The 100 Worst Things Trump Has Done Since Descending That Escalator

Donald Trump has done a lot of bad, evil, crazy, and weird things since he came down that golden escalator in July 2015. Some of them were truly ghastly—family separation, January 6. Others were partly ghastly and partly embarrassing or gobsmacking (the love/hate affair with “Rocket Man” Kim Jong Un). Still others were just embarrassing—Sharpiegate, trying to buy Greenland. All of them, serious or not, contribute to the picture of a man who shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office again.

Just two weeks out from this pivotal Election Day, we’ve taken upon ourselves the public service of ranking the 100 worst things Trump’s done since that fateful July day. This is partly for your entertainment and amusement. But there’s a serious point here too. We want to remind people of just how horrible, on such an insistently recurring basis, the man was. And is. And will be.

The order was determined, and the items written, by editors Ryan Kearney, Jason Linkins, and Alex Shephard. We’ll be unfurling them every day this week in batches of 20. So: Read, agree, disagree, argue, and pass them along to Uncle Stan in Aliquippa. Unless you calculate that it’ll just make Uncle Stan like Trump more.

—TNR editor Michael Tomasky

100. Shark or Electrocution: The Eternal Debate

Where does one even begin with the presidency of Donald Trump? We’re going with a long-running debate he used to share with the public as to whether it’s preferable to die in the jaws of a shark or get electrocuted. It’s a nostalgic way to ease our way into one man’s addlepated corruption, while leaving us a lot of room to build up to other, much worse things. —J.L.

99. Fat-Shames Chris Christie

Oh, these two! Trump and the former New Jersey governor have had a tumultuous relationship over the years, with Christie going from opponent to sycophant to opponent again in what we loosely called “the 2024 Republican presidential primary.” For Christie, the highlight of his latest failed attempt at higher office came when Trump made fun of his weight at a New Hampshire rally. “Christie, he’s eating right now,” Trump said. “He can’t be bothered.” Hey, at least Trump remembered you, Chris! —J.L.

98. That Weird “Dance” Party in Philly

One of the more pressing questions of the 2024 presidential campaign is also perhaps its most absurd: How much of Trump’s odd behavior is the result of cognitive decline, and how much is it just … who he is? There is no clearer representation of this conundrum than Trump’s October 14 rally in suburban Philadelphia. As he was speaking in a hot, crowded room, his rambling performance—ostensibly a town hall with his supporters—was derailed by two medical emergencies. Rather than leave the stage, Trump decided to stick around—and demanded his handlers play a series of his favorite tunes, including Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” the celestial “Ave Maria,” and the song that has become his bizarre signature: the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” The entire display lasted roughly as long as his town hall. The crowd slowly dwindled; Trump, dancing with himself, didn’t seem to mind.—A.S.

97. Greenland With Envy

We can’t believe we have to explain this, but Greenland is neither a private island nor up for sale. At 836,330 square miles, it is the biggest island in the world, one that exists within the Kingdom of Denmark but which is also largely autonomous. Nonetheless, President Trump was obsessed with the idea of buying Greenland. “I strongly hope that this is not meant seriously,” Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s prime minister, said in 2019. By that point in Trump’s delirious presidency, we Americans knew better.—R.K.

96. Tells Boy Scouts About a Sex Party on a Yacht

In July 2017, Trump gave what still might be his weirdest speech. Appearing before 24,000 Boy Scouts in West Virginia, he ranted about Obamacare, the “fake news” media, and the “cesspool” of Washington, D.C., for over 30 minutes. But the weirdest moment came when he alluded to a fellow real estate developer having wild, seemingly sex-fueled parties on his yacht in the 1970s.—A.S.

95. Duncing About Architecture

A few weeks after Trump was inaugurated, Architectural Record obtained a draft of a proposed executive order called “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again,” which would mandate a “classical style” for buildings under its purview. Why? As TNR contributor Kate Wagner explained at length, the move was more or less rooted in the obsessions of crypto-fascist weirdos. This was an early example of how the Trump era required us to go down so many different rabbit holes of far-right lore. Anyone up for testicle tanning?—J.L.

94. Please Clap—or Be Accused of Treason

Trump’s extremely boring 2018 State of the Union address was coldly received by Democrats. That’s hardly unusual for the party out of power in the White House, but to Trump it was “like death and un-American,” he whined during a speech the following week. “Somebody said treasonous. Yeah, I guess, why not? Can we call that treason? Why not?” Three years later, he himself would come closer to committing treason than any president in U.S. history.—R.K.

93. The Biggest, Most Beautiful Tariffs

Trump recently said tariff is the “most beautiful word in the dictionary.” But what are economists saying about his proposal to levy tariffs on $3 trillion worth of imports, including a trade war–inducing 60 percent tariff on goods from China? David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, described them as a “perfect stagflation machine,” something that reflects “a two-year-old’s mentality,” and “one of those magical economic proposals that can actually cause inflation and put you into a recession—at the same time.” Sounds pretty ugly to us.—J.L.

92. Woos Black Voters With a … Mug Shot

For most people, it is not good to have your mug shot taken. But Trump is not most people. Shortly after being booked on racketeering charges that had been brought against him in Georgia, Trump saw a silver lining. “A lot of people said that that’s why the Black people like me because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against,” he said, seemingly making the racist suggestion that Black people related to him for being a criminal.—A.S.

91. Showers, Dishwashers, and Toilets Have “No Water”

For years, Trump has ranted in speeches about the water pressure of home appliances, complaining that it takes him forever to wash his “gorgeous head of hair,” he has to flush the toilet 15 times, and dishwashers don’t actually wash dishes. He even went so far as to implement a rule lifting the limit on the flow rate of shower heads. But Biden reversed it in 2021, and Trump’s pumpkin head hasn’t looked the same since.—R.K.

90. Morning Joe Derangement Syndrome

Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski know how to get under Trump’s skin. The proof is in the berserk things he says about the hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe. In 2017, he called Brzezinski “low I.Q. Crazy” and claimed she was “bleeding badly from a face-lift” during a visit to Mar-a-Lago. Three years later, he suggested that Scarborough had murdered a congressional staffer in 2001 while serving as a Republican congressman from Florida.—R.K.

89. The Lecter Lecture

Why has Trump taken to shouting out Hannibal Lecter, the fictional serial killer from Thomas Harris’s famous series of novels, on the campaign trail? Some people believe it’s something that goes hand in hand with Trump’s conflation of asylum-seekers with insane asylums. Or it could just be an inside joke he’s having with himself. Either way, the lambs are screaming somewhere.—J.L.

88. Disasterclass

Trump earned himself a fresh round of media mockery in September 2018 when he referred to Hurricane Florence as “one of the wettest we’ve ever seen from the standpoint of water,” which is what you have to offer, one supposes, when you’re a climate change denier staring hard evidence of climate change right in the face. Anyway, big disasters were truly not Trump’s bag, as we’d all come to learn during the pandemic.—J.L.

87. Hell Is Other People

Trump went out of his way to hurt the late Representative John Dingell’s wife, Michigan Representative Debbie Dingell, in a December 2019 Battle Creek rally, implying that the widow’s recently deceased husband was “looking up” at her from Hell. (Apropos of nothing in particular, you all realize that when Trump dies, he’s going to lie in state, right? There’s going to be a big ceremony in Washington, and all the living presidents will have to make a speech. That’s going to be wild.)—J.L.

86. Carries His Feud with John McCain to the Grave

It’s easy to understand why Trump wasn’t invited to John McCain’s funeral. Trump has questioned McCain’s status as a war hero by saying he likes “people who weren’t captured,” and he has spent his entire political career denigrating McCain’s political career. And yet, months later Trump was still fuming that he wasn’t invited to McCain’s funeral. “I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve,” he said in a speech at an Ohio tank factory. “I don’t care about this, I didn’t get a thank-you. That’s OK.” For sure.—A.S.

85. Infrastructure Week 4EVA

During his 2016 campaign, Trump promised to invest a trillion dollars in infrastructure repairs. These never materialized, but it did help build a single running joke that the media was able to keep dryly referring to over the entirety of the Trump era as “a metaphor for any well-intentioned proposal doomed to go nowhere,” like the Mueller investigation or the New York Mets.—J.L.

84. Bugging Out Over Obama

It was early 2017, about a month and a half after Trump assumed the presidency, and yet he was still obsessed with … Barack Obama?! “How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” Trump tweeted on March 4. “I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!” It’s a useful reminder that Trump will promote election conspiracy theories no matter the outcome.—R.K.

83. A Hurricane of Lies

Helene left not only unimaginable destruction in its wake but also a flood of misinformation. And that’s catnip to Trump. “I’ll be there shortly, but don’t like the reports that I’m getting about the Federal Government, and the Democrat Governor of the State, going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas,” he posted on Truth Social, referring to North Carolina. He also claimed, “They’re being treated very badly in the Republican areas.” And: “Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants, many of whom should not be in our country.” All lies.—R.K.

82. That Helsinking Feeling

At a July 2018 conference, while standing alongside Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, Trump offered a “stunning rebuke of the U.S. intelligence community” by suggesting their assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election had missed the mark. “I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today,” he said. It was almost enough to suggest that he wasn’t quite on the level!—J.L.

81. Remember When We All Sided With Megyn Kelly?

In the first GOP presidential debate in 2015, co-moderator Megyn Kelly reasonably asked Trump about his persistent denigration of women as “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.” The question really stuck in his craw, such that a day later he complained to Don Lemon, “She gets out and she starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions. You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever. In my opinion, she was off base.”—R.K.

Coming Tuesday: 80—61.