Trump’s 2025 Report Card

Last week, in The Washington Post there was an opinion piece by Marc A. Thiessen entitled “The 10 Worst Things Trump did in 2025.” Its title understandably immediately captured my interests. Thiessen was a senior staff member during the administration of George W. Bush and a chief speech-writer for Donald Rumsfeld while Rumsfeld served as the Secretary of Defense for President George H.W. Bush. Thiessen also spent more than six years as a spokesman and senior policy adviser to Senator Jesse Helms when Helms, an avid anti-communist, chaired the Senate Foreign Relation’s Committee. Thus, the title of his article was clearly intended to convey the impression that its author harbored an open mind in evaluating Trump’s performance. However, what I quickly discovered was that Thiessen’s criticisms of Trump’s performance during 2025 were not particularly damning; nor did they include most of Trump’s more egregious actions. This has prompted me to fill the void left by Thiessen.

            The simple fact is that Trump has started his second term as President in much the same way as he started his last debate in June 2024 with President Biden. Indeed, Trump has undertaken so many actions inimical to the well-being of our nation and its citizens that it leaves most individuals frozen speechless while wondering which of his multitude of injurious actions to denounce first. They include the following:

1. He flouted the nation’s laws and Constitution.

a. He petitioned the Supreme Court to make him immune from criminal prosecution, a total anathema to our nation’s founders.

b. He petitioned the Supreme Court to revoke birthright citizenship which is ensconced in the Constitution.

c. He imposed a wide range of tariffs, usurping a power which the Constitution vests in the Congress.

d. He effectively declared war on Venezuela, another power which the Constitution vests in the Congress.

e. He threatened to remove heads of the independent federal agencies without providing justification as required by the statutes creating those agencies.

f. He used the nation’s military personnel to police major cities even when state and local governments had neither requested or wished them to do so.

2. He encouraged the states to skew their electoral systems to the detriment of the nation’s founding principle that each citizen has an equal right to elect its leaders.

a. He requested the governors of the States of Texas, India, Missouri, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Utah and Virginia to draw new Congressional maps within their states in a manner that will increase the number of Republican Congressional delegates.

b. He is seeking to eliminate voting by mail as a means of discouraging voting by persons with restricted ability to vote at the polls.  

3. He undermined the nation’s confidence in its federal government.

a. He caused the federal government to ignore the economic plight of almost 60% of the nation’s citizens who have less than $1,000 in savings.

b. In the name of cutting excess costs he has terminated the employment of numerous senior military and civilian government officers with critical knowledge required to run the government.

c. He abused the pardon powers by granting pardons to those who have taken, or will take, action for his benefit.

d. He caused the DOJ to prosecute his enemies and to refrain from investigating, much less criminally prosecuting, his supporters.

e. He used the powers of the President to extort universities and law firms.

f. He threatened to withhold federal funding authorized by Congress to state governments that take actions which he opposes.

g. He refused to expend other monies appropriated by the Congress in the manner specified by the Congress.

h. He attacked those elements of the news media labeling them as purveyors of “fake news” and using his powers as President to silence their opposition to his actions.

i. He incited violence against judges and legislators who expressed criticism of his actions.

j. He pursued frivolous legal actions in the courts.

4. He undermined our nation’s relationships with its allies.

a. He caused the U.S. to change sides in the war in Ukraine, abandoning the position of our NATO allies and declining to take action that would arrest Russian aggression.

b. He made threats to take over the Panama Canal, Greenland, Venezuela and Canada which have whet the appetites of Russia and China for their own acts of aggression, all in violation of the U.N. Charter which recognizes the sovereign rights of each nation.

 5. He took actions which undermine efforts to arrest the deterioration of the earth’s climate.

a. He declared climate change is “a Hoax” misleading Americans as to the danger posed by rising global temperatures.

b. He rescinded financial incentives for electric vehicles.

c. He limited efforts to build renewable energy projects.

d. He opened new areas of oil and gas exploration and encouraged the expansion of fossil fuel development.

6. He took a multitude of actions which endanger the health of millions of Americans.

a. He cut the budget of USAID which suppresses the spread infectious diseases prevalent in foreign countries thereby preventing them from coming to the U.S.

b. He significantly cut the budget of the Medicaid program on which over 88 million Americans rely to secure their healthcare needs.

c. He cut the budgets of the NIH and CDC which form the foundation of public health programs in the U.S.

d. He eliminated a major element of funding for the Affordable Care Act leaving over 20 million Americans without access to healthcare.

e. He appointed an anti-vaccine advocate as his Secretary of HSS who cut the use of vaccines, the nation’s primary preventive healthcare tool.

 7. He launched a campaign against millions of immigrants who have proven themselves to be assets to our nation.

a. Rather than concentrate of “the worst of the worst” he not only sought to incarcerate and deport immigrants with no criminal records who have been in the U.S. for many years and are providing useful services and paying taxes, some of whom are in fact U.S. citizens.

b. He caused immigration agents to wear masks and hide their identities so as create an atmosphere of terror.

c. He deported immigrants without due process and in violation of court orders.

8. He caused the nation’s wealth to be transferred from its poorest  to its wealthiest citizens.

a. He extended the 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy paid for mostly with cuts to social welfare programs.

b. He raised money through the imposition of tariffs mostly affecting the nation’s poor to further offset his tax cuts for the nation’s wealthiest citizens.

9. He used his position as President to enrich himself.

a. He accepted the gift of a Boeing 747 from Qatar.

b. He used his imposition of tariffs and other powers of his office to extort gifts from U.S. citizens and corporations.

c. He encouraged companies and individuals to do business with companies owned or controlled by him or members of his family.

Thiessen’s one criticism of Trump’s actions during 2025 with which I am in agreement is Trump’s allowing Nvidia to sell its H200 computer chips to China. Even this criticism (which Thiessen lists as Trump’s No. 1 faux pas) is not particularly damning as there are mitigating circumstances. The principal problem with this action is that the N200 chip is far more advanced than other computer chips currently available to China and will likely be used by China to significantly augment its military capabilities. On the other hand, the H200 computer chip is not the most advanced chip produced by Nvidia. Perhaps the deciding factor in Trump’s mind was that the U.S. government would receive a 25% fee for all such sales.

Thiessen’s No. 2 criticism of Trump’s 2025 actions was (get this!) “He underfunded [our nation’s] defense buildup.” Trump’s 2025 defense expenditures were approximately $980 billion. This was an increase of roughly $100 billion more than  2024 defense expenditures. More importantly, it was more than three times the defense expenditures of China, the nation with the second largest defense budget. Indeed, the U.S.’s 2025 defense expenditures were more than the defense expenditures of the next nine nations with the largest defense expenditures (China, Russia, Germany, India, U.K., Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, France and Japan). If there was a legitimate criticism to be made with respect to U.S. defense expenditures it is that they were far too high and wasteful. Indeed, if Trump was truly looking to cut “fraud, waste and inefficiency” (as he purported to do), the defense budget should have been where his search should have begun, not with the $45 billion budget of USAID.

            A third most significant Trump shortcoming identified by Thiessen was that his tariffs are going to slow the growth of the U.S. economy. While that is undoubtedly true, it’s not the only action taken by Trump during the past year that is going to slow our nation’s economic growth. Cuts to a number of social welfare programs will have a similar impact. In addition, his administration’s mass incarcerations and deportations of immigrants are also going to slow U.S. economic growth. There is also a question as to whether any Americans are even going to fill the jobs that will be vacated by the loss of immigrant workers who are willing to perform jobs shunned by most U.S. citizens and are willing to do so for significantly lower wages than U.S. citizens.

Also on Thiessen’s list of Trump’s worst actions during 2025 were his issuances of “unjustifiable pardons.” This criticism hardly scratches the surface of the problems associated with Trump’s grants of pardons. First, it must be appreciated that before Trump became our nation’s President, there was a highly organized process for selecting who would be granted a presidential pardon. There was the Office of the Pardon Attorney within the DOJ that was charged with the responsibility of reviewing and vetting petitions for pardons. That office and its review process was totally ignored by Trump who made his pardon decisions based upon who supported pardon requests and what those seeking a pardon were willing and able to do for him. As a result, rather than actually explain why a pardon was merited, Trump often sought to justify his grants claiming that “many individuals” (all unnamed) had assured him that the pardon requests were meritorious.

High on the list of Trump’s abuse of his pardon powers was his pardoning of those who, at his urging, had participated in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 in an effort to prevent Congress’ confirmation of President Biden’s election. Although these individuals may have thought that they were acting in the best interest of the country, any such thoughts were, at best, delusional. The reality is that they not only were trying to block a Constitutionally mandated procedure, but in the course of doing so they attacked members of the Capitol police force causing the deaths of four individuals and physical harm to approximately 150 police officers.

More recently, Trump granted a pardon to Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former President of Honduras who had worked with the El Chapo Guzman’s Sinaloa drug cartel to ship 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S.  See, “Donald’s Puzzling Pardon Announcement.” Trump sought to justify this act of clemency claiming that the pardon was being granted because Hernandez had been “unfairly treated by the prosecutors.” Notably, Trump did not disclose who had informed him that Hernandez had been “unfairly treated.” Nor did he elaborate on just how Hernandez had been mistreated that might have caused a jury composed of 12 unbiased individuals to unanimously find him guilty or a judge to sentence him to 45 years in prison. In seeking to justify his pardon of Hernandez, Trump also ignored the fact that Hernandez’s own country had chosen to extradite him to the U.S. for trial.

Thiessen’s 4th most damning criticism of Trump’s actions in 2025 was that “His administration bungled the release of the Epstein files.” This alleged criticism suffers from two principal flaws. First, the handling of the disclosure of the Epstein files was not being directed by some unnamed individuals working in the Trump administration; nor by Attorney General Pam Bondi, or Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche or even by FBI Director Kash Patel. No, it was by Donald Trump himself who, in an effort to arouse his voter base, had made a campaign promise to disclose the Epstein files which he suggested would reveal the misdeeds of a host of Democratic politicians and financial supporters. When Pam Bondi said that she had the Epstein files on her desk she was only trying to give credence to what she must have felt were the wishes of the man who had nominated her to be our nation’s Attorney General. At the time, she undoubtedly was unaware that this was just another of Trump’s “white lies” and that he had no intention of revealing what his one-time best friend, Jeffrey Epstein, had been doing and with whom.

The second error wasn’t a matter of “bungling” the disclosure of this files, but rather a conscious effort not to disclose the contents of those files while still proclaiming a willingness to do so. Yes, the handling of the Epstein files has turned into an unmitigated nightmare for the Trump administration, but not because it was being handled in an incompetent manner, but rather because it was being implemented to satisfy two conflicting goals. Goals that were clearly laid down by President Trump.

Trump’s remaining five 2025 misdeeds cited by Thiessen were of such little national significance that few Americans would attach any importance to them. That, of course, is the whole point of Thiessen’s action. He was purposely not seeking to reveal just how terribly Trump conducted the federal government during 2025. He was simply trying to convey the impression that he is a neutral arbiter of national affairs, willing criticize, as well as praise, the actions of our 47th President. Had he spoken more honestly, he might have offended his readers and that was something he clearly wished to avoid.