About two weeks ago, one moistexhaustgas reached out to me over reddit. He is a reader of the “Everything Awful The Trump Administration Has Done Omnibus” and asked me to look into something. It seems he’d run into some bizarro evil mirror universe version of the omnibus cataloging all the “good” things the Trump administration has done floating around facebook. He asked me if I wanted to take a crack at refuting it, and I decided to take up the challenge.

The full list is 58 items long, significantly shorter than the list of terrible things he’s done (not surprising), but still a fair amount to get into. So I’ll start by addressing the ones that can be lumped together, and then picking apart the rest one at a time. If you ever encounter this list of “good” things Trump has done, you can refer to this list as a ready-made set of rebuttals.

“He presided over a good economy”

5. Consumer confidence highest since 2000 at index 125.

6. Mortgage applications for new homes rise to a 7 year high.

14. More than 600,000 jobs created

16. The Stock Market is at the highest ever in its history 32. Unemployment lowest since May 2007

47. High manufacturing surge in 3 years.

48. $78 Billion promised reinvestment FROM major businesses like Exxon, Bayer, Apple, SoftBank, Toyota 53. Gas prices lowest in more than 12 years

One of the first things that pops out from this list is that they aren’t actually things Trump has done. There’s no real reason to believe why Trump is responsible for low gas prices or a rise in household income, but they’re going to give him credit for it anyways. All of these can essentially be boiled down to “the economy has been good since he took office”.

The bottom line on that is this: Trump hasn’t done anything big enough to affect a sustain, macro-economic change in the economy. Even if he had, it would probably take at least a year for it to really matter. I’m not even saying this to score points on Trump, that’s something virtually any expert on economic policy would tell you. Pretty much everything listed is just a continuation of a pre-existing trend.

Some may argue that Trump is creating business confidence, but this is just wishful thinking. Maybe Trump is instilling confidence in the markets with his promises of tax cuts and “business saavy”, or maybe his periodic threats to shut down the government or wreck trade deals are making people hold off on making investments.

As dishonest as all of this is, I’m not getting to bent out of shape about this. It’s almost certain that the economy is going turn in the next 3 years, and I’ll be glad to let Trump own every little bit of that.

“He’s Putting America First in Trade”

3. No longer in TPP 7. Arranged 20% Tariff on soft lumber from Canada. 17. China agreed to import American beef. 40. Stopped companies from moving out of America.

41. Promoted businesses to create American Jobs.

42. Encouraged country to once again “Buy American” and hire American

45. Review of all trade agreements to make sure they are America First

53. Gas prices lowest in more than 12 years.

For the most part, these things break down into Trump taking credit for someone else’s work, empty rhetoric, things that have blundered the US into a worse position in trade, or Trump getting played.

The two best items on the list, opening China to beef exports and the lower gas prices, are things that have nothing to do with Trump, and in fact were in motion well before he even entered the scene. The deal with China was thanks largely to the efforts of Max Baucus, who was the ambassador to China from 2014-2017, who negotiated the deal the re-opening of Chinese market to US beef back in 2016. On the other hand, gas prices have been low since 2014 when Saudi Arabia decided to ramp up production to undermine foreign competition, particularly from political rival Iran.

Most of the items largely come down to “tough talk” or tit for tat measures things that haven’t actually amounted to much. For the most part, these haven’t really amount to much. A lot of companies have just gone right on outsourcing because they don’t believe Trump has neither the political clout or no how to enact a raft of comprehensive protectionist measures. And this has been mostly accurate so far.

Trump can, of course, bluster his way to sabotaging trade deals, but this has had a way of backfiring. For example, after Trump decided to exit TPP, all the other participants decided they’d just as soon continue on without the US. Whether or not you liked the TPP deal, it’s still the case this new situation where the US is now caught outside of a bunch of markets and preferential trade relations is a really bad outcome.

Despite Trump’s self-proclaimed abilities as a trade negotiator, he has a way of getting played. Usually this will involve some arrangement where he gets some token gesture, but doesn’t actually get anything substantial out of it. First there was the carrier group, who negotiated a deal where they got a bunch of tax breaks in exchange for keeping jobs in the US, which they largely ended up outsourcing anyways. More recently, Trump came back from China where he bragged about getting $250bn worth of trade deals, which were in fact mostly a bunch of non-binding memorandums that will take years to materialize, if they do at all. In other words, he keeps getting played, and we’re all paying for it.

“He’s tackling illegal immigration”

4. Illegal immigration is now down 70%( the lowest in 17 years)

8. Bids for border wall are well underway.

25. Targeting of MS13 gangs

26. Deporting violent illegal immigrants.

35. Created an office for illegal immigrant crime victims.

39. End of DACA program.

Yes, Trump is really going after illegal immigrants, with gusto, and he doesn’t care how many lives he has to wreck or how much money he has to waste to do it.

The border wall is arguably the least of it. Yes, it’s a big stupid gesture that’d waste money, cause an ecological disaster, and wouldn’t even work, but at least it would just do those things. The less spectacular aspects of Trump’s drive to deport immigrants and close borders are even worse. ICE agents regularly act with shocking cruelty and disregard for decency as part of Trump’s deportation drive, doing everything from violating Federal laws to abandoning bus loads of women and children to fend for themselves in the face of a hurricane. Repealing DACA means ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who were effectively US citizens living product lives. He’s made the immigration system in to even more of a bureaucratic nightmare than it already was, and has deported people even when he knows doing so would probably lead to their deaths. He’s also been willing to sacrifice countless people on the alter of his deportation drive, including legal immigrants and people who just so happen to live in sanctuary cities. Even the aspects of these things that are “targeting criminals” are stoking xenophobia and emboldening outright white supremacists and the like (and we are waaaaaay past the point where anyone can seriously argue otherwise).

And for what, exactly? There was never a crime wave associated with immigration, nor do states on the southern border or with high rates of immigration have high rates of homicide. In fact, most evidence suggests immigrants are pretty law abiding, by and large. You can’t claim that immigrants are bad for the economy, all the evidence points the other way. Even the idea that immigrants these days “don’t assimilate” is demonstrably wrong. We’re making people’s lives a nightmare for essentially no reason, or very likely worse than no reason.

“He’s saving taxpayer money and eliminating wasteful bureaucratic spending!”

18. $89 Billion saved in regulation rollbacks.

49. $700 million saved with F-35 renegotiation.

50. Saves $22 million by reducing white house payroll.

51. Department of Treasury reports a $182 billion surplus for April 2017 (2nd largest in history.)

58. What’s the difference between Presidents Trump and Obama? Approximately $1 Trillion! President Obama increased the US debt in his first 6 months by $1 Trillion more than President Trump! As of March, President Trump had decreased the US Debt since his inauguration by $103 Billion!”

The obvious response to these is, of course, than any pretense of fiscal responsibility on the part of the Trump Administration and Republicans was blown the moment they put forward a budget that’s projected to add $5.3tn to the national debt through tax cuts to the rich.

But we can go a LOT more in depth picking this number apart.

First, a number of these items are omitting relevant details that borders on grossly dishonest. The idea that Trump decreased the deficit while Obama blew it up omits the fact that Obama inherited an economy in free where the tax base was collapsing and deficit spending was actually warranted while Trump inherited a booming economy with an expanding tax base.It’s also worth noting that deficit spending was entirely warranted when Obama came in office, the stimulus created something like 3 million jobs. The “$182bn surplus” in April doesn’t mention that the government always runs a surplus in April because that’s when it collects a large share of their revenues, and it only collected more in April this year because it just changed the timing of when it collects certain types of revenues. The figure of $89bn “saved” in rolling back regulations leaves out the fact that those numbers are would be spread out over several years, include things like “estimated time to complete paper work”, presumes no innovations that would reduce costs, and in no way addresses the benefits to consumers that come from regulations, such as not having their drinking water contaminated by refuse from coal mining operations.

Another issue is, of course, whether that Trump and his cronies are making plenty dumb, wasteful expenditures. On the one hand, the administration has been pretty reckless in its personal expenditures. The $22 million the administration claims to have save in staffing was surpassed months ago by Trump’s extravagant travel. Every time Trump takes a vacation to Mara-lago it costs tax payers about $3mn, and despite owning many of the facilities he visits he still passes as much of the fees as he can to tax payers, charging rent to secret service staying in Trump tower and having them pay $60k in golf cart rental fees. The rest of the Administration isn’t much better. The Trump administration is really top heavy, having far more members commanding 6 figure salaries than Obama ever did. These officials have wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars in chartering private jets, and These aren’t just acts of fiscal irresponsibility, in many cases Trump is personally profiting from them. Really, if you want to parse the Trump administration’s personal spending, you’re pretty quickly going to find tons and tons massive ethical lapses.

He’s also continued to plenty of big ticket items that are costing taxpayers billions. To cite one example, the decision by Trump and the Republican Congress to keep the Warthog attack plane in service, despite repeated requests by the military, continues to waste about $3.5bn a year in taxpayer money, far more the $700mn Trump claims to have saved on the F-35.

“He turned the VA around”

12. Allowing VA to terminate bad employees.

13. Allowing private healthcare choices for veterans.

Trump’s efforts to reform the VA are something of a mess, with tons of delays, backlogs, unmet promises and so forth. ABC did a pretty good job cataloging these recently.

“He’s signed a lot of new laws”

27. Signed 41 bills to date

56. President Trump has worked with Congress to pass more legislation in his first 100 days than any President since Truman.

The implication of these is that Trump must be an effective leader because look at all the legislation he’s signed. In reality, trying to reduce the effectiveness of a leader down to a raw number like “laws passed” is asinine for a number of reasons.

First off, a fair number of these laws were particularly relevant, and none of them were big pieces of legislation. For example, of the 28 pieces of legislation Trump signed in his first 100 days, 6 were fluff pieces of legislation renaming buildings and designating new heads of Smithsonian institutes. On the other hand, there were none big pieces of legislation Trump had promised, such as a healthcare or tax cuts. By contrast, Obama had passed an $800bn stimulus and the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

Second, there’s a pretty straight forward reason why the Trump Administration signed a high number of legislation in his first few days: the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to reverse regulations within 100 days of being implemented based on a simple up or down vote. There were about 13 “laws” passed this way. It’s inaccurate to equate these to full on laws, since the barrier for passing them is so low.

Factoring out frivolous laws and things passed through the CRA, you’re down to a pretty short list of modest legislation. It’s also worth noting that, as time has gone on, the pace of legislation signed by the Trump Administration slowed significantly. By September 14, the date of the last piece of signed legislation on the White House website as of this writing, the Trump Administration had signed 57 pieces of legislation. By contrast, Obama had signed 83 pieces of legislation by that point, and as we’ve noted this included some really significant things.

The point is, the Trump Administration has actually been pretty inept when it comes to achieving legislative victories, despite a very favorable legislature led by people who actually do have a pretty good idea how to pass laws.

All The Rest

1. Supreme Court Judge Gorsuch supports Constitutional Law

Hey, that was #186 on my list. But yes, Trump, spent appointed Niel Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, validating the almost year long refusal to even vote on anyone President Obama nominated. Gorsuch has spent much of his time since being appointed denying people of their right to be effectively represented in court and alienating all the other Justices.

2. 59 missiles dropped in Syria.

That was #184 in the “Everything Awful Trump Has Done” omnibus. The strike had a dubious legal justification that the administration refuses to even try to justify. We also remember that, at the time, Trump gave Russia advance warning of the attack, who of course notified Syria and removed anything valuable from the airbase struck.

9. Pulled out of the lopsided Paris accord.

And in so doing both increased the chances of an existential crisis, or at the very least exorbitant costs from unchecked climate change, and alienated the US from the rest of the world diplomatically.

Also, it wasn’t lopsided.

10. Keystone pipeline approved.

Yes, they had to burn down some tents and kick Native Americans in the teeth one more time to do it, but they did it. Now tar sand oil can get pumped directly to the gulf of Mexico, where it can be sold on the world market, passing down virtually none of the profits to you.

11. NATO allies boost spending by 4.3%

These increases in spending were largely already planned before Trump entered the scene, and most analysts interpret this a reaction to increased Russian aggression.

19. Boosted energy independence.

54. Signed an Executive Order To Promote Energy Independence And Economic Growth

Unless that energy independence comes from renewables, in which case fuck it.

20. MOAB for ISIS

… and as we all know, the amount of ordinance dropped in a war is the sole standard by which it should be judged. That’s why Vietnam and “Shock and Awe” were such a smashing success…

21. Travel ban reinstated.

Then halted, then reinstated, then halted… Seems like this is just kind of a frivolous prejudicial thing that’s wasting tons of time and money in litigation

22. Executive order for religious freedom.

Specifically that order enables religious organizations to make political contributions without losing their tax exempt privilege, so it’s really more like he’s degraded campaign finance.

23. Jump started NASA

Y’know, I’d like NASA and space exploration to be something that everyone can get behind, and the gradual stripping away of functions from NASA as the agency lowers its sight is something that I find a little depressing. So if Trump really were reinvigorating the agency, then great.

But there’s not really much I can see that confirms that he’s really doing all that much to help NASA. In terms of funding, his proposed $19.1bn budget for the agency was roughly what Congress or the Obama Administration were putting towards the agency ($19bn-$19.65bn). He shifted around some things in the budget, and he’s shifted the agency’s focus from Mars to the Moon, but all that mostly just seems like a wash. On the other hand, his the person he’s nominated to head up the agency is woefully unqualified, so there’s that.

24. $600 million cut/saved from UN peacekeeping budget.

… seriously undermining what is demonstrably a highly effective tool for handling humanitarian crises and preventing a resurgence in conflict.

28. Created a commission on child trafficking

… Then he ended child refugee programs. All and all, he’s probably had a net negative impact in the realm of stopping child trafficking.

29. Created a commission on voter fraud

Ah yes, #237 on the omnibus. Basically, he called for a commission on the basis of a popular conservative conspiracy theory with little factual basis, and it’s been slowly imploding ever since, getting sued by a bunch of states for demanding data that it would have been illegal for them to provide, getting sued by one of its own members for being nakedly partisan, and still not having anything to show for itself.

30. Created a commission for opioids addiction.

This was a good thing, it’s just too bad he delayed doing it for several months, then when he did he put pitifully few resources towards it.

31. Giving power to states to drug test unemployment recipients.

Usually this drug testing just reveals that there are exceedingly few people receiving unemployment benefits who are on hard drugs. Mostly they just serve to make the lives the lives of poor people somewhat worse. But then again, that’s probably the point.

34. Historic Black College University initiative

This initiative had initially received praise from Historically Black Colleges, but they quickly became disenchanted when they realized that it was a pretty empty gesture. They were then alienated when it became clear that the Trump administration was trying to milk the story for publicity. By September, Historically Black Colleges had become so frustrated with the administration that they boycotted an annual white house conference.

34. Women In Entrepreneurship Act

And he’s ended title VII protections and made it more difficult for women on campus to report rape. All and all, Trump is probably a net negative on female empowerment.

36. Reversed Dodd-Frank

So now we can all have our retirement savings squandered by shiftless investment brokers while our economic system is periodically collapses… yay…

37. Repealed DOT ruling which would have taken power away from local governments for infrastructure planning

As we recall, back in August the Trump administration rolled back a rule mandating that infrastructure projects incorporate preventative measures like “flood proofing” into their plans. A few short weeks later, Hurricane Harvey cause horrendous flooding in Houston, reminding everyone that skimping on such preventative measures can have disastrous consequences. The Administration was criticized so heavily for this move that it was forced to reverse course, though to my knowledge they haven’t actually done anything to rectify the situation.

38. Order to stop crime against law enforcement.

Again, like immigration this mostly just comes down to making the criminal justice system even lousier and more likely to kill them arbitrarily while shoveling money to private prisons and others who parasitically live off it.

43. Communicates directly to American people via Twitter without spin of hostile media

I’m all for direct communication between politicians and their constituents, but Trump has caused full on international incidents through his Twitter account. Some message control is clearly a good thing…

44. Cutting regulations – two for every one created.

57. Has given head executive of each branches 6 month time Frame dated march 15 2017, to trim the fat, restructure and improve efficiency of their branch.

You could also probably add the federal hiring freeze to these. Essentially, these all boil to arbitrary dictates foisted that paradoxically cause more inefficiency in how they drop impractical mandates and deadlines on the civil service without any practical consideration as to how they’re supposed to work. Republicans have been doing this for decades, and it almost always backfires spectacularly. After Reagan enacted his hiring freeze, the CBO found that the freeze actually wasted money because they caused a bunch of mission critical functions to become short staffed. After coming into office in 1994, Gingrich and the Republican congress eliminated a federal agency which specifically worked to increase government efficiency in the government.

As for Trump’s rule, what do you think is actually going to happen when you just tell federal agencies that they need to make new rules they have to eliminate two? It’ll be a mess, you’re going to have agencies specifically avoiding updating/streamlining their processes, and they’re going to have to form work groups and run exhaustive analyses anytime they want to do anything that warrants rule making. Meanwhile, something like 42% of the government workforce is on the brink of retirement and there’s going to be nobody with adequate training or experience to do their jobs.

I mean, it’s almost like Republicans are actively sabotaging the government…

46. Apprentice program

Alright, the apprenticeship program is a legitimately good thing. Apprenticeships are good for both the short term and long term earnings of the individual workers, and they help improve the broader economy by raising the overall skill level of the workforce. That’s why Democrats, labor organizations, the Clinton campaign, and others on the left have been pushing for them for years. As long as Trump doesn’t let the whole thing devolve to a situation where fast food restaurants start getting subsidies for “artisan sandwich makers” then I’ll give him credit for this.

48. Denied FBI a new building.

Why is this a good thing? The old FBI headquarters is falling apart, and the fact that a significant part of the FBI staff can’t operate in the same building causes all kinds of operational inefficiencies that will probably cost taxpayers far more over time.

It’s also been suggested that Trump did that because Trump hotel is across the street from the current FBI headquarters, so he had a vested interest in seeing to it nothing happened to drive down the property value/open up the land to possible competitors.

52. Negotiated the release of 6 US humanitarian workers held captive in Egypt.

Yes, by buddying up to the horrible, human rights abusing Sisi regime and selling them weapons.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they were released, but I don’t think we’re coming out ahead on this one.

55. Has already accomplished more to stop government interference into people’s lives than any President in the history of America.

I don’t know what this is based, but it’s not anything like Habeas Corpus, reducing police brutality, reducing large bodies of people to status of second class citizens, or not spying on people.

Overall Analysis

It’s instructive to look at just what Trump’s fans tend to identify as his accomplishments because it reveals what they tend to find appealing about him. A lot of this is just crassly taking credit for things, 16% are taking credit for the good economy. Others are pretty typical conservative fair. For example, 26% relate to “taking down big government” in some way or another.

But a lot of this reflects the something a little more specific to Trump and the Tea Party conservatism that preceded him. Trade related issues account for 16% of the listed items, while 19% reflect Trump’s law and order style conservatism of tough on crime measures and hard core anti-immigration measures. Conversely, it’s interesting what doesn’t factor in. Foreign policy issues don’t factor in particularly large, and where they do they’re mostly things where the US is presented as getting a better deal rather than, say, destroying America’s enemies, remaking the middle east, or extending US dominance. In other words, they reflect a sort of inward looking nationalism, as opposed to the Neo-Conservatism of the Bush administration. Religious and cultural issues are also not cited that much, which again represents something of a departure from the days of the moral majority conservatives and their culture war issues. Trump has done plenty of culture warring, but it’s notable that it’s not something his fans point out.

All this sort of builds a profile of Trump and Trump voters as being, in many ways, a substantial break from recent conservatism. He’s less Reagan and Bush, and more Buchanan and Perot. This may sound more or less unsurprising by this point, but it does present both interesting challenges and opportunities as the old political system gets knocked off its axis.