Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara Just Listed Everything That’s Wrong With Trump

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Preet Bharara, the former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, tweeted a list of everything he believes is wrong with President Donald Trump, calling him “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on America.”

Bharara’s list continues below and includes citations where appropriate.

Among other things, Bharara referred to the president as “a liar,” “a cheat,” and “a bad businessman.” (Trump made a total “16,241 false or misleading claims in his first three years” according to Washington Post fact-checkers, and has for decades repeatedly come under fire for shoddy business practices.)

Bharara continued, accusing the president of lacking “principles” and projecting “his every flaw on others.” (As recently as last month, news outlets reported that the White House launched a “purge campaign” to remove anyone perceived to be disloyal to the president.)

The Trump presidency has been characterized as one of “post-truth,” a charge perhaps most successfully realized by presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway, who infamously coined the phrase “alternative facts” when she defended former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s false statement about the attendance numbers at Trump’s inauguration.

The president’s disregard for science, most recently in his misleading claims about the national coronavirus outbreak, is particularly well documented, as ishis history of climate change denial. He once suggested nuclear warheads could be used to stop hurricanes and has expressed a disregard for history, once telling a Washington Post reporter that he had never read a biography of a president and had no intention of picking one up.

When not raising eyebrows for claiming he’d want to purchase Greenland, the president has continued to face criticism for refusing to release his tax returns, ensuring that his financial dealings cannot come under scrutiny. The Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments on March 31 for three cases involving access to the president’s financial documents.

Bharara further noted that Trump “attacks war heroes while he pardons war criminals.”

Trump had a regular feud with the late Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former prisoner-of-war in Vietnam whose record he often derided, and claimed several times McCain was “not a war hero.” In November 2019, he garnered fierce criticism for pardoning three members of the armed forces who have been accused or convicted of war crimes, including former army lieutenant Clint Lorance, who received a 19-year sentence for murdering two civilians.

On the matter of the privileges Trump bestows on his children, Bharara was similarly peeved: In addition to promoting his two sons to significant roles within the Trump organization––an organization from which he has refused to divest himself––Trump named his daughter a senior adviser, granting her unparalleled influence over White House affairs.

Bharara pointed out that Trump referred to Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vind­man, who testified in the House’s impeachment inquiry, as “human scum” while “surrounding himself with scumbags like Roger Stone, who was arrested and later sentenced as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation over his communications with WikiLeaks.

Bharara made additional note of Trump’s tendency to praise despots, including Chinese leader Xi Jinping, whom he lauded after the latter amended the Chinese constitution and appointed himself “president for life.”

Finally, Bharara mentioned that Trump has claimed “no one has more respect for women than he does” (despite a litany of sexual assault allegations against him), and that he “knows more than his generals” (as he once claimed during a 2015 rally).

Bharara’s claim that Trump said he “has a special talent for infectious diseases” is incorrect: Trump said this in reference to Vice President Mike Pence, whom he appointed to oversee the government’s coronavirus response. The irony of this statement is that Pence received blistering criticism for his handling of an HIV outbreak while he was governor of Indiana.

Bharara has his own personal history with the president; he was one of 46 U.S. attorneys from the Obama administration who was asked to resign by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions shortly after Trump took office. Bharara was the only one of the group who publicly refused to resign, a move that garnered significant media attention during the Trump administration’s often rocky transition.

Alan Herrera
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