Unemployment is more than a third higher than when he entered office, and more than 400,000 Americans have died of Covid-19.
The Washington that Trump leaves behind now looks more like a military base than the seat of the world’s longest-standing democracy. Thousands of National Guard troops patrol the streets, while the Capitol, White House and large areas around them are fenced off to protect against another attack by Trump’s supporters. And Trump can’t altogether escape the place himself. Rather than being fully unburdened from the pressures of the presidency upon leaving office, he’ll have to eventually defend himself in his historic second impeachment trial in the Senate over his incitement of the Capitol riot.
The coronavirus pandemic, which Trump all but ignored as he sought to overturn his election defeat, has grown much worse in the final weeks of his presidency, with the recorded death toll reaching 400,000 on Jan 19. Daily US deaths from Covid-19 have topped 4,000 multiple times since the start of the new year -- more dead Americans, each day, than the number killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Hospitals across the country are bursting with patients suffering from the disease. Trump claims the development of a coronavirus vaccine as one of his administration’s greatest achievements, but its rollout has been beset by distribution and bureaucratic failures. After top administration officials promised that more than 100 million doses of vaccine would be delivered by the end of the year, only about 15.6 million shots had been administered as of Tuesday, Jan 19, according to the Bloomberg vaccine tracker. Trump has deflected blame, as he did throughout the crisis, instead faulting governors for not inoculating more people, faster. “They’re calling it a medical miracle,” Trump said of his administration’s vaccine effort in a speech last week near a segment of border wall in Alamo, Texas. It will be the incoming Biden administration’s responsibility to speed up vaccinations and revive an economy still reeling from pandemic-related shutdowns. The president-elect has said 100 million people will receive a shot in the first 100 days of his term, a goal Trump administration officials call a low-ball figure since the nation is up to almost 900,000 doses a day already. Jobless Rate Higher
At its peak, the Trump economy could boast one of the best job markets in decades. The unemployment rate was at a 50-year low, and women, people of color and the disabled all shared in the gains.
Trump enters his post-White House life with key figures from the world of politics unwilling to associate with him following the Capitol riot. He has been cut off from major social media platforms, including Twitter, which will hurt his ability to grab the spotlight once he is out of office. Before departing, the president issued a handful of last-minute executive actions. They include an order to create a statue garden for people Trump designated as American heroes, ranging from presidents to game show host Alex Trebek, and an order to discourage government agencies from seeking criminal prosecutions of regulatory violations. Both orders could be overruled by Biden. Trump’s White House even released a new history of the country’s founding, written by a commission Trump appointed last year. The report, published on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, defended the nation’s founders’ handling of slavery and argued that modern identity politics “creates new hierarchies as unjust as the old hierarchies of the antebellum South.” He’s expected to issue a number of pardons on Tuesday, though White House Counsel Pat Cipollone has resisted preparing preemptive grants of clemency for the president himself, family members or White House aides, according to people familiar with the matter. Meanwhile, Trump has struggled to find legal representation for the upcoming impeachment trial, with some attorneys who represented him during his first impeachment no longer willing to associate with him. He won’t have much time to cobble together a team. The Senate could begin its trial soon after Biden takes the oath of office on Jan. 20. If convicted, Congress may bar him from running for federal office ever again.