country has had a few [bad presidents]. There are the ones who are simply bad at the job and incompetent, and a lot of bad things happen on their watch. There are those who are corrupt and engaged in criminality, and have scandals that plagued their administration And there are those who actively do the country harm through their action or their inaction,” says historian Kevin Kruse on this bonus members-only episode of The New Abnormal. “Trump checks all of those boxes.”
That even includes President Herbert Hoover, who was in office during the Great Depression, and as Kruse says, “botched it.”
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“Hoover was, aside from that glaring failure of the depression, someone who actually had a life of real accomplishments. Trump likes to preen as a self-made man, and he’s not,” he says.
Then, Kruse and co-host Molly Jong-Fast switch gears and discuss the state of voter suppression and the history of how it impacted Black Americans in this country. Essentially, says Kruse, the Voting Rights Act is an effort “to undo all of the voter suppression that had happened since reconstruction,” which was a lot. And once the Shelby County v Holder Supreme Court decision gutted it, a lot of states were very open about their suppressive tactics.
It was bad, says Kruse, “the intent of these laws was just as clear as it had been in the late 1800s.” But he is optimistic about a Biden administration turning the tide.
Plus! He explains what people misunderstand the most about American suburbs—which is why many of them in Georgia turned blue—and why Trump has pandered to Jewish people.
Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.
