The Supreme Court's tariff decision seems a good time to look at Trump's first year back in office and assess what he has done. Earlier in the month, in her whackadoodle House Hearing, his unhinged AG called Trump "The Greatest President Ever". Of course such a superlative is merely a matter of opinion, and she is undoubtedly as captured as a resident of Georgetown, Guyana in 1978, but it does encourage people to take a look and see what Trump actually accomplished. I mean, he must have done something to gain such an accolade.

To be generous, Trump might look at his Supreme Court tariff loss as a convoluted kind of win, since the loss wasn't as bad as his loss in Minnesota. At least the Supreme Court is composed largely of adults. In Minnesota, it was mostly teenage school kids who defeated him and got him to "taco".

And since every cloud has a silver lining, as the SC decision came on a Friday, the weekend talk shows will likely speak more of his illegal tariff actions than Jeffrey Epstein. The Iranians might get a reprieve, too, as at least for the weekend, he doesn't need another diversion and distraction from Epstein. Greenland served its purpose and is now in the past. Blowing up fishing boats in the Caribbean served it's purpose, and has stopped. Pretending he would run Venezuela served its purpose, too. The tariff loss can hide Epstein's ghost for a few days. Simple gifts.

As for his other "accomplishments", let's see....

Total non-farm job growth in 2025 was 181,000. In Biden's last year of 2024, it was 2,230,000. I don't think Trump's performance there falls into any kind of superlative like "Greatest". Even mediocre would be generous.

His tariffs were supposed to bring back manufacturing jobs to the US, but construction of new plant and factories fell in 2025. Maybe business people either knew the tariff thing was illegal, or else they crunched the numbers and saw it simply made no economic sense to build in the US what can be bought cheaper, albeit of equal or superior quality, from abroad.

The economic data also released Friday, which might get lost in the tariff decision, did not exactly scream "Greatest". Inflation---using the Fed's preferred measure of PCE---came in at 3% in December, vs 2.7% in Dec 2024 of Biden. GDP Growth in the 4th Quarter came in at 1.4%, vs 2.8% in the last Quarter of 2024 under Biden. No superlative there, either.

While the equity market set a new high, that's hardly a big deal, as the last time a President failed to preside over a new high was, I think, 1976-1980 under Carter. Trump got to ride Biden's coattails, as the market was on an upward slope in 2024.

Maybe Trump made some friends in China during his first year, as his Rube Goldberg-esque deal with the UAE ($500,000,000 into his family business, which some might call a bribe) got restrictions on the export sale of Nvidia H200 GPUs removed, and the UAE then forwarded these chips to China. Overall, Trump's family net worth grew by an estimated $4 billion in 2025, too, as grifting and self-dealing became the norm. No President comes close to that kind of corruption, so maybe Greatest Grifter is a superlative well-earned.

To his credit, Trump did get all manner of Participation Trophies, such as his FIFA Peace Prize and that Champion of Coal prize. He also got a second hand Nobel Peace Prize, though the Nobel Committee reminded him that it's Fake Nobel. On Thursday, Trump spoke in Georgia and declared he was going to test the law that would allow him to award himself the Congressional Medal of Honor, usually reserved for military personnel displaying extraordinary valor in battle. Trump said he deserves one because he visited Iraq for 3 1/2 hours in 2018. If that deserves the Medal of Honor, then at least 1.5 million US troops and another few hundred thousand contractors and US Diplomats---who spent months to years in Iraq from 2003 to 2021---deserve the same medal. That would seem to cheapen the honor.

Trump also set a record for frivolous spending, as his golf outings in his first year back cost the US Taxpayer $71,000,000 per the OMB. Trump holds the previous term record, having run up $151,500,000 in Trump 1.0, and he is on pace to shatter that record, provided his cankles and declining health allow it.

I guess some fake credit also goes to him for his Board of Peace, which as yet has no function, no plans, no purpose, and no decent nation as a member, as it is filled largely by monarchies and authoritarian regimes. The odds of that useless entity lasting beyond Trump's death are worse than the odds of winning the Powerball Lottery, but he can bask (or sleep) in the glory until death do they part.

Elsewhere, he claims to have stopped wars that either did not exist or else haven't actually ended. Even the most groveling sycophantic MAGA likely cannot name the 8 wars Trump claimed to have stopped. I think the people of Armenia and Cambodia will be forever grateful for his efforts for ending their horrific war...LOL. And let's not forget how Trump claimed to have stopped the Rwandan Genocide of 1994, all while filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings for his casinos. THAT, my friends, is multi-tasking at another level.

Trump also taught us that that the old saw, "Go big or go home" is alive and well. He blew up small boats incapable of carrying much more than a dime bag of drugs, but pardoned a guy who ran 400 tonnes of cocaine into the US. He went after Letitia James for some supposed $700 worth of mortgage fraud (dismissed), but pardoned a billionaire who laundered money for the terrorist group Hamas, as well as a donor who scammed "investors" out of tens of millions of dollars.

Finally, he did do something along the border, and that likely freed up thousands of strawberry and lettuce picking jobs for his MAGA disciples, befitting their talent and skill level. He might claim he prevented some crimes, too, by sending home bad folks, but that has to be weighed against the horrific crimes committed by the 6 January 2021 terrorists he pardoned. A good many of their crimes were sexual abuse and exploitation of children, but as we have seen with the slow-rolled release of the Epstein files, that is something Trump views as less severe than reminding military personnel of their legal duty to refuse to obey unlawful orders.

Perhaps a final tribute to his first year is that, while he failed abysmally to unite the nation, he does seem to have united the civilized world....albeit against him. Many people are saying that couldn't be done. Some people are saying nobody could have destroyed the civilized world's view of the US any more or any faster.

On 2/21/2026 at 8:04 AM, Wingate said:

guess some fake credit also goes to him for his Board of Peace, which as yet has no function, no plans, no purpose, and no decent nation as a member, as it is filled largely by monarchies and authoritarian regimes.

Absolute monarchies please, all the European Constitutional Monarchies with parliamentary governments took one look and said no!

He ruined your year. Thats a great accomplishment LOL

7 minutes ago, Yagoda said:

He ruined your year. Thats a great accomplishment LOL

Nothing better than lefties crying!

President Trump called (the IEEPA Tariff case) "one of the most important cases in the history of our country."

https://abcnews.com/Politics/supreme-court-hears-trump-tariffs-case-staggering-importance/story?id=126950904

But that was maybe just an "off the cuff" remark

The term is a portmanteau of the words "boom" and "recession." It highlights how the average American doesn't feel like they're reaping the benefits of an economy that is — on paper — humming along, according to creator Matt Stoller.

Many Americans feel terrible about their finances, with debt at all-time highs, and the majority of Americans incorrectly believe the country is in an economic slowdown.

"Traditionally, the economy is doing really well," said Stoller, an antimonopoly advocate and research director at the American Economic Liberties Project, a nonpartisan thinktank. "But ordinary people are saying they're not."

On its surface, Stoller said the "boomcession" theory can help explain why data in recent years shows that U.S. GDP growth hasn't correlated with better consumer sentiment readings. That marks a significant break from the typical trend seen over the past six decades.

"I've never seen anything like it," said Diane Swonk, chief economist at consulting firm KPMG. "I've been doing this for 40 years. And that's a long time to never see anything like this."

While high prices have been a perennial issue since the pandemic's inflationary shock, consumers without financial safety nets have more recently focused their concern on the job market.

Economists have described the current labor backdrop as a "jobless boom" and "hiring recession." Fed Chair Jerome Powell has dubbed it a low hire, low fire environment.

"If you have the assets that are enjoying really high values, then you're feeling supported," said Joanne Hsu, director of the University of Michigan's Surveys of Consumers. "But strong stock markets don't mean a lick to you if you don't own any stocks or real estate".

So-called labor share, or the percentage of economic output trickling down to workers in the form of compensation, tumbled to new lows last year. What's more, the gap between corporate profits and employee pay as a slice of GDP grew to its widest on record. Michigan's survey of sentiment fell near all-time lows last year.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/18/boomcession-econonomy-gdp-recession-consumer-sentiment.html

 

I look at the US, and I see the Western Roman empire circa mid 5th century, prior to Odoacer marching into Rome. 

 

Trump simply precipitated the inevitable decline. Whether or not the CCP remains in charge is irrelevant to China's growth and dominance. I don't like it. But, it is what it is. I predict in 50 years or so, the US will only be the 4th or 5th biggest world power.