Donald Trump will be going down in history as the most corrupt failed fascist once impeached two-time popular vote loser in American history. And yet, as Trump memorializes his election loss with an unmatched string of 47 court losses and counting, some in his milieu still think there's another "legacy" to "lock in," according to The Washington Post.
Last week, for example, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services adopted a longer and more difficult citizenship test that critics said could further curb legal immigration. The Pentagon named 11 new members, including a pair of prominent former Trump campaign aides, to a Defense Department business advisory board. And the president signed an executive order drafted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy aimed at protecting civil liberties in the use of artificial intelligence by the federal government.
In addition, Trump is suddenly yanking a bunch of troops from Afghanistan, hurriedly auctioning off oil rights in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to further trash the planet, rushing to strip civil servants of decades-old job protections, and racing to erect another 50 miles of his precious border wall.
All of these actions do meaningful harm. With some time and effort, many of them can be undone one way or another—they're just piling on the clean-up of Trump's toxic waste zone that the incoming Biden administration will have to conduct. And the legacy items that can't be undone—at least in the immediate future—are the federal judges Senate Republicans continue to confirm at a rapid clip. (While they’re lifetime appointments, the federal judiciary could potentially be expanded at some future time to dilute their influence.)
But these actions aren't the least bit normal for a lame duck president, and are so very predictably Trump. Past presidents have typically stopped implementing major policies in order to clear the way for their successor to start reshaping the government and begin implementing the agenda they ran and won on as quickly as possible. It's a matter of respecting the will of the people.
But to Trump, the 80 million-plus Americans who voted against him are traitors, so ignoring them and subverting their will is totally fair and even an act of patriotism.
It's also entirely delusional. Winners write the history books. And at this point, Trump is nothing but a sour-grapes loser and will go down as the biggest presidential blunder in history. As one political journalist observed on Twitter, it’s the "End of an error."