OPINION – As of noon today, Donald Trump is no longer the US president. He leaves behind a grim legacy, according to an analysis by Peter van der Heiden, political scientist and lecturer in American politics. ‘Trump’s biggest legacy is that the truth no longer matters.’

The legacy of four years of Donald J. Trump – where on earth do I begin? Is there even a quantifiable legacy? There is, of course, but that won’t be what Trump will be remembered for, no matter how loudly he will proclaim that. Unlike other presidents, he did what he had promised to do. Like the wall on the border with Mexico, paid for by Mexicans, he’s somewhat achieved that. Although he promised a 1000-mile-long wall and delivered ‘only’ 400 miles of it (largely replacing existing fences), it’s there. It’s just that America paid for it; Mexico hasn’t contributed a single peso.

Trump also promised to deport all illegal immigrants. This plan pretty much came to nothing, but it did severely damage the image of the US by separating parents and children and even locking the latter up in cages.

Failed promises

He promised an entry ban for Muslims which was in complete violation of the Constitution, so only a very slimmed-down version took effect. Most things didn’t go through at all, or only in part: Hillary Clinton wasn’t prosecuted, Obamacare wasn’t replaced and the ‘better’ trade deals were only marginally better. He promised to finally address the country’s infrastructure but it remains just as disastrous, that the US would leave NATO but it’s still a member, that the national debt would be reduced but it has risen to unprecedented levels – there’s a long list of failed or only partly fulfilled promises, too many to mention here.

‘There’s a long list of failed or only partly fulfilled promises’

There are of course some things to counter that. As announced, the US left the Paris climate accord, Trump withdrew a significant proportion of US troops, he moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, bombed ISIS until there was almost nothing left, took Iran firmly in hand and increased the military budget. He introduced a hefty tax cut that, in line with the trickle-down principle, went straight to the very wealthy in the hope that the money would find its way into the economy – to no avail, of course, as we have known since Reagan tried to do the same thing with disastrous consequences. He introduced deregulation, which made him very popular with entrepreneurs who felt hampered by environmental legislation and the like.

To the environmental body responsible, he appointed a climate change denier who had earlier amassed a fortune as a lawyer for businesses that created pollution. So much for draining the swamp. And to cap it all, he succeeded – with the help of Republican guile and deception – in appointing no fewer than three arch-conservative judges to the Supreme Court, ensuring that the Court would be a bastion against progressive policies for generations to come.

Polarisation

You could add this all up and draw conclusions about the merits of the forty-fifth president’s legacy, except that it’s not about quantifiable outcomes in his case. With Trump, it’s about the situation that he created. First of all, of course, is the incredible polarisation within the US. Trump may not have instigated it, but he certainly escalated it. This polarisation was a deliberate political strategy on Trump’s part and it brought him what he wanted: virtually unlimited power within his party. That’s because he mobilised the masses and managed to attract more people to the polls than any sitting president ever. Republican politicians depended on the same masses, and therefore on Trump – until the lemmings stormed the Capitol on 6 January.

We can safely assume that without Trump there’d be no QAnon – if only because he’s the main character in that bizarre conspiracy theory. Trump, according to QAnon, would save the world from a vast global network of paedophiles led by the Democrats and Bill Gates which controls everything. He has also paved the way for theories of this kind – it’s hard to imagine that these theories could have spread so widely without Trump’s bizarre lies and insinuations about the ‘fake news’ media, which he saw as public enemy number one. This QAnon seems to be taking a bigger hold on the world than the non-existent paedophile network and is working hard to undermine many things.

I see these lies, this unending stream of verifiable falsehoods, as Trump’s true legacy. He lied right from the outset, saying that the rain only started after the inauguration, while everyone could see that the opposite was true (I can still see George W. Bush struggling with his plastic raincape). He followed this up with ‘alternative facts’, from the ‘largest crowd ever at an inauguration’ to ‘large-scale voter fraud’. Four years of Trump can be neatly encapsulated by lies. And that’s the sad part. For four years, the American people were lied to by their president. Trump’s legacy is that the truth no longer matters.