The Worst of the Worst: Where Trump Ranks Among America’s Most Disastrous Presidents

The Scoring Framework

  <p>Ranking presidents is an imperfect exercise. Historians have been doing it since Arthur Schlesinger Sr.'s pioneering 1948 poll, and the methodology has always been contested.<sup><a href="#s1">[1]</a></sup> To make this comparison as rigorous as possible, I'm scoring across six dimensions of presidential failure — each rated 1–10, where 10 is the worst in American history. The dimensions are designed to capture different failure modes: a president can be catastrophically incompetent without being corrupt (Buchanan), or staggeringly corrupt without starting a war (Harding).</p>

  <table>
    <thead>
      <tr>
        <th>Dimension</th>
        <th>What It Measures</th>
      </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
      <tr><td>Personal Enrichment</td><td>Using the presidency for direct financial gain by the president and their family</td></tr>
      <tr><td>Abuse of Power</td><td>Weaponizing federal agencies, politicizing justice, retaliatory prosecution</td></tr>
      <tr><td>Criminal Conduct</td><td>Indictments, convictions, and pardons of associates in the administration's orbit</td></tr>
      <tr><td>Institutional Damage</td><td>Dismantling oversight bodies, firing watchdogs, eroding checks and balances</td></tr>
      <tr><td>Foreign Policy Disasters</td><td>Wars started, lives lost, alliances broken, international standing damaged</td></tr>
      <tr><td>Democratic Erosion</td><td>Attacks on elections, the press, the judiciary, civil liberties, and the peaceful transfer of power</td></tr>
    </tbody>
  </table>

  <p>A note on methodology: this is inherently a judgment call, not a precise measurement. I've tried to ground each score in documented evidence and published scholarship. Where reasonable people would disagree, I've noted the strongest counterargument. The goal is not to declare a "winner" (we all lose) but to put the scale of what's happening into historical context.</p>

  <h2>The Contenders: America's Hall of Shame</h2>

  <div>
    <div>32</div>
    <h4>James Buchanan (1857–1861)</h4>
    <div>15th President · Democrat</div>
    <p>Ranked dead last by historians more often than any other president. His catastrophic failure was passive: as the nation tore itself apart over slavery, Buchanan did essentially nothing, arguing he lacked constitutional authority to prevent secession. His inaction helped make the Civil War — and its 620,000 dead — inevitable.<sup><a href="#s1">[1]</a></sup></p>
    <p><strong>Key sins:</strong> Inaction before Civil War. Corruption in his cabinet (Secretary of War John Floyd funneled arms to Southern states). Dred Scott endorsement.</p>
  </div>

  <div>
    <div>30</div>
    <h4>Andrew Johnson (1865–1869)</h4>
    <div>17th President · National Union</div>
    <p>Lincoln's successor vetoed civil rights legislation, pardoned Confederate leaders, and actively sabotaged Reconstruction — setting back Black Americans' rights by nearly a century. First president impeached (acquitted by one vote).<sup><a href="#s1">[1]</a></sup></p>
    <p><strong>Key sins:</strong> Vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Vetoed the Freedmen's Bureau. Pardoned ex-Confederates en masse. Openly racist governance.</p>
  </div>

  <div>
    <div>34</div>
    <h4>Richard Nixon (1969–1974)</h4>
    <div>37th President · Republican</div>
    <p>The gold standard for presidential corruption until recently. Watergate remains the benchmark scandal: a criminal conspiracy to cover up a politically motivated burglary, directed from the Oval Office. Nixon resigned facing certain impeachment and removal. His administration produced 76 indictments.<sup><a href="#s5">[5]</a></sup></p>
    <p><strong>Key sins:</strong> Watergate. Secret bombing of Cambodia (~150,000 civilians killed). Saturday Night Massacre. Enemies list. Sabotage of 1968 Vietnam peace talks.</p>
  </div>

  <div>
    <div>26</div>
    <h4>Warren G. Harding (1921–1923)</h4>
    <div>29th President · Republican</div>
    <p>Until the 21st century, Harding's administration was considered the most corrupt in American history. The Teapot Dome scandal — his Interior Secretary secretly leasing Navy oil reserves for bribes — was the gold standard of cabinet graft. Three appointees went to prison; two officials committed suicide.<sup><a href="#s3">[3]</a></sup></p>
    <p><strong>Key sins:</strong> Teapot Dome. Ohio Gang. Veterans' Bureau fraud. Personal affairs. Died in office amid cascading scandals.</p>
  </div>

  <div>
    <div>51</div>
    <h4>Donald Trump (2017–2021, 2025–present)</h4>
    <div>45th/47th President · Republican</div>
    <p>The only president in U.S. history to be criminally indicted. Twice impeached. Led an effort to overturn an election that culminated in a violent assault on the Capitol. His second term has seen unprecedented personal enrichment, systematic dismantling of oversight, an elective war in Iran, and the weaponization of federal law enforcement against political enemies.<sup><a href="#s4">[4]</a></sup><sup><a href="#s7">[7]</a></sup></p>
    <p><strong>Key sins:</strong> January 6. Iran war. ~$3.4B personal enrichment while in office. 17 IGs fired. 1,500+ insurrectionists pardoned. Systematic destruction of civilian oversight leading to mass civilian casualties. Weaponized prosecution of critics.</p>
  </div>

  <h2>The Scorecard</h2>

  <table>
    <thead>
      <tr>
        <th>Dimension</th>
        <th>Buchanan</th>
        <th>A. Johnson</th>
        <th>Harding</th>
        <th>Nixon</th>
        <th>Trump</th>
      </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
      <tr>
        <td>Personal Enrichment</td>
        <td><span>2</span></td>
        <td><span>2</span></td>
        <td><span>5</span></td>
        <td><span>3</span></td>
        <td><span>10</span></td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>Abuse of Power</td>
        <td><span>4</span></td>
        <td><span>7</span></td>
        <td><span>3</span></td>
        <td><span>9</span></td>
        <td><span>10</span></td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>Criminal Conduct</td>
        <td><span>3</span></td>
        <td><span>2</span></td>
        <td><span>7</span></td>
        <td><span>8</span></td>
        <td><span>9</span></td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>Institutional Damage</td>
        <td><span>6</span></td>
        <td><span>7</span></td>
        <td><span>4</span></td>
        <td><span>6</span></td>
        <td><span>10</span></td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>Foreign Policy Disasters</td>
        <td><span>8</span></td>
        <td><span>4</span></td>
        <td><span>2</span></td>
        <td><span>7</span></td>
        <td><span>8</span></td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>Democratic Erosion</td>
        <td><span>9</span></td>
        <td><span>8</span></td>
        <td><span>5</span></td>
        <td><span>1</span></td>
        <td><span>4</span></td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>TOTAL</td>
        <td>32</td>
        <td>30</td>
        <td>26</td>
        <td>34</td>
        <td><strong>51</strong></td>
      </tr>
    </tbody>
  </table>

  <p><em>Note on the Democratic Erosion scores:</em> Buchanan scores 9 because his passivity in the face of secession nearly ended the republic itself. Andrew Johnson scores 8 for actively destroying Reconstruction and disenfranchising millions. Nixon scores only 1 because — crucially — when the system caught him, <em>he resigned</em>. The institutions worked. Trump scores 4 on this dimension for his second term specifically because of the Iran war's chilling effect on dissent, surveillance state expansion, and ongoing attacks on press freedom, but the January 6 insurrection attempt that ended his first term would push a combined score much higher. For a combined first-and-second-term score on democratic erosion, Trump would rate a 9 or 10 — the only president to attempt to overturn an election he lost.</p>

  <h2>Dimension Deep Dives</h2>

  <h3>Personal Enrichment: No Contest</h3>

  <p>There has never been anything like this. The Jacobin's June 2026 analysis catalogs an astonishing scope of self-dealing: Trump's crypto empire (into which investors poured $2 billion within four months, now accounting for most of his $6 billion net worth), stock trades in companies he simultaneously hands government contracts to (Boeing, Palantir, Nvidia), his sons' rare earths firm receiving hundreds of millions in federal loans at White House request, drone firms the family invested in that the government is now buying from, and a settled IRS lawsuit that grants the Trump family immunity from future audits.<sup><a href="#s4">[4]</a></sup></p>

  <p>By seven months into his second term, Trump had become $3.4 billion richer, according to The New Yorker.<sup><a href="#s4">[4]</a></sup> For comparison: the Biden-era self-dealing scandal that Republicans investigated involved a $40,000 payment to Joe Biden through his son's business connections.<sup><a href="#s4">[4]</a></sup></p>

  <p>The historical comparisons the Jacobin article raises are instructive: Grant's Whiskey Ring involved government agents siphoning tax revenue — but Grant himself wasn't enriched. Harding's Teapot Dome involved his Interior Secretary taking bribes — but Harding personally didn't profit. Nixon used the presidency to punish enemies and cover up crimes — but not primarily to make money. Trump is doing all of these things simultaneously, and also making billions.<sup><a href="#s4">[4]</a></sup></p>

  <div>
    <div>
      <div>$3.4B</div>
      <div>Trump wealth gain in office</div>
    </div>
    <div>
      <div>$0</div>
      <div>Grant personal gain from scandals</div>
    </div>
    <div>
      <div>$0</div>
      <div>Harding personal gain (cabinet took bribes)</div>
    </div>
    <div>
      <div>$0</div>
      <div>Nixon personal gain from Watergate</div>
    </div>
  </div>

  <h3>Abuse of Power: Trump vs. Nixon</h3>

  <p>Nixon's abuses were serious: an enemies list, the Saturday Night Massacre (firing the special prosecutor investigating him), wiretapping journalists, and using the IRS against political opponents. But Nixon operated within a system that ultimately checked him. He fired one special prosecutor; the system appointed another. He tried to use the CIA to obstruct the FBI; both agencies ultimately cooperated with investigators.<sup><a href="#s5">[5]</a></sup></p>

  <p>Trump's second term represents a qualitative escalation. He fired 17 inspectors general in a single night — a federal judge found this was "obviously" illegal.<sup><a href="#s11">[11]</a></sup> His DOJ is prosecuting his political enemies (James Comey for a mean tweet, Letitia James for winning a civil fraud case against him, a rape victim who won a lawsuit against him).<sup><a href="#s4">[4]</a></sup> He settled his own lawsuit against his own IRS and granted himself and his family immunity from future audits. He's using DHS to buy iris scanners and deploy surveillance against protesters, while three men face felonies for protesting ICE.<sup><a href="#s4">[4]</a></sup></p>

  <p>The difference: Nixon tried to abuse power covertly and was caught. Trump abuses power openly, daring the system to stop him, and the system — so far — largely hasn't.</p>

  <h3>Criminal Conduct: The Indictment Record</h3>

  <p>The data on criminal indictments across administrations is stark. PolitiFact verified the broad pattern in 2020:</p>

  <table>
    <thead>
      <tr><th>Administration</th><th>Indictments</th><th>Convictions</th><th>Prison Sentences</th></tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
      <tr><td>Nixon (R)</td><td>76</td><td>55</td><td>15</td></tr>
      <tr><td>Reagan (R)</td><td>26</td><td>16</td><td>8</td></tr>
      <tr><td>Trump 1st term (R)</td><td>34*</td><td>9+</td><td>6+</td></tr>
      <tr><td>Obama (D)</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr>
      <tr><td>Clinton (D)</td><td>2</td><td>2</td><td>1</td></tr>
      <tr><td>Carter (D)</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr>
    </tbody>
  </table>
  <p>*Includes 25 Russian nationals from Mueller investigation. Source: PolitiFact<sup><a href="#s5">[5]</a></sup></p>

  <p>Trump is also the only sitting or former president to be personally indicted on criminal charges — a distinction no other president in 250 years of American history holds.<sup><a href="#s6">[6]</a></sup> His second term adds an entirely new dimension: the blanket pardoning of 1,500+ January 6 defendants, including a convicted child molester, followed by the DOJ scrubbing records of their crimes.<sup><a href="#s4">[4]</a></sup><sup><a href="#s12">[12]</a></sup></p>

  <h3>Institutional Damage: The Oversight Wasteland</h3>

  <p>The systematic dismantling of oversight in Trump's second term has no precedent:</p>

  <ul>
    <li><strong>17 inspectors general</strong> fired in a single night<sup><a href="#s11">[11]</a></sup></li>
    <li><strong>~90% of CHMR</strong> (Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response) staff eliminated<sup><a href="#s13">[13]</a></sup></li>
    <li><strong>USAID</strong> effectively destroyed<sup><a href="#s10">[10]</a></sup></li>
    <li><strong>DOT&E</strong> (weapons testing oversight) cut from 94 to 30 personnel<sup><a href="#s13">[13]</a></sup></li>
    <li><strong>Civilian Protection Center of Excellence</strong> reduced to a "shell on paper"<sup><a href="#s13">[13]</a></sup></li>
    <li><strong>CHMR data management platform</strong> defunded — the military literally can't track civilian casualties<sup><a href="#s13">[13]</a></sup></li>
  </ul>

  <p>The direct consequence: 156 people, including 120 children, killed in a school strike enabled by the absence of the civilian protection teams that would have caught the outdated targeting data.<sup><a href="#s13">[13]</a></sup></p>

  <h3>Foreign Policy: The Iran War</h3>

  <p>The 2026 Iran war is, by itself, among the worst foreign policy decisions in modern American history. As of June 2026, U.S.-Israeli strikes have killed at least 2,362 civilians (383 children) and injured over 32,314, according to Amnesty International.<sup><a href="#s13">[13]</a></sup> More than 115,000 civilian structures have been damaged, including 763 schools and 334 medical facilities.<sup><a href="#s13">[13]</a></sup></p>

  <p>The historical parallels are grim: Nixon's secret bombing of Cambodia, George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq based on faulty intelligence, LBJ's escalation of Vietnam. Trump's Iran war combines elements of all three — launched on dubious premises, conducted with inadequate oversight, and producing mounting civilian casualties with no clear strategic objective or exit plan.</p>

  <h2>The Numbers Don't Lie</h2>

  <p>The U.S. position on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index tells a story of accelerating decline:</p>

  <div>
    <div>
      <div>15th</div>
      <div>CPI rank, 2005</div>
    </div>
    <div>
      <div>16th</div>
      <div>CPI rank, 2015</div>
    </div>
    <div>
      <div>28th</div>
      <div>CPI rank, 2024</div>
    </div>
    <div>
      <div>29th</div>
      <div>CPI rank, 2025</div>
    </div>
  </div>

  <p>The U.S. dropped 12 points on the CPI over the past decade (from 76 to 64 out of 100), with the steepest declines tracking Trump's two terms.<sup><a href="#s14">[14]</a></sup> In 2024, the U.S. hit its worst score since the index was established. In 2025, it fell further — now tied with countries like Barbados and Bhutan. This is an empirical measure, not a partisan argument.</p>

  <h2>What Historians Say Now</h2>

  <p>Professional historians have already rendered preliminary judgment, and it's devastating.</p>

  <p>The C-SPAN Presidential Historians Survey has polled historians across multiple years. In recent iterations, Trump's first term consistently ranks in the bottom four, and has placed dead last twice — below even Buchanan.<sup><a href="#s1">[1]</a></sup> The Siena College Research Institute survey, which has tracked rankings since 1982, placed Trump near the bottom in its most recent edition.<sup><a href="#s1">[1]</a></sup></p>

  <p>This is Trump's ranking for his <em>first</em> term alone. The second term — with the Iran war, the $3.4 billion enrichment, the IG purge, the prosecution of political enemies, the gutting of civilian protection — hasn't been factored into most surveys yet.</p>

  <blockquote>
    "It's not hyperbole to say that there has literally never been anything like this in US history, that the famous episodes of White House graft under Ulysses S. Grant and Warren G. Harding don't even come close to touching the scale of what is currently going on."
    <cite>— Jacobin, June 2026<sup><a href="#s4">[4]</a></sup></cite>
  </blockquote>

  <h3>The Buchanan Counterargument — and Why COVID Complicates It</h3>

  <p>The strongest counterargument to placing Trump at the very bottom comes from Buchanan: his passivity directly contributed to the Civil War, which killed 620,000 Americans — 2% of the population. That's a body count no modern president has approached domestically. Surely that makes Buchanan worse?</p>

  <p>But this framing deserves a harder look, because Trump has his own Buchanan moment: COVID-19.</p>

  <p>A Lancet Commission report in February 2021 concluded that <strong>40% of the ~461,000 U.S. COVID deaths at that time — roughly 184,000 — were preventable</strong> compared to the weighted average of other G7 nations.<sup><a href="#s21">[21]</a></sup> The commission cited Trump's public dismissal of the threat, his politicization of mask-wearing, his promotion of unproven treatments, his convening of superspreader events, and his failure to develop a national response strategy. Before the pandemic even began, his administration had disbanded the NSC's global health security team and left ~700 CDC positions unfilled via a hiring freeze.<sup><a href="#s21">[21]</a></sup></p>

  <p>The parallels to Buchanan's passive catastrophe are striking:</p>

  <div>
    <div>
      <div>620K</div>
      <div>Civil War dead (Buchanan's inaction)</div>
    </div>
    <div>
      <div>~184K</div>
      <div>Preventable COVID dead (Lancet est.)</div>
    </div>
    <div>
      <div>2.26x</div>
      <div>Death rate in pro-Trump vs pro-Biden counties post-vaccine</div>
    </div>
    <div>
      <div>4K–12K</div>
      <div>Deaths from anti-mask messaging alone (PMC est.)</div>
    </div>
  </div>

  <p>An NPR analysis found that after vaccines became widely available in May 2021, <strong>people in counties that voted 60%+ for Trump died at 2.26 times the rate</strong> of those in counties that voted similarly for Biden.<sup><a href="#s22">[22]</a></sup> A peer-reviewed study in the International Journal of Health Services estimated that Trump's anti-mask pronouncements alone caused between 4,200 and 12,200 additional deaths.<sup><a href="#s23">[23]</a></sup> Accidental poisonings with disinfectants spiked measurably after his April 2020 comments about injecting bleach.<sup><a href="#s24">[24]</a></sup></p>

  <p><strong>Where the parallel holds:</strong> Both Buchanan and Trump represent a president whose conduct during a national crisis directly contributed to mass American death. Buchanan watched states secede and said he lacked authority to act. Trump called COVID a "hoax," held rallies where masks were mocked, promoted hydroxychloroquine (a Veterans Affairs study found it increased deaths), and never produced a national strategy. The mechanism is the same: presidential failure of duty during a crisis that killed Americans at scale.</p>

  <p><strong>Where it breaks down:</strong> Buchanan's causal chain is tighter — he literally watched the nation split and the path to 620,000 dead is direct. Trump's COVID failures are more diffuse, shared with governors, structural healthcare problems, and global pandemic dynamics. The Lancet's 40% figure includes systemic factors (no universal healthcare) predating Trump. COVID killed people in every country; the Civil War was uniquely caused by American political failure.</p>

  <p><strong>The honest verdict:</strong> The COVID parallel doesn't make Trump's body count equal to Buchanan's in absolute terms, but it eliminates the one dimension where Buchanan clearly had Trump beat. When you add ~184,000 preventable COVID deaths to Trump's ledger — alongside the Iran war, the $3.4B enrichment, the IG purge, the January 6 insurrection, and the weaponization of the DOJ — the case that any other president combines this many failure modes at this scale collapses entirely. Buchanan was a catastrophe in one dimension. Trump is a catastrophe in all of them, <em>including</em> the one Buchanan was worst at.</p>

  <h2>What They'll Say in 50 Years</h2>

  <p>Predicting historical judgment is inherently speculative, but the patterns of how presidential reputations evolve over time are well-documented. Here's what the trajectory suggests:</p>

  <div>
    <h3>The Arc of Historical Judgment</h3>
    <div>
      <div>2030s — The Immediate Reckoning</div>
      <div>If the pattern holds (see: Nixon post-resignation, Bush post-Iraq), the first wave of serious historical scholarship will be scathing. Archives will open. Memoirs will be published. The scale of financial self-dealing will be documented with receipts. The Iran war's full civilian toll will become known. Midterm election losses (if they materialize) will define the political verdict.</div>
    </div>
    <div>
      <div>2040s — The Comparison Phase</div>
      <div>Historians will have enough distance to make rigorous comparisons. The Trump presidency will likely be studied alongside other democratic backsliding episodes: Orbán's Hungary, Erdogan's Turkey, Berlusconi's Italy. The question won't be "was he corrupt?" but "how did the institutions fail to stop it?" The AI warfare dimension — Maven, Palantir, the Minab school strike — will be a case study in military ethics textbooks.</div>
    </div>
    <div>
      <div>2050s — The Structural Analysis</div>
      <div>By mid-century, historians will likely frame Trump not as an aberration but as a symptom of structural failures: wealth concentration, media fragmentation, the collapse of shared epistemology. The question becomes whether American democracy recovered or whether the damage was permanent. If the institutions eventually reasserted themselves (as they did after Nixon), Trump becomes a cautionary tale. If they didn't, he becomes the beginning of the end.</div>
    </div>
    <div>
      <div>2076 — The 300th Anniversary Verdict</div>
      <div>At America's tricentennial, historians will rank Trump with the certainty that comes from knowing how the story ended. The two likeliest framings: (1) "The president who stress-tested every institution and exposed fatal weaknesses — the necessary shock that forced reform" or (2) "The president who proved that a sufficiently shameless leader, backed by a sufficiently loyal faction, could hollow out a 250-year-old democracy from the inside." Which framing prevails depends on what happens next.</div>
    </div>
  </div>

  <p>The most likely consensus in 50 years: Trump will be remembered as the most <em>personally corrupt</em> president in American history (the evidence is already overwhelming and documented), as having presided over one of the most lawless administrations on record, and as the president who came closest to breaking the constitutional order since the Civil War. Whether he's remembered as "the worst" overall depends on outcomes still being determined — particularly whether the Iran war expands, whether democratic institutions recover, and whether the precedents he set are normalized or reversed.</p>

  <h2>The Bottom Line</h2>

  <p>Here's what makes Trump's presidency historically unique: <strong>other presidents failed in one or two categories</strong>. Buchanan was catastrophically passive but personally honest. Johnson was a racist saboteur but didn't enrich himself. Harding presided over graft but didn't weaponize the DOJ. Nixon abused power but resigned when caught, and the system worked as designed.</p>

  <p>Trump is scoring 8+ in <em>five of six categories simultaneously</em>. He is personally enriching himself on an unprecedented scale while prosecuting his enemies, pardoning his allies, dismantling oversight, waging an elective war, and attacking the institutions that would hold him accountable. Previous worst-ranked presidents excelled at one or two varieties of failure. Trump is a polymath of presidential malfeasance.</p>

  <blockquote>
    "We're departing from the rules and norms that we've tried to establish as a global community since at least World War II. There's zero accountability."
    <cite>— Wes J. Bryant, former senior adviser, Pentagon Civilian Protection Center of Excellence<sup><a href="#s13">[13]</a></sup></cite>
  </blockquote>

  <p>The historical verdict isn't fully written. But the evidence already in the public record — from Transparency International's index to Pentagon inspector general reports to watchdog financial analyses — points in one direction: this is the most corrupt, most institutionally destructive, and most comprehensively disastrous presidency in American history. Not because Trump is worse than Buchanan in any single dimension (letting the Union collapse is hard to top), but because no other president has managed to fail this badly across this many dimensions at the same time.</p>

  <p>The "Wall of Scandal" strategy works politically — it overwhelms the information space and exhausts the public's capacity for outrage. But it also creates the most complete evidentiary record of presidential misconduct ever assembled, one that historians will spend decades unpacking. In 50 years, the textbooks will have plenty of material.</p>