July 21, 2026
By Thomas B. Edsall [NY Times op-ed]]
Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.
Donald Trump is the black-thumb president.
Let’s start small. He persuaded FIFA to quash the one-game suspension of the U.S. striker Folarin Balogun, after which the American men’s soccer team suffered a humiliating 4-1 loss to Belgium.
When Trump first announced plans to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, he said it would cost $1.5 million. On July 15, The Associated Press reported that despite this initial promise, “the bill ballooned to more than $16 million by June. Trump had said the repairs would last a century, but within days of the project’s initial completion last month, the water was beset by an algae bloom and pieces of the new coating appeared to be peeling off the bottom.”
These setbacks are just two examples of Trump’s kiss of death, the defeats and economic setbacks that have come to characterize his second term in office, including the job losses following Trump’s imposition of tariffs, the surge in the national debt after passage of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the economic havoc resulting from his war against Iran.
Trump is one of the most — if not the most — ham-handed presidents in the nation’s history.
I asked Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University, for his take on Trump in 2026. He replied by email:
Governing via conspiracy theories, personal whim and wish-casting, Trump has taken his place as the most consistently inept president of this century. At home and abroad, in many cabinet and sub-cabinet agencies, the administration’s culture is dominated by incompetence.
Trump’s infliction of harm is not a result of bad luck or malign interference by foreign and domestic adversaries — the common fate of American presidents. In the overwhelming majority of cases, Trump himself initiated the policies and actions that turned belly-up.
One of the most egregious examples, perhaps, is his decision to join Israel’s bombing of nuclear facilities in Iran on June 21, 2025.
“The strikes were a spectacular military success,” Trump declared in an address to the nation that day. “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”
Despite these claims of success 13 months ago, the United States and Israel struck again this year, beginning on Feb. 28, and the war on Iran is in its fifth month, with the conflict intensifying and Americans beginning, once again, to die.
On his Substack, Popular Information, Judd Legum documented 24 instances between April 17 and July 13 of Trump making some variation of the claim “that the Strait of Hormuz was ‘open’ or controlled by the United States.”
Trump also let the Iranians know that “You got beat to hell” and boasted that it was a “Total and complete victory. 100 percent.”
More important than Trump’s false claims of victory, the war on Iran — a war of choice — has inflicted severe damage on the United States, including the death of at least 17 American military personnel and the wounding of more than 400 others.
According to Brown University’s Iran War Energy Cost Tracker, Americans are paying $71.3 billion more for gasoline and diesel alone. The increases in fuel costs translate into average household costs of $543.94 as I write. It will be more when you read this.
Let’s take a closer look at some of Trump’s proudest achievements.
On April 2, 2025, he announced “Liberation Day,” his plan to impose tariffs on America’s trading partners….
DSD@ Politicaldg101
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