Splittsville SPECIAL EXTRA-LONG, EXTRA-LATE-POSTED JULY 4 SPECIAL!

The Disillusioned But Still Proudly Patriotic Newsletter for Fans of THE SPLIT

You think Trump is bad?

If so…you’re right! He is! He’s not only bad, he’s the worst President ever—although we don’t like that use of the word “ever,” because it sounds childish. (“This is the yummiest ice cream cone ever!”) We prefer the more adult, intellectual, “He’s the worst fucking President in history.” Which he is.

Of course, we’re not historians. (Then again, neither are you, so shut up.) Still, to prove he’s the worst President in history ever, we’ve compiled a rundown of the major scandals that have plagued and besmirched the office of POTUS since the very beginning of the nation of the country.

You’ll see, by the time you get through the list—physically exhausted, emotionally spent, morally devastated--that not only is Donald Trump’s administration the worst that there ever was, it is worse than all the other non-Trump administrations put together. That’s a bold claim, but we back it up with a graph, which means it’s science.

But first, we admit it: We used artificial intelligence—Claude, to be precise—to help us dig up 250 years of presidential scandals. Here’s one of the good—great!—things about AI: it saved us countless hours of research (i.e. Googling). It came up with an enormous list of presidential scandals in less than a minute. In fact, the list was too enormous to be usable: who wants to read a dozen dense pages of presidential scandals? Not us! And, we think, not you. So we re-queried Claude, asking him, her, or it to give us only the five worst scandals of each president. Much better.

Here’s what Claude him-, her-, or itself had to say about the assignment: “I’ve been selective—only including scandals that were historically significant, widely recognized, and genuinely damaging to the president’s reputation…. A handful of presidents have no entry—William Henry Harrison (died after one month), Zachary Taylor (died after 16 months), and James Garfield (died after 6 months) simply didn’t serve long enough to accumulate significant scandals. A few others, like Monroe and Arthur, had relatively clean administrations by historical standards.

“The most scandal-plagued presidencies by this accounting are Grant (pervasive cabinet-level corruption), Nixon (criminal in multiple dimensions), Harding (his associates were openly criminal), and Trump (two impeachments plus criminal conviction). Clinton, Reagan, and George W. Bush also rank high….”

On top of Claude’s work, we’ve done our own editing, both for brevity and…what’s the word?…oh, yeah: comedy.

1. George Washington. Two (mediocre, Frenchy) scandals.

The Jay Treaty: It was secretly negotiated with Britain, and Francophiles saw as betraying the French alliance. Since one of us (SR) is a Francophile, we now (upon learning of this abomination) deplore the so-called father of the country for his treachery.

The Citizen Genêt Affair: French envoy Edmond “Citoyen” Genêt undermined US neutrality by recruiting American privateers (aka pirates) to attack the Brit navy. Washington demanded Genêt’s recall and was sternly—and appropriately, we’re sure—reprimanded by pro-French Americans as caving to Britain.

2. John Adams. Two (mediocre) scandals.

The XYZ Affair: French agents (mysteriously labeled X, Y, and Z) demanded bribes. Adams disclosed the scandal but, proving that it’s always been thus, he was attacked by his critics nonetheless. This doesn’t seem like much of a scandal, but what the hell.

The Alien and Sedition Acts: Adams criminalized criticism of the government, jailing journalists and political opponents. This sounds all too familiar to us. Off with his head!

3. Thomas Jefferson. Three (so-so) scandals.

Sally Hemings: Jefferson had children with the enslaved Sally Hemings. This—owning slaves, making babies with a slave—was a bad look for the “all men are created equal” guy.

Burr conspiracy: Jefferson’s former Vice President (and Hamilton-killer) Aaron Burr was accused of plotting to seize territory in the west. Jefferson advocated that Burr be tried for treason; the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court acquitted him; Jefferson was embarrassed.

Embargo Act: To avoid war with Britain, Jefferson placed an embargo on foreign trade. (Please don’t ask us to explain.) This came close to crippling the American economy—although it was a boon for professional smugglers—and was viewed as an authoritarian, king-type overreach in a “no kings” country.

4. James Madison. One (kinda creepy) scandal.

The Burning of Washington: The Brits burned down the White House and the Capitol during the War of 1812. Madison fled, which naturally caused people to mock him as a coward and criticize his warmaking capability.

5. James Monroe. One (confusing) scandal.

“Corrupt bargain accusations”: This had something to do with Monroe’s inability or refusal to oversee his succession after, or maybe during, the election of 1824. We’d dispute its inclusion as a scandal but we’re too ignorant to do even that.

6. John Quincy Adams. One (confusing, not even original) scandal.

“Corrupt bargain,” yet again: Although Andrew Jackson won the vote in 1824, the House proclaimed Adams president. Then Adams turned around and appointed as Secretary of State the congressman who had swung votes his way, Henry Clay. This, unsurprisingly, was seen as a fine example of quid pro quo.

7. Andrew Jackson. Two (pretty bad) scandals.

The Indian Removal Act aka Trail of Tears: Jackson, as asshole, forced thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral lands. All of them suffered; many died. We now call this “ethnic cleansing.”

Institutionalization of the spoils system: Jackson replaced qualified government officials with ass-kissing, sycophantic party loyalists, thus imposing the blight of corrupt political patronage on our naive young nation. We’re glad that’ll never happen again.

8. Martin Van Buren. One (obnoxious) scandal.

The Panic of 1837: A major economic depression followed on the heels of his election. He didn’t much like the idea of using the government to alleviate the suffering of the nation’s citizens, and for this he was widely regarded as a fucking dick.

9. William Henry Harrison. Zero (0) scandals.

10. John Tyler. One (sort of fun) scandal.

Expulsion from the Whig Party: Here’s a president who vetoed almost all of the legislation proposed by his own (Whig) party. Cool! Then his entire cabinet resigned. Even cooler! Then the Whigs kicked him out of the party. Coolest! This hasn’t happened to any other president. Yet.

IT’S WORLD UFO DAY AND NATIONAL LINT AWARENESS DAY. SO IF YOU ENCOUNTER AN ALIEN, MAKE IT AWARE OF LINT. AND THEN—

11. James K. Polk. One (familiar sounding) scandal.

“The Manufactured Pretext”: Polk thought it would be a good idea to have a war with Mexico. Here’s how he got one: He provoked an attack by sending troops into disputed territory just north of the Rio Grande (“Big River”). As expected, the Mexicans attacked. Voila: the Mexican–American War. “Honest” Abe Lincoln, a funny-looking congressman from Illinois, accused Polk of lying to start his war of choice. Many believed he was right.

12. Zachary Taylor. Zero (0) scandals.

13. Millard Fillmore. One (racist) scandal.

The Fugitive Slave Act: This act, signed by Fillmore, ordered northern states to pursue, catch, and return to their southern hellholes anyone who had escaped slavery. This really pissed off right-thinking people up north and was one more, uh, nail in the coffin of the lead-up to the Civil War.

14. Franklin Pierce. One (racist) scandal.

The Kansas–Nebraska Act: Pierce, possibly in the middle of a lifelong alcoholic stupor (and, until recently, considered the worst president of all time), signed another racist act, this one precipitating a two-year guerrilla war (known as “Bleeding Kansas”) between pro- and anti-slavery factions.

15. James Buchanan. Two (racist) scandals.

Dred Scott interference: While the justices of the Supreme Court were deciding Dred Scott, Buchanan (improperly) lobbied them to make it as harsh as possible. The decision--which among other awful things denies citizenship to enslaved people as well as former enslaved people and their heirs, and is considered one of the worst ever made by our Robed Untouchables—was overruled, ridiculed, and shat upon after the Civil War.

Pathetic inaction as the Union collapsed: The southern states had started seceding. Buchanan stated that secession was illegal, but that’s as far as he went, saying he had no power to stop it. Enable the Civil War much, James?

16. Abraham Lincoln. One (measly) scandal.

Suspension of habeas corpus: Lincoln suspended habeas corpus without congressional approval in order to keep a bunch of Confederate traitors from helping to overthrow the government of the United States of America, God bless him. The mean Supreme Court ruled aspects of this unconstitutional.

17. Andrew Johnson. Two (one of which was racist) scandals.

Impeachment: He was the first president to be impeached, for violating the Tenure of Office Act by firing the Secretary of War. He was acquitted by one Senate vote.

Sabotage of Reconstruction: He undermined Reconstruction by pardoning Confederate leaders, vetoing civil rights legislation, and smiling benignly when Southern states enacted Black Codes that essentially restricted freedmen to living like slaves again.

18. Ulysses S. Grant. Four ($$$$$$) scandals.

The Crédit Mobilier scandal: Officials close to Grant received discounted shares in a corrupt railroad construction company that defrauded the government of millions.

The Whiskey Ring: A sprawling conspiracy involving Treasury officials, distillers, and Grant’s personal secretary defrauded the government of millions in tax revenue.

Black Friday gold panic: Financiers Jay Gould and James Fisk, with help from officials close to Grant, attempted to corner the gold market. The ensuing panic ruined thousands of investors.

Indian Ring corruption: Grant’s Secretary of War, William Belknap, sold trading post contracts at Native American reservations. He was impeached after resigning to avoid prosecution.

19. Rutherford B. Hayes. One (racist) scandal.

Stolen election of 1876: After Hayes lost the popular vote, the disputed electoral count was resolved by a corrupt, racist commission, which made this deal: in exchange for the presidency, Hayes would end Reconstruction and abandon any federal efforts to protect Black Americans from the predations of the ex-Confederate crackers who still ran the south.

20. James A. Garfield. Zero (0) scandals.

21. Chester A. Arthur. One (pre-presidential) scandal.

Spoils system past: Before becoming president, Arthur had been removed as Collector of the Port of New York for running one of the most patronage-corrupt offices in the country under the spoils system.

22. Grover Cleveland. Two (meh) scandals.

Illegitimate child scandal: Cleveland admitted to fathering a child out of wedlock, paying for the child’s care. His opponents chanted “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?” during the 1884 campaign. Today, it’s apparently no big deal for a presidential candidate—or, indeed, a president—to have had an affair with his second wife while still married to his first wife; to have had an affair with his third wife while still married to his second wife; to have fathered children with all of them; to have had a liaison with a porn actress while married to one or the other of his wives (who can keep track?); to be adjudicated guilty of sexual assault, and so on and so forth. Nope. No big deal.

Pullman strike intervention: Cleveland got a court injunction to break the strike and used federal troops to break some heads. This did not endear him to the labor movement.

23. Benjamin Harrison. One ($$$$$$) scandal.

“Billion Dollar Congress”: Look no further than Harrison’s administration for runaway spending, big-time patronage, and a Congress that appropriated a billion bucks in peacetime (a first!), a big, corrupt chunk of which went to pension fraud.

24. Grover Cleveland. Zero (0) scandals.

25. William McKinley. One (grandiose and racist) scandal.

The Philippines adventure: McKinley “annexed” the Philippines and fought a brutal war against Filipino independence fighters, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians.

26. Theodore Roosevelt. One (racist) scandal.

The Brownsville Affair: After a shooting in Brownsville, Texas, Roosevelt had the army issue dishonorable discharges of all 167 Black soldiers of the 25th Infantry without trial or evidence, stripping them of pensions. Congress slapped his wrist.

27. William Howard Taft. One (nasty little) scandal.

The Ballinger–Pinchot Affair: Richard Ballinger, Taft’s Secretary of the Interior, corruptly opened public lands to private mining interests. Taft naturally fired the whistleblower, forester Gifford Pinchot.

28. Woodrow Wilson. Two (mostly racist) scandals.

Resegregation of the federal government: Wilson, a Southern Democrat racist piece of shit, resegregated federal offices, cafeterias, and restrooms, reversing decades of post-Civil War integration, causing serious harm to Black federal employees, who thought they were finally doing well in these here United States.

The Palmer raids: Prominent member of the Wilson administration Attorney General Mitchell Palmer conducted mass warrantless (natch) arrests and deportations of thousands of immigrants and so-called radicals in what was considered (until today) the worst assault on civil liberties in US history.

29. Warren G. Harding. Three (big) scandals.

Teapot Dome: In a familiar—it’s practically a cliché—type of scandal, Interior Secretary Albert Fall secretly and illegally leased federal oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming to private companies in exchange for—wait for it!—bribes! For his unfailing devotion to corruption, Fall became the first Cabinet member ever to be imprisoned for crimes committed on the job.

Veterans Bureau fraud: Veterans Bureau chief Charles Forbes embezzled millions (when a million dollars was a lot of money) meant for WWI veterans’ hospitals and medical care. Harding apparently knew about it and did nothing to stop it.

“The Little Green House on K Street”: This was the headquarters of Harding cronies who, for a couple of years in the early 1920s, sold government jobs and pardons as well as running a high-end protection racket. These things are illegal. Seriously corrupt. A number of highly esteemed people you’ve never heard of were investigated, caught, and punished (or at least given enthusiastic slaps on their respective wrists).

30. Calvin Coolidge. One (famous) scandal.

Teapot Dome aftermath: Coolidge inherited and spent a lot of energy trying to bury the Teapot Dome investigation. Many corrupt officials of the previous—Harding—administration were grateful.

31. Herbert Hoover. One (stupid, arrogant) scandal.

Dissing of veterans: Hoover ordered General Douglas MacArthur to violently—with bayonets and tear gas—chase World War I veterans out of Washington, DC. The veterans were there to protest the government’s refusal to pay them the bonuses they’d been promised.

32. Franklin D. Roosevelt. Three (one of which was a biggie) scandals.

Japanese American internment: FDR forcibly relocated 120,000 Japanese Americans to internment (i.e., concentration) camps without due process. Many were forced to sell or lease their businesses and farms below market value. Sometimes their property was just seized by what today we refer to as “scumbags.”

Court-packing plan: After the Supreme Court struck down New Deal legislation, FDR attempted to add several additional justices to change the balance of power at the court. Many critics claimed this highly reasonable proposal was nothing more than a blatant power grab. We don’t consider it a scandal, but it’s on this list because we’re pathologically open-minded.

Extra presidential terms: Limiting presidents to two terms was a tradition or norm, not a law. His enemies saw his decision to run for a third, then a fourth term as an outrageous power grab. Guess who didn’t mind: the voters of America. Nonetheless, the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, limiting presidents to two terms, passed in 1947 (after our only four-term president had died).

33. Harry S. Truman. Two (piddly) scandals.

The five-percenters scandal: Several close Truman associates were exposed for peddling influence in exchange for such treasures as fur coats and deep freezers.

The IRS scandal: A sweeping investigation in 1950 uncovered widespread corruption in the IRS. Over 160 IRS employees were fired and several faced the wrath of the law.

IT’S ALSO NATIONAL ANISETTE DAY, THIRSTY THURSDAY, AND I FORGOT DAY. DON’T PRETEND THAT’S A MERE COINCIDENCE.

34. Dwight D. Eisenhower. Two (one cliché, one interesting) scandals.

The Sherman Adams scandal: Eisenhower’s chief of staff accepted gifts (a vicuña coat! hotel stays!) from a businessman seeking government favors.

The U-2 lie: The Soviets shot down a CIA U-2 spy plane over their territory. The administration, assuming the pilot had been killed, falsely claimed it was a weather aircraft. Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, produced Francis Gary Powers, the captured and very much alive pilot. Oops! The deception was exposed, scuttling an upcoming summit.

35. John F. Kennedy. Two (one geopolitical, one domestic) scandals.

Bay of Pigs debacle: A CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles failed disastrously in its attempt—approved by JFK—to overthrow Castro. It was the quintessential Cold War embarrassment.

Extramarital affairs: Kennedy, a confirmed horndog, had a number of “friends with benefits” while in office, including Judith Exner (who was also involved with Mafia types involved in CIA assassination plots, creating national security risks monitored by the FBI) and (so they say) Marilyn Monroe.

36. Lyndon B. Johnson. Two (one geopolitical, one venal) scandals.

Gulf of Tonkin deception: LBJ used a largely make-believe North Vietnamese attack on American ships to secure congressional authorization to escalate the stupid Vietnam War.

The Bobby Baker affair: When Johnson was Senate Majority Leader—before he became Vice President—his protégé Bobby Baker used political connections to amass a fortune through tax evasion, fraud, and theft.

37. Richard M. Nixon. Four (political/awful) scandals.

Watergate: The appropriately named CREEP—the Committee to Re-elect the President, aka Nixon’s campaign—sent a team to break into Democratic Party headquarters. The perps (“the Watergate Burglars”) were caught. Then came the cover-up. Then the certainty of Nixon’s impeachment. Then his resignation to avoid impeachment—the only president (so far) to resign. Good times.

Secret bombing of Cambodia: Nixon illegally ordered massive bombing of Cambodia, falsifying records to conceal it from Congress and the public.

Enemies List / IRS abuse: Nixon compiled an “enemies list” of political opponents and journalists. The plan: to order the IRS to audit and harass them. This is illegal.

Agnew’s corruption: Nixon’s thuggish Vice President, Spiro Agnew, resigned and pleaded no contest to felony tax evasion for accepting bribes as Maryland governor and as Vice President. He was the only VP (so far) to be forced from office for criminal conduct.

38. Gerald Ford. One (quid pro quo?) scandal.

Pardon of Nixon: Ford, who Nixon tapped as his VP after Agnew’s flameout, and who became President after Nixon’s flameout, unconditionally pardoned Nixon of all his crimes. Citizens of the nation despised him for this, and showed their feelings at their earliest convenience (the election of 1976).

39. Jimmy Carter. One (dumb) scandal.

The Bert Lance affair: Carter was upright and scandal-free, but his budget director, Bert Lance, was a bit of a scumbag. Lance resigned after his skeevy banking practices back home in Georgia blew up big-time, embarrassing the upright and formerly scandal-free administration.

40. Ronald Reagan. Three (rather serious) scandals.

Iran-Contra: The Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Iran and illegally funneled profits to Nicaraguan Contra rebels, defying a congressional ban. Reagan claimed befuddlement, but evidence suggested otherwise.

The HUD scandal: There was widespread favoritism—i.e., fraud—in the Department of Housing and Urban Development under Reagan, in which connected developers were awarded no-bid, low-income housing contracts.

The Savings and Loan crisis: Reagan deregulation allowed banks to engage in reckless speculation. The inevitable collapse cost taxpayers $130 billion, the largest financial scandal in US history at the time.

41. George H.W. Bush. Two (rather serious) scandals.

Iran-Contra pardons: On the eve of trials that could have implicated Bush, he pardoned six Iran-Contra figures—including former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger—which special counsel Lawrence Walsh called a cover-up.

“Passportgate”: State Department officials, ordered by political appointees, searched the passport files of Bill Clinton and Ross Perot during the 1992 presidential campaign. This is illegal.

42. Bill Clinton. Three (two horndoggy, one bullshit) scandals.

Monica Lewinsky…impeachment: Clinton had a sexual relationship with “that woman,” a White House intern, then more or less lied about it under oath; this led the throbbing members of the House to impeach him for perjury and obstruction of justice. The Senate frowned severely but acquitted him.

Whitewater: A tedious independent counsel investigation into a failed Arkansas land deal convicted some Clinton associates; there were no charges against Clinton, but the investigation was (purposefully) deeply damaging.

Sexual misconduct allegations: A number of women, including former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones, accused Clinton of sexual harassment and assault. The Jones lawsuit led directly to the Lewinsky investigation and broadcast throughout the land questions about his treatment of women.

43. George W. Bush. Five (rather serious) scandals.

Iraq WMD deception: To whip up public support for going to war against Iraq, the Bush administration trumpeted bullshit “intelligence” to insist Saddam Hussein had amassed a vast collection of weapons of mass destruction. And, no, there were no WMDs.

Abu Ghraib torture: Disgusting photographs revealed US soldiers yukking it up as they waterboarded (which is to say: tortured) and otherwise humiliated Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. The ensuing scandal undermined America’s moral standing among the nations of the world (you may recall when America had moral standing) and revealed the moral rot of the “W” administration.

Warrantless surveillance program: The NSA, directed by George W and without court orders, wiretapped the international communications of US citizens. This, of course, violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Hurricane Katrina response: The catastrophic failure of FEMA to respond to Hurricane Katrina, in which over 1,800 Americans died, exposed gross incompetence and cronyism in Bush’s appointment of the tragically unqualified Michael Brown as agency director. “You’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie,” said Bush, unironically.

US attorney firings: The nominally independent Justice Department fired eight US attorneys for political reasons such as allegedly ignoring voter fraud claims or prosecuting GOP miscreants. Perjury investigations of senior Department officials followed.

44. Barack Obama. Three (one serious, two less so) scandals.

NSA mass surveillance: Edward Snowden revealed that Obama’s NSA was (still!) surveilling phone records and internet activity of US citizens.

IRS targeting of right-wing groups: Obama’s IRS was accused of improperly examining the Tea Party and other wingnuts who sought tax-exempt status; the administration’s handling of these accusations was clumsy.

Fast and Furious: An ATF operation allowed guns to flow illegally to Mexican drug cartels in the hope that the guns, like bread crumbs, would lead directly to the lairs of the bad guys. One of those guns was used to kill a US Border Patrol agent, predictably causing the wingnuts to blow all their fuses.

45. Donald J. Trump. Five (rather serious) scandals.

First impeachment: By withholding military aid, Trump tried to squeeze Ukraine into announcing it was investigating Joe Biden, Trump’s opponent in the upcoming 2020 election. Trump was acquitted by the Senate GOP majority.

Second impeachment: After the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot by MAGA shitheads seeking to overturn the election, Trump was impeached, this time for incitement of insurrection, and was again acquitted by the Senate GOP majority. He is the only twice-impeached president, which doesn’t mean he won’t be the first thrice-impeached president.

Russia, Russia, Russia: Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation documented extensive Russian interference in the 2016 election and multiple instances of potential obstruction of justice by Trump. Mueller inexplicably declined to press charges.

Campaign-finance violations: Before the 2016 election, Trump paid hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels to keep her from, among other things, describing his peculiar mushroom-shaped phallus. Those payments contributed to his conviction of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records. No other president has ever been convicted of a felony.

Classified-documents thievery: When he left office after his first term, Trump illegally brought hundreds of classified documents with him to Mar-a-Lago, where they were beautifully stacked in a gold-ornamented bathroom. The federal indictment that inevitably followed was dismissed on a technicality.

46. Joe Biden. Three (mid-level) scandals.

Classified documents mishandling: Biden took with him some classified documents from his tenure as Vice President, storing them in unsecured locations around his house. A special counsel characterized him as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and declined to prosecute.

Hunter Biden: Joe’s son no doubt traded on his father’s name to lubricate foreign business deals. This caused House Republicans to salivate uncontrollably, but they never came up with evidence that would enable them to impeach, hang, and/or apply thumbscrews to Hunter’s father.

That debate: Biden’s pathetic performance at the first (and only) debate with Trump in the lead-up to the 2024 election caused the Democratic Party to melt down, led to Biden’s reluctant withdrawal from the race, and left the replacement candidate, Kamala Harris, with little time to prepare for the battle.

47. Trump again

Where to start? When, if ever, to end? Claude whittled it down to eight, and we just added two three four more. “Is that all?” No, but how much time do you, or does anyone, have?

The crypto and financial conflicts: Trump (and his wife) launched a “memecoin” that foreign interests could—and did!—purchase as a way of currying favor with the President. Example: The UAE made what’s been characterized as the largest cryptocurrency transaction in history, a $2 billion stablecoin purchase in World Liberty Financial, which critics describe as essentially the president’s personal crypto fund. In return, Trump permitted the UAE to import a larger quantity of US-produced AI chips than allowed under the Biden administration.

The Qatar plane: Qatar offered Trump a luxury 747 jet, which he sought to use as the new Air Force One. Democrats attempted to block it, characterizing it as a straightforward foreign gift to a sitting president. Critics noted that beyond the ethics questions, it reflected Trump’s desire to be treated with the trappings of royalty.

The Signal scandal: In March 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accidentally added the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a Signal group chat in which military strike plans against Houthi rebels in Yemen were discussed—before the strikes happened. A second Signal chat then emerged in which Hegseth shared sensitive information about the same imminent attack with his wife, brother, and personal lawyer, none of whom work for the government.

DOGE and the Musk fallout: Elon Musk was installed as the effective head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which conducted sweeping layoffs, shut down agencies, and eliminated programs at a pace and scale that triggered more than 127 lawsuits in the administration’s first two months. Legal scholars argued that many early actions violated federal law and the Constitution. The elimination of the US Agency for International Development is estimated to have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of the world’s poorest people (including many children), with other estimates predicting the total will be in the millions.

The Iran war: Trump’s attacks on Iran, made without Congressional approval and for a series of self-contradictory reasons, have killed thousands (including [at least] 13 Americans,), injured tens of thousands, played havoc with the world economy, taught Iran that its control of the Strait of Hormuz makes it a dominant Middle East power, and made America’s relationship with Israel even more fucked up than it had been previously. That it looks like Trump’s constantly changing announcements about peace, war, ceasefire, and renewed hostilities have enabled manipulation of the stock market has become a mildly interesting footnote.

The Epstein files: Despite a December 2025 legal deadline requiring the release of all Epstein files, lawmakers maintained that around 50% remained unreleased. Trump and his Justice Department are literally covering up evidence concerning a child sex-trafficking ring which will implicate Trump and a number of other soon-to-be infamous people.

Defiance of courts: A Washington Post analysis found that by mid-2025, the administration had defied judges and court orders in roughly one-third of all cases filed against it, a level of defiance described by legal experts as unprecedented in American presidential history and raising fears of a constitutional crisis.

Crackpots and creeps in the Cabinet: RFK Jr.’s leadership of Health and Human Services was marked by anti-vaccine decisions, mental health grant cuts, and a decimation of medical and scientific research. Pete Hegseth is a Brylcreemed buffoon. Kash Patel’s tenure as FBI director centered on accusations of politicizing the bureau and using FBI resources for personal vendettas. Sean Duffy’s role as Secretary of Transportation is a joke. Todd Blanche’s replacement of Pam Bondi, making him Acting Attorney General, stands as a new low for the office. Wrestling executive-made-Secretary-of-Education Linda McMahon called AI “A-One.” Et fucking cetera.

ICE: We’re frankly astounded that Claude didn’t mention this. (See? AI has its “issues.”) Trump, Jewish Nazi ghoul Stephen Miller, and former head of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, have overseen a Gestapo-like attack on the immigrant community, sweeping up the innocent as well as the possibly-guilty-but-not-properly-charged, dispatching them to dangerous countries or hellhole concentration camps, murdering in cold blood two protesters in Minneapolis, and utterly trashing the rule of law.

The Pardons: Trump’s second term has seen a historically unusual use of the pardon power, both in volume and in the nature of the recipients. He has granted executive clemency to more than 1,700 individuals as of June 2026, and a June 2026 Reuters review found that 96% of clemency grants failed to meet longstanding DOJ standards. Those pardoned or granted clemency include: the January 6th Capitol rioters (who, among other things, attacked and killed cops and shat on the House floor), 2020 Election “Fake Electors” (including Rudy Giuliani, former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and attorneys Sidney Powell and John Eastman), Changpeng Zhao (founder of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, who had pleaded guilty to violating money laundering laws and who had worked extensively with the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial business), Ross Ulbricht (creator of Silk Road, sentenced to life in prison for his role in facilitating illegal markets, including convictions for distributing narcotics), George Santos (colorful but repellent New York Republican liar and fraud), and corrupt politicians, including Henry Cuellar and Glen Casada. There are more, obvs.

The depraved alterations to the nation’s capital: The summary destruction of the East Wing of the White House; the gaudy besmirching of the Oval Office and the surrounds with gold tat; the paving over of the Rose Garden and its conversion to a Mar-a-Lago patio; the no-bid “restoration” of the Reflecting Pool into an algae-clogged swamp: the list goes on and on. And don’t even mention that proposed Triumphal Arch.

The Hijacking of America 250: Trump funneled taxpayer money from the Congressionally-created America 250 celebration to his shady, unregulated Freedom 250 and deceived donors into sending their contributions to the latter. Where all that money went remains a mystery—it certainly didn’t end up being spent on The Great American State Fail (sic), which is an ongoing embarrassment.

And that’s—what? What about NATO? And Venezuela? And Canada? And tariffs? And Greenland? And “Cuba’s next”? Fine. Feel free to compose your own list. The point—that Donald Trump’s second term has been and will continue to be the most criminal, corrupt, scandal-drenched administration in history—is splendidly illustrated in the following graphic.

We were going to posit an average of two scandals per day, from January 20, 2025, until today (which is two days prior to America’s 250^th birthday). Then we thought: “Let’s be fair. Let’s be conservative.” So we’re calling it one scandal a day, to which we added those of Trump’s first term. That figure vastly outnumbers those of every other presidential administration put together. Read it and weep:

Appalling isn’t the word. Bear in mind, too, that all of this has taken place within what we might call the ambient meta-scandal of Republican complicity: The GOP could have put a stop to this years ago, let alone last month. They chose not to and, we predict, no matter how wretched things get, they will continue to choose not to.

Which leaves us, once again, in Splitsville, our term for a single geo-political entity harboring two or more distinct “nations.” In one, there are those (call them “the morons”) who regard all this corruption, theft, lying, and criminal activity, and think, “YEAH! THAT’S FOR ME! I LOVE TRUMP!” In another are the Republicans—voters, office holders, party apparatchiks, propagandists; call them “the assholes”—who don’t actually love all this crap but, for reasons of ambition, greed, or sloth, promote or minimize it or try to ignore it.

In the third are the rest of us.

Happy Fourth of July.

WHEN MAGA FINALLY SECEDES AND CREATES THEIR OWN COUNTRY, PREPARE FOR YOUR FIRST (UNWISE) VISIT BY READING THE SPLIT.