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Donald Trump has had historic levels of controversies for recent presidents of the United States by a number of metrics. He has been criticized for his hiring decisions, [1] [2] and turnover in the Trump administration was also the highest of all presidents since Brookings Institution started measuring in 1980. [3] According to some historians, Trump has received criticism from former officials at levels not seen over the last hundred years. [4] Nepotism has also risen as a point of comparison across administrations, with Trump having more family members in prominent roles than recent presidents. [5] Trump is the first president indicted on criminal charges in 160 years, [6] the first convicted of a felony and the first to be impeached twice. [7]
A President of the United States hires staff for his campaign and administration, though some also hire staff for personal businesses. Some presidents have received significant criticisms about their staff due to accusations of nepotism, corruption, criminality or a high turnover rate. Some former staff or appointees have also criticized the actions of the President that hired them.
Ethics scandals in government include conflicts of interest, improper use of government funds, hiring of unqualified or unconfirmed personnel, or other controveries that lead to firings, calls for resignation or removal by a judge.
USA Today interviewed three presidential historians and a political scientist about how usual the amount of criticism Trump has gotten from former officials who served under him who reported that it had no historical precedent in the last century. [4] The Washington Post said that no president had ever drawn more detractors from inside his inner-circle. [91] CNN said that "No person in US politics – certainly no recent president – has such an expansive list of high-profile allies turned enemies." [92] PBS described it as, "without precedent in the modern era." [93]
Nepotism is more often associated with dictatorships who centralize power in unqualified family members. [5]
In 1967, a Federal anti-nepotism statute was passed after John F. Kennedy appointed his brother Robert F. Kennedy as Attorney General. [94]
Trump's 2016 presidential transition set a 'low bar' for modern transitions according to Max Stier, followed by George H. W. Bush. [95] [96] Trump's 2024 transition team officially started in August, which is considered unusually late as most transition efforts start in the late spring. [97]
Donald Trump was impeached in 2019 and again in 2021 in the House. Not enough Republicans in the Senate voted to remove Trump from office after either impeachment. [98]
Discussion also swirled around Trump's eligibility to run for President in 2024 following the January 6th attack on the Capitol. In 2024, the Supreme Court overturned Colorado's interpretation of the 14th Amendment to remove Trump.
The tax returns of Donald Trump became an early source of interest for those concerned about potential conflicts of interest when Trump was a candidate for President. [100] [101] [102] [103] While not required, it was the norm since it leaked that Richard Nixon had underpaid some of his taxes. [lower-alpha 1] Nancy Pelosi raised concerns about his $400 million debt and who might own it and thus have leverage over the president. [107]
Roger Jason Stone is an American libertarian conservative political consultant and lobbyist. He is most remembered for the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation, and his involvement with and connections to Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election as a political consultant for the campaign of 45th U.S. president Donald Trump.
Donald John Trump Jr., often called Don Jr., is an American businessman. He is the eldest child of former U.S. president Donald Trump and his first wife Ivana Trump.
Eric Frederick Trump is an American businessman, activist, and former reality television presenter. He is the third child and second son of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, and Ivana Trump.
Peter Kent Navarro is an American economist who served in the Trump administration, first as Deputy Assistant to the President and director of the short-lived White House National Trade Council, then as Assistant to the President, Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy in the new Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy; he was also named the national Defense Production Act policy coordinator. He is a professor emeritus of economics and public policy at the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine, and the author of Death by China, among other publications. Navarro ran unsuccessfully for office in San Diego, California, five times. Navarro, who sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election, was the first former White House official ever imprisoned on a contempt-of-Congress conviction.
Robert Hunter Biden is an American attorney and businessman. He is the second son of U.S. President Joe Biden and his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden. Biden was a founding board member of BHR Partners, a Chinese investment company, in 2013, and later served on the board of Burisma Holdings, one of the largest private natural gas producers in Ukraine, from 2014 until his term expired in April 2019. He has worked as a lobbyist and legal representative for lobbying firms, a hedge fund principal, and a venture capital and private equity fund investor.
Hope Charlotte Hicks is an American public relations executive and political advisor who served in President Donald Trump’s administration from 2017 to 2018 and 2020 to 2021. She served as White House director of strategic communications from January to September 2017, as White House communications director from 2017 to 2018, and returned to serve as a counselor to the president from 2020 to 2021.
Jason Miller is an American communications strategist, political adviser and CEO, best known as the chief spokesman for the Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign and transition of Donald Trump. He was a Senior Adviser to the Trump 2020 re-election campaign. From 2010 through 2016, Miller was a partner and executive vice-president at Jamestown Associates. He was initially announced as the incoming White House Communications Director during the presidential transition, though he withdrew shortly after amidst news of an extramarital relationship with a staffer who joined the 2016 campaign two months before the election.
Robert Roger Porter is an American lawyer and former political aide who served as White House Staff Secretary for President Donald Trump from January 20, 2017, until February 7, 2018. He was previously Chief of Staff for U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah.
John David McEntee II is an American political advisor and dating app CEO who served in the Trump Administration. He has been a Trump loyalist during and after the Trump presidency. He began as a body man and personal aide to the president but was dismissed by White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly in March 2018 after failing a security clearance background check, which discovered he was under investigation by the Department of Homeland Security due to issues related to gambling.
Stephanie Ann Grisham is an American former White House official who was the 32nd White House press secretary and served as White House communications director from July 2019 to April 2020. She was chief of staff and press secretary for the first lady of the United States, Melania Trump from 2020 to 2021, after previously serving as her press secretary from 2017 to 2019.
On April 25, 2019, former vice president Joe Biden released a video announcing his candidacy in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries. On November 3, 2020, Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, defeated incumbent Republican president Donald Trump and vice president Mike Pence in the general election.
The net worth of former president Donald Trump is not publicly known. Forbes has estimated his wealth for decades and estimates it at $4.1 billion as of late August 2024, with Trump making much higher claims. He received gifts, loans, and inheritance from his father, who was a real-estate developer and businessman. Donald Trump's primary business has been real estate ventures, including hotels, casinos, and golf courses. He also made money from Trump-branded products including neckties, steaks, and urine tests. Money received through political fundraisers is used to pay for guest stays at properties owned by the Trump Organization and to pay his and his allies' lawyers.
The 2024 United States presidential election will be the 60th quadrennial presidential election, set to be held on Tuesday, November 5, 2024. Voters in each state and the District of Columbia will choose electors to the Electoral College, who will then elect a president and vice president for a term of four years.
Donald Trump, the President of the United States from January 2017 to January 2021, controversially refused to release his tax returns after being elected president, although he promised to do so during his campaign. In 2021, the Manhattan district attorney (DA) obtained several years of Trump's tax information, and in late 2022, the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee obtained and released six years of his returns.
Alyssa Farah Griffin is an American political strategist and television personality. She was the White House Director of Strategic Communications and Assistant to the President in 2020 during the presidency of Donald Trump. In addition to appearing on CNN as a commentator, she is a co-host of the talk show The View, for which she received a nomination for a Daytime Emmy Award.
Republican Accountability (RA), formerly Republican Accountability Project (RAP) and, for the current presidential election, Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT), is a political initiative launched in May 2020 by Defending Democracy Together for the 2020 U.S. presidential election cycle. The project was formed to produce a US$10 million advertising campaign focused on 100 testimonials by Republicans, conservatives, moderates, right-leaning independent voters, and former Trump voters explaining why they would not vote for Donald Trump in 2020. By August 2020, they had collected 500 testimonials.
Olivia Troye is an American national security official who worked on national security and homeland security issues at the National Counterterrorism Center, the United States Department of Energy Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, and the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis. She went on to work in the Office of the Vice President of the United States as the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism advisor to Vice President Mike Pence and also served on the White House Coronavirus Task Force as Pence's lead staffer on the Task Force. She resigned from the White House in August 2020.
The Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory is a series of false allegations that Joe Biden, while he was vice president of the United States, improperly withheld a loan guarantee and took a bribe to pressure Ukraine into firing prosecutor general Viktor Shokin to prevent a corruption investigation of Ukrainian gas company Burisma and to protect his son, Hunter Biden, who was on the Burisma board. As part of efforts by Donald Trump and his campaign in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which led to Trump's first impeachment, these falsehoods were spread in an attempt to damage Joe Biden's reputation and chances during the 2020 presidential campaign, and later in an effort to impeach him.
The United States Justice Department investigation into attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election began in early 2021 with investigations and prosecutions of hundreds of individuals who participated in the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol. By early 2022, the investigation had expanded to examine Donald Trump's inner circle, with the Justice Department impaneling several federal grand juries to investigate the attempts to overturn the election. Later in 2022, a special counsel was appointed. On August 1, 2023, Trump was indicted. The indictment also describes six alleged co-conspirators.
The sheer number of Trump officials − a minimum of 16 − speaking out against their former boss, and the severity of their criticism, is highly unusual. It has no historical precedent in the last century, according to three presidential historians and a political scientist interviewed by USA TODAY.
No president has ever attracted more public detractors who were formerly in his inner circle... Among them are his former vice president, top military advisers, lawyers, some members of his Cabinet, economic advisers, press officials and campaign aides, some of whom are working for other candidates.
No person in US politics – certainly no recent president – has such an expansive list of high-profile allies turned enemies.
It's a striking chorus of detractors, one without precedent in the modern era, coming from those who witnessed first-hand his conduct in office and the turmoil that followed.
