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For the former prime minister Theresa May, one of the most pressing matters she confronted during her encounter with Donald Trump a few days after his inauguration went beyond mere diplomacy.

May had travelled to Washington in 2017 with the intention of persuading the new US president to make a supportive statement about Nato. Little did she expect that she would be calling her husband, Philip, to warn him that images of the US president of holding her hand as they walked through the White House would soon be flashing around the world.

With Trump out of power, those who had ringside seats during four years of dangerous and often chaotic foreign policy are now describing their often bruising encounters in a major new documentary series.

The three-part BBC series, Trump Takes on the World, by the award-winning documentary maker Norma Percy, reveals extraordinary access to key observers of the president.

With testimony from a whos who of world leaders and senior US officials, it offers an unmediated reflection of Trump shorn of political hypocrisies.

It was not just May who found Trump unsettling: to European diplomatic observers, he seemed a strange creature. And he also triggered alarm among some American officials in the room with him, with one defence official noting that the presidents notoriously short attention span suggested a squirrel careening through the traffic.

Mays encounter with Trump, which is described to Percy by British aides as well as Trump insiders, was a taste of what was to come. May was seen as not strong by Trump, according to KT McFarland, the former US deputy national security adviser. But the prime minister had gone into the meeting determined to persuade the president to make a statement backing Nato and warn him over his closeness to Vladimir Putin.

The meeting took a bizarre twist as they walked through the White House.

He held her hand going through the colonnades, which took us all by surprise, and as it turns out, took Theresa by surprise, Fiona McLeod Hill, the former joint chief of staff at No 10, told Percy.

She couldnt really take her hand back, so she was stuck And the first thing she said [afterwards] was I need to call Philip just to let him know that Ive been holding hands with another man before it hits the media.

Before May had the opportunity to call her husband, Trump hosted her for lunch, where another boundary-shattering episode was waiting. First May was treated to the full bloom one of Trumps stream-of-consciousness rants, described by Thomas Shannon, then US undersecretary for political affairs, as running the gamut from his own inauguration to his disdain for the press.

Then, keen to raise the issue of Putin, May asked Trump if he had spoken to the Russian leader, which Trump denied. At that point, however, Trumps chief of staff intervened to tell the president that Putin had actually called, but not been put through.

Hill takes up the story of the toe-curling outburst. Trump at this point looks not orange but red. He flipped. Furious. In front of May, he scolded his advisers in what Shannon recalled as an unseemly moment. He said: Youre telling me that Vladimir Putin called the White House and youre only telling me now during this lunch? Vladimir Putin is the only man in the world who can destroy the United States and I didnt take his call.

May was far from alone in being exposed to Trumps flagrant disregard for boundaries.

From his unilateral withdrawals from the Iranian nuclear treaty and the Paris climate accord to his dealings with the Palestinians, Russia and China, few even those close to him could ever fully grasp the extent of his unpredictability or his disdain for detail.

The former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was thrown off balance by Trumps behaviour during an encounter at a G20 meeting in Hamburg also in 2017.

Like May, Turnbull had important issues on his mind, in this case steel tariffs. Taking his chance, Turnbull collared Trump, who was obsessing about something else. Donald said: Malcolm, do you want to see my SCIF? It is so cool. I had no idea what he was talking about. I thought he was talking about a boat [a skiff]. We turned around a corner and there was this big steel box about the size of a shipping container.

Trump pulled Turnbull into what turned out to be a sensitive compartmented information facility, an ultra-secure communications hub, with the new French president, Emmanuel Macron, also in tow.

He said: This is so cool when youre in there, nobody can hear you, not even the Chinese. Its so secret.

Expectations of Trump from European leaders were not so much low as non-existent. For the former French president Franois Hollande, who dealt with Trump only briefly, an early red flag was raised when the US leader asked him in all earnestness who he should appoint to his team in the White House. I thought he was just being courteous; it was pretty outrageous. Imagine I phoned Obama and said: You know France well, who should I appoint as an adviser? Later, briefing his successor Macron during the transition, Hollande was clear how he regarded the US leader sentiments Percy herself regards as a summing up how many foreign leaders viewed the Trump era.

I said to [Macron], Hollande recalls, dont expect anything from Donald Trump. Do not think youll be able to change his mind. Dont think that its possible to turn him or seduce him. Dont imagine that he wont follow through with his own agenda.

Some friends asked me why I was doing it, said Percy, who has made the documentaries The Death of Yugoslavia, End of Empire and Watergate, and who filmed the new series under lockdown. The view was that we knew what Trump was like. He was on the news every night. But this is the inside story of those who had to deal with him.

Trump Takes on the World begins on Wednesday at 9pm on BBC Two

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How Donald Trump's hand-holding led to panicky call home by Theresa May - The Guardian

While the House impeachment managers have focused on events leading up to the Capitol breach, it was the real time response from Donald Trump to the rioters which yields smoking gun evidence of his intent to incite the insurrection. Trump failed to promptly call off his followers or to summon timely assistance for the police, despite pleas from his fellow Republicans caught up in the mayhem. His final words that day connect his incendiary statements about a stolen election to the storming of the Capitol.

As he watched the insurrection unfold on television, with some delight according to witnesses, Trump made no immediate demand that the rioters leave the Capitol. He failed to heed the pleas of Republicans in Congress, who desperately tried to call him with no response. We are begging essentially, and he was nowhere to be found, Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio said. We know Trump did call Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama after mistakenly dialing Senator Mike Lee of Utah. Trump called Tuberville not to ask about his safety or to offer assistance, but to discuss a strategy for objecting to the count of electoral votes.

When rioters breached the Capitol in full view of cameras, Trump did not appear on television to denounce them or tell his followers to cease and desist. Instead, he stoked the incitement with a tweet to attack his vice president and double down on claims about a stolen election. He wrote, Mike Pence did not have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution, giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones.

Trump later sent a tweet in the passive voice, Stay peaceful! He sent a similar message more than half an hour later. He still had not appeared in person on any medium at this point. Trump eventually released a video that told his supporters, You have to go home now. But he prefaced that with another incitement, I know your pain. I know you are hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it. He praised the rioters, We love you. You are very special.

However, the smoking gun tweet came that evening but was later deleted. Trump wrote, These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly and unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love and in peace. Remember this day forever!

Trump admitted in his own words that violent protest was a likely moment of grievances over an election that thwarted the will of his supporters. But it was Trump himself who ginned up these grievances for two months with a drumbeat of lies about the election that culminated in the fiery rhetoric of his rally. In his tweet, Trump further assured rioters with love that they had acted as patriots rather than insurrectionists. Their storming of the Capitol, he implied, should be forever cherished instead of reviled.

The rioters themselves understood they were summoned by him. Video of the mayhem shows them shouting at the police their claims of legitimacy, We were invited by the president of the United States. The Trump loyalist Jenna Ryan declared after the Capitol breach, We were going in solidarity with President TrumpDonald TrumpDOJ to seek resignations of most Trump-appointed US attorneys: report Trump attorney withdraws request to not hold impeachment trial on Saturday Kinzinger in op-ed calls on GOP senators to convict Trump in impeachment trial MORE. This was our way of going and stopping the steal. Meanwhile, Trump has yet to acknowledge the victory of Joe Biden or to retract his claims of a landslide win snatched away by massive fraud.

Allan Lichtman is an election forecaster and a distinguished professor of history at American University. He is the author of The Embattled Vote in America: From the Founding to the Present. He tweets @AllanLichtman.

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Here is the smoking gun evidence to back impeachment of Donald Trump | TheHill - The Hill

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At noon on 20 January, presuming he doesnt have to be dragged out of the White House as a trespasser, Donald Trump will make one last walk across the South Lawn, take his seat inside Marine One, and be gone.

From that moment, Trumps rambunctious term as president of the United States will be over. But in one important aspect, the challenge presented by his presidency will have only just begun: the possibility that he will face prosecution for crimes committed before he took office or while in the Oval Office.

Youve never had a president before who has invited so much scrutiny, said Bob Bauer, White House counsel under Barack Obama. This has been a very eventful presidency that raises hard questions about what happens when Trump leaves office.

For the past four years Trump has been shielded from legal jeopardy by a justice department memo that rules out criminal prosecution of a sitting president. But the second he boards that presidential helicopter and fades into the horizon, all bets are off.

The Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, is actively investigating Trumps business dealings. The focus described in court documents is extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization including possible bank fraud.

The government is going to have decisions to make about how to respond

A second major investigation by the fearsome federal prosecutors of the southern district of New York has already led to the conviction of Trumps former lawyer Michael Cohen. He pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations relating to the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels, the adult film actor who alleged an affair with Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.

During the course of the prosecution, Cohen implicated a certain Individual 1 Trump as the mastermind behind the felony. Though the investigation was technically closed last year, charges could be revisited once Trumps effective immunity is lifted.

It all points to a momentous and fiendishly difficult legal challenge, fraught with political danger for the incoming Biden administration. Should Trump be investigated and possibly prosecuted for crimes committed before and during his presidency?

It looks like the incoming administration will have to confront some form of these issues, said Bauer, who is co-author of After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency. The government is going to have decisions to make about how to respond, given the potential that it becomes a source of division.

Any attempt to hold Trump criminally liable in a federal prosecution would be a first in US history. No exiting president has ever been pursued in such a way by his successor (Richard Nixon was spared the ordeal by Gerald Fords contentious presidential pardon).

Previous presidents have tended to take the view that it is better to look forwards in the name of national healing than backwards at the failings of their predecessor. And for good reasons any prosecution would probably be long and difficult, act as a huge distraction, and expose the incoming president to accusations that they were acting like a tinpot dictator hounding their political enemy.

If you do nothing you are saying that though the president of the United States is not above the law, in fact he is

That a possible Trump prosecution is being discussed at all is a sign of the exceptional nature of the past four years. Those who argue in favor of legal action accept that there are powerful objections to going after Trump but urge people to think about the alternative the dangers of inaction.

If you do nothing you are saying that though the president of the United States is not above the law, in fact he is. And that would set a terrible precedent for the country and send a message to any future president that there is no effective check on their power, said Andrew Weissmann, who was a lead prosecutor in the Mueller investigation looking into coordination between Russia and Trumps 2016 campaign.

As head of one of the three main teams answering to the special counsel Robert Mueller, Weissmann had a ringside seat on what he calls Trumps lawless White House. In his new book, Where Law Ends, he argues that the prevailing view of the 45th president is that following the rules is optional and that breaking them comes at minimal, if not zero, cost.

Weissmann told the Guardian that there would be a price to be paid if that attitude went unchallenged once Trump leaves office. One of the things we learnt from this presidency was that our system of checks and balances is not as strong as we thought, and that would be exacerbated by not holding him to account.

Bauer, who was an adviser to Biden during the presidential campaign but has no role in the transition team, is also worried that a sort of double immunity would be established. Presidents cannot be prosecuted while in office under justice department rules, but under such a double immunity nor could they be prosecuted once leaving the White House in the interests of national healing.

And so the president is immune coming and going, and I think that would be very difficult to square with the idea that he or she is not above the law.

Biden has made clear his lack of enthusiasm for prosecuting Trump, saying it would be probably not very good for democracy. But he has also made clear that he would leave the decision to his appointed attorney general, following the norm of justice department independence that Trump has repeatedly shattered.

Other prominent Democrats have taken a more bullish position, adding pressure on the incoming attorney general to be aggressive. During the Democratic primary debates, Elizabeth Warren called for an independent taskforce to be set up to investigate any Trump corruption or other criminal acts in office.

Kamala Harris also took a stance that may come to haunt the new administration. The vice president-elect, asked by NPR last year whether she would want to see charges brought by the Department of Justice, replied: I believe that they would have no choice and that they should, yes.

Trump issued a series of pardons largely characterized by political self-interest

There are several possible ways in which the justice department could be forced to confront the issue of whether or not to take on Trump. One would be through a revelation as yet unknown, following the emergence of new information.

Weissmann points out that the Biden administration will have access to a wealth of documents that were previously withheld from Congress during the impeachment inquiry, including intelligence agency and state department files. Official communications sent by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump through their personal emails and messaging apps an ironic move given the flak Hillary Clinton endured from the Trump family in 2016 for using her personal email server may also become available for scrutiny.

But the two most likely avenues for the pursuit of any criminal investigation would relate to Trumps use of his presidential pardon power and alleged obstruction of justice. Trump issued a series of pardons largely characterized by political self-interest, Weissmann said.

Though the presidential pardon power is extensive, it is not, as Trump has claimed, absolute including the absolute right to pardon himself. He is not immune from bribery charges if he were found to have offered somebody a pardon in exchange for their silence in a judicial case.

For Weissmann, the way Trump continually teased his associates including Roger Stone and Paul Manafort with the promise of pardons in the middle of federal prosecutions was especially egregious. There may be a legitimate reason to give somebody a pardon, but whats the legitimate reason for dangling a pardon other than to thwart that person from cooperating with the government?

Perhaps the most solid evidence of criminal wrongdoing compiled against Trump concerns obstruction of justice. John Bolton, the former national security adviser, went so far as to say that for Trump, obstruction of justice to further his own political interests was a way of life.

In his final report on the Russia investigation, Mueller laid out 10 examples of Trumps behavior that could be legally construed as obstruction. Though Mueller declined to say whether they met the standard for charges the US attorney general, Bill Barr, suggested they did not, but gave no explanation for his thinking he did leave them in plain sight for any future federal prosecutor to revisit.

In one of the starkest of those incidents, Trump tried to scupper the special counsel inquiry itself by ordering his White House counsel, Don McGahn, to fire Mueller. When that became public he compounded the abuse by ordering McGahn to deny the truth in an attempt at cover-up.

Weissmann, who played a key role in gathering the evidence against Trump in the Mueller report, said that such obstruction goes to the heart of why Trump should face prosecution.

When the president, no matter who it is, obstructs a special counsel investigation there have to be consequences. If you can obstruct an investigation criminally but you dont have to worry about ever being prosecuted, well then, theres no point in ever appointing a special counsel.

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How real is the threat of prosecution for Donald Trump post-presidency? - The Guardian

We'retentatively starting to emerge from the four year-long national nightmare of Donald Trump's presidency, but the reckoning of what the nation endured will take years to really understand. Trump was terrible in so many ways that it's hard to catalog them all: His sociopathic lack of regard for others. His towering narcissism. His utter ease with lying. His cruelty and sadism. The glee he took in cheating and stomping on anything good and decent. His misogyny and racism. His love of encouraging violence,only equaled by his personal cowardice.

But of all the repulsive character traits in a man so wholly lacking inany redeemable qualities, perhaps the most perplexing to his opponents was Trump's incredible stupidity. On one hand, it was maddening that a man so painfully dumb, a man who clearly could barely read even on those rare occasions when he deigned towear glasses still had the low cunning necessary to take over the Republican Party and then the White House.

Onthe other hand, it was the one aspect of Trump's personality that kept hope alive. Surely a man so stupid, his opponents believed,will one day blunder so badly he can't be saved, even by his mostpowerful sycophants. That has proved to be the case as Trump fumbles his way through a failed coup, unable and unwilling to see that stealing the election from Joe Biden is a lost cause.

Trump's unparalleled idiocy gave us a few laughs along the way, which wesorely needed in those troubled times. With that in mind, here's a list of the 10most jaw-droppingly stupid moments of Trump's White House tenure.

1) That time Trump suggested injecting household cleaners into people's lungs to cure them of the coronavirus. Even for connoisseurs of Trumpian idiocy, it was a shocker when, after hearing that bleach and Lysol can kill the coronavirus on surfaces, got behind the podium in the White House briefing room and declared, "I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. ... Is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning, because, you see, it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs?"

He then pointed at his head, and said, "I'm, like, a person who has a good you-know-what."

The situation was only made worse because this nitwit said this during the daily coronavirus "press briefing," during that surreal periodof the spring andearly summer in which he held forth daily, often for hours, presenting himself as not just a leader but an expert. Never has a man believed he knew so much while knowing so little.

2) That timehe looked at a solareclipse without eye protection after everyone was repeatedly told not to look at the eclipse without eye protection.

It was at this moment that I realized that Trump voters must like it that he's an stone cold idiot, if only because they enjoy the wayit triggers the liberals.

3) That time he couldn't admit he was wrong when he tweeted that Hurricane Dorian was going to hit Alabama, and so he drew on a weather map with a Sharpie to make it seem like he was right.

Again, what really elevates some of the best dumbass-Trump moments is when his stupidity combines with his massive ego to create a dunderhead singularity.

4) That timehe threw paper towels at people in Puerto Ricowho had just endured Hurricane Maria.

Trump's ego plus Trump's stupidity is just sublime. But when his stupidity combined with racism, the effect was often more chilling than funny.

5) That time he asked members of the National Security Council if they could nuke hurricanes rather than letting them hit the U.S.

Hurricanes drew out Trump's fatuousness like a good cheese draws out the notes in fine wine.

6) That time Trump was told to talk about Frederick Douglass at a Black History Month event, clearly had no idea who that was, and while trying to bullshit his way through the talk, implied that Douglass was still alive.

"Douglass is an example of somebody who's done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice," Trump said, using the same strategy that a sixth-grader who hasn't read the book might employto bluffthrough a bookreport. There was a piece of paper in front of Trump that likely had more information about the author and abolitionist who was bornenslaved and died in 1895 as one of the most famous Americans, but Trump, as ever too vain to wear his glasses in public, probably couldn't read it.

7) That time he suggested that his much-desired border wall could just maybe be buttressed with alligator moats.

This one was fondly remembered by the Salon staff as an iconic example of the wayTrump's racism amplifies his imbecility in an almost exponential fashion.

8) That timehe asked Canada's prime minister, Justin Trudeau, "Didn't you guys burn down the White House?"

At this point one almost wants to give him half-credit for remembering that the White House wasburned down at one point by the British in the War of 1812. But then one remembers that Trump has declared himself the protector and savior of American history, so much so that he's created the "1776 Commission" in a supposed effortto preserve what he considers the proper teaching of history. All he means by that, of course, is teaching kids that the blatant racism of the past was noble and just, and not so much actual facts, let aloneactual history.

9) That time Trump "liked" a tweet praising Rihanna.

This is a deep cut, but a personal favorite of mine, mostly because Ashley Feinberg at Slate did a detailed explorationofthis topic and demonstrated it was almost certainly the result of stupidity, horninessand Trump's short and stubby fingers. It started when Trump liked and then unliked a tweet by a woman named Heben Nigatu declaring, "Every new Rihanna interview makes me grow stronger. We stan a work/life balance queen!!!"

As Feinberg noted, Rihanna's name was trending on Twitter the night of the weird "like."If users clicked that trending topic, they sawa photo of Rihanna lounging on a couch in a see-through leotard. As "our president is furiously, pathologically horny," Feinberg concludes, he likely "clicked on this photo of Rihanna while making a series of steamboat noises and sweating profusely," which led him to a list of tweets mentioning Rihanna including Nigatu's tweet. At which point his fingers, which are too small to be controlled with any grace, likely slid unconsciously over the "like" button.

As further evidence, Feinberg points out Trump had, in the past, done the same to a sexy photo of Katy Perry.

10) Whenhe called the Second Epistle to the Corinthians "TwoCorinthians."

This isanother personal favorite, because, like many other ofTrump's dumber moments such aswhen he tried to put money on a communion platter, orwhen he held aBible as if he were afraid it mightbite him, orwhen he seemed confused by the idea that heshould ask God for forgiveness it was a fun reminder that Trump's professed Christianity is not just an act, but an acthe can barely be bothered to keep going. It's delicious because it's a twofer, not just exposing Trump's stupidity, but the absolute shamelessness of the Christian right leaders who backed him. (For those who may be unclear: This book of the Bible is abbreviated as "2 Corinthians" but always called "Second Corinthians.")

Every time Trump fumbled in this way, and the Trump-friendly evangelists kept on actinglike he was God's emissary on earth, it was further evidence that most of these supposedly devout Christians don't really care about faith or God or Jesus or any of thatthat stuff they care about power. Aswith their beloved president, dramatic performance of public piety by so many right-wing Christian leaders is little more than a dog-and-pony show put on to sucker the rubes.

So there's your top 10, with the caveat that it was hard perhaps impossible to narrow down that number in a satisfying manner, since Trump has done unbelievably stupid crap virtually every single day for four years. But that's why the internet gods invented social media and comment sections, so you can add your own to the list!

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Remember that stupid thing Donald Trump did? Hard as it is to pick, here are the top 10 - Salon

In April 1932 Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) was running for president when the nation was in the depths of a devastating economic depression.

FDR famously stated, These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten... that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid. In an election year 84 years later, Republican Donald TrumpDonald TrumpMillions set to lose jobless benefits amid Trump standoff with Congress The Memo: Could Pence run and win in 2024? Flights out of Nashville halted due to telecom issues tied to RV explosion MORE confidently promised, The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Trump knew that phrase still resonated with millions of disillusioned Americans. In fact from the 2016 campaign to today Trump has repeated the phrase forgotten men and women at least 163 times.

FDR and Trump both New Yorkers from wealthy families campaigned as populists who spoke of shared prosperity and a return to better days. FDRs campaign theme song wasHappy Days Are Here Again while Trump popularized the sloganMake America Great Again.

FDRdelivered on many of his key promises to forgotten Americans. His New Deal gave them and us Unemployment Insurance, Social Security, Old Age Pensions, a minimum wage and collective bargaining. Millions of unemployed workers during the Great Depression got government subsidized jobs thanks to the Public Works Administration (PWA), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Civil Works Administration (CWA) and the Works Project Administration (WPA).

Trump however turned out to be the anti-FDR. The forgotten men and women at the bottom of the economic pyramid remained forgotten.They got little from Trumps administration.

Trump has done nothing to ensure that Americans are able to earn a living wage, despite the fact that the federal minimum wage has fallen in real dollars. Trump has threatened the funding that underpins Social Security, a program that ensures a dignified retirement for millions of American seniors. Trump continuously threatened the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Under Trump, repeal and replace the ACA soon became just repeal, which would have left millions of vulnerable Americans without health insurance. With COVID-19 decimating the economy, the number ofuninsured is now rising. Trumps inaction in the face of a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, has only added to the ranks of forgotten men and women.

Trump promised a robust investment of $1 trillion to repair and rebuild the nations crippled infrastructure. Consequently, blue collar voters many of whom had remained within the Roosevelt Democratic Coalition defected to Trump in large enough numbers in states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to swing the 2016 election in his favor. But, instead of a benefitting from massive infrastructure programs, blue collar Americans saw Trump launch trade wars thatkilled jobs and closed factories. And the deteriorating roads, bridges and tunnels throughout the nation remain as forgotten as the people.

FDRonce stated, Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle. But Trump whose net worth is $2.5 billion, and who paid$750 in federal income taxes in 2017 added to the national debt with a tax cut that gave the wealthiest 20 percent of individuals and corporations 60 percent of the net benefits. FDR believed theprogress of a nation rested on those who didnt have much.

On the other hand, Trump doled out tax cuts to the wealthy and forgot about Americans who in the midst of a pandemic and an economic depression found themselves unable to pay for food or rent.

While Trump railed against the swamp in Washington, D.C., and promised to drain it, he proceeded to fill his cabinet and inner circle with billionaires and Wall Street executives. In many cases, Trump went a step further by appointing individuals diametrically opposed to the mission statement of their department or even worse were wholly unqualified for the job. Trump the outsider who unapologetically campaigned on being critical of both Democrats and Republicans basically became a bombastic puppet.

During the Great Depression and World War II, FDR gave the nation confidence that under his leadership we could succeed in the face of the monumental world events playing out in front of the American people. He boldly declared war on the depression and on fascism. Throughout his presidency, FDR instilled a sense of shared sacrifice in the American people. Trump, in contrast, has been largely unable to face the serious challenges facing the American people when it comes to COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing economic downturn. As thousands of our fellow Americans died from COVID-19 each day, Trump the self-proclaimed wartime president refused to wear a mask (the most basic way to combat COVID-19),mocked those who did wear masks, and held large, maskless indoor events. Instead of instilling shared sacrifice, Trump promoted at best selfishness and callousness.

Ultimately, the Trump administration has left far too many Americans divided, cynical and angry with how their government works; or in many cases, does not.

With the Democratic victory in the 2020 election, President-elect Joe BidenJoe BidenFlights out of Nashville halted due to telecom issues tied to RV explosion Does Haaland pick show Biden commitment to public lands fracking ban? Police: Vehicle that exploded in Nashville broadcast warning before blast MORE has an opportunity to change the relationship the White House has with the still forgotten men and women of America. Biden will have to immediately address the COVID-19 pandemic, massive unemployment, the catastrophic effects of climate change and Congresss continued attempts to undermine the economic security programs that for generations have protected Americans when they are most at risk of poverty and illness.

Biden has the opportunity to embody FDR's principle of fighting for the interests of those at the bottom of the economic pyramid. In doing so, he may reignite faith in our great democratic experiment.

Dr. June Hopkins is the granddaughter of Harry Hopkins, one of Franklin Delano Roosevelts (FDR) closest advisors, and author of "Harry Hopkins: Sudden Hero, Brash Reformer." Stephen Seufert is a Democratic committee person in Bucks County, Penn.

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Donald Trump, the Anti-FDR | TheHill - The Hill