At the recent Republican National Convention, nostalgia was perhaps the dominant theme. Over and over again, speakers hearkened back to the Trump administration as a time of unrivaled prosperity in the United States: fewer wars, safer streets, “the strongest economy in American history.” 

In the convention’s immediate aftermath, the New York Times opinion page released a piece intended to counter this narrative, titled “Donald Trump’s First Term Was a Warning.”

“For Americans who may have forgotten that time, or pushed it from memory, we offer this timeline of his presidency,” it reads. “Mr. Trump’s first term was a warning about what he will do with the power of his office—unless American voters reject him.”

The Trump administration was in power just four years ago, but the speed of the news cycle sometimes makes it feel as if it’s been twenty. While we often hear references to the worst moments from Trump’s time in office, the daily experience of actually living through the Trump administration was akin to a giant, rolling, ever-widening snowball of catastrophe. Before you even had time to process one outrage, a new one was already there. This is the experience the Times attempted to capture with the presentation of its article, and as a premise, I think it’s quite effective.

The timeline includes a lot of the events I immediately think of when the Trump administration comes to mind. There’s the Muslim ban, the deadly “Unite the Right” riot at Charlottesville, family separation at the border, the transgender military ban, downplaying COVID-19, and January 6. There are also a few outrageous things that even I, a person who is paid to write things about politics, totally forgot about. For instance, I’d remembered Trump’s comments about “shithole countries,” but I’d completely memory-holed the fact that he’d also justified barring Haitians’ temporary protected status because they “all have AIDS.” 

A comprehensive, authoritative timeline of the first Trump administration is a great idea for a piece of persuasive journalism, but it is equally important as a historical document. In a similar fashion to “Lost Cause” historians who have spent decades attempting to create a rose-tinted image of the Antebellum South, the gears are already in motion to create an image of the Trump era as a time of untrammeled prosperity and stability. Even if Trump loses in 2024, nostalgia for that era will surely be wielded by future demagogues who emerge in his stead. That false remembrance needs to be countered.

For this reason, I’m disappointed in the Times’ accounting of the Trump administration. It was a huge missed opportunity. At Current Affairs, my colleagues have spent years emphasizing the importance of criticizing Trump for the correct reasons. As we’ve seen since the beginning of Trump’s political career, the media often criticizes Trump for silly reasons that undermine the real reasons why he’s dangerous. We’ve seen this in a lot of previous attempts to catalog Trump’s worst offenses. For example, a 2016 article in the Atlantic listing Trump’s “many scandals” listed the fact that he is accused of sexually assaulting dozens of women and the fact that he may have once bought concrete from a Mafia affiliate alongside one another. As Nathan J. Robinson pointed out in this magazine, “surely grabbing dozens of women’s genitals without their permission is worse than having purchased building supplies from someone vaguely shady,” but listing them alongside one another implies a similar degree of severity. 

This turned out to be a persistent problem while Trump was in office. We could see it again in a Business Insider article listing “21 scandals that rocked the Trump administration in 2018.” One of them is the fact that “The administration's ‘zero tolerance’ policy resulted in thousands of immigrant children being separated from their parents at the border,” which is one of the most unforgivable crimes of his administration. But because the article lists these scandals in chronological order, before you read about this crime against immigrant children, you have to hear about how Trump strategist Steve Bannon allegedly called his daughter Ivanka “dumb as a brick,” that a Trump aide was caught mocking John McCain’s cancer, and that the White House doctor was accused of medical malpractice. It’s not that these stories that portray a dysfunctional White House are not scandalous. But they are trivial in comparison to the administration intentionally traumatizing thousands of children.

I’m sorry to say that nearly a decade later, the media still has not figured out how to properly criticize the 45th president. And the Times’ rundown of the most consequential moments of his presidency demonstrates this. Instead of listing the numerous policy choices that made both the United States and the world a worse place, the emphasis is placed much more on Trump’s worst personal excesses and the things that made him an aberration relative to other presidents. Put simply, the Times cares more about reminding people of palace intrigue bullshit that doesn’t matter at the expense of discussing things that affect millions of people.

The most glaring example of this is the absurd number of items on this list that pertain to the Russia investigation that dominated the first few years of Trump’s presidency. Of the 76 total events listed, at least eight of them pertain to this single investigation or Trump’s relationship with Russia more generally. 

It was a worthwhile endeavor to try to get to the bottom of whether Trump had coordinated with the Russian government during the 2016 election, given how many shady connections existed. But I struggle with the notion that ordering the firing of FBI Director James Comey and “Sid[ing] with Vladimir Putin over American intelligence agencies on Russian election interference” are among the most consequential things Trump did while president. It’s understandable that they may have felt extremely significant at the time, largely because the media hyped every new twist in the Russia saga as the thing that may lead to Trump being led away in handcuffs. But by early 2019, when the much-hyped Mueller Report was finally released, it had essentially amounted to nothing.

 But the Times has many events of the Russia investigation not only listed, but written in large bold text—suggesting that they are of paramount importance— while policy decisions that are hugely consequential, like closing the National Security Council’s pandemic preparedness unit, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, suggesting that border patrol agents should shoot migrants, and weakening EPA regulations on toxic mercury, are not: 

Compared to the Russia Stuff, the ramifications of these decisions, even after Trump has left office, have been tremendous. It’s baffling to me why they are treated as less significant than firing the FBI director. 

When the Times does list important policy decisions, the aspects they choose to emphasize are often peculiar. For example, one of the things they list is simply that, in June 2019, Trump “steps into North Korea.” They write that “Mr. Trump’s almost complete embrace of Kim Jong-un after initially promising fire and fury results in no progress in reducing North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. In the months after the visit, North Korea continues to test-launch missiles.” Fair enough, if you want to criticize Trump for failing to achieve anything diplomatically. But the Times’ implication here seems to be that Trump’s previous “fire and fury” posture towards the DPRK, during which members of his administration openly threatened hot war with the nuclear-armed country, was somehow preferable to attempting diplomacy, which they characterize as an “almost complete embrace” of the dictator. (In case you are wondering, no, they did not consider Trump threatening nuclear war to be one of the most consequential events of his administration.) 

Another event the Times highlights is the gigantic tax cut he gave to the wealthiest people in the United States. They write it up as follows: 

“12.22.2017: [Trump] cuts taxes for corporations and the wealthy, sending the budget deficit skyrocketing. The Tax Cut and Jobs Act costs $1.5 trillion. From 2017 to 2018, the budget deficit grows 17 percent, largely driven by falling revenues.”

The Trump tax cuts are indeed one of the most important things Trump’s administration did. But the Times acts as if the worst thing about them was that they increased the budget deficit. They completely ignore that the Paul Ryan GOP then immediately used this self-imposed budget shortfall to justify spending cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. In other words, they attempted to pay for a tax cut for the rich by taking away from everyone else. But this aspect of Trump’s legacy—his elitism and vicious class warfare—ends up going unacknowledged.

The Times also heavily emphasizes Trump’s breaches of political decorum: He “insult[ed] NATO allies” and “continue[d] to attack John McCain after his death,” we’re told. (Even six years later, they’re burned up that anyone would dare have a bad word to say about one of America’s greatest warmongers.) And when they do focus on policy, they seem to place more weight on the unusual, informal way Trump carried it out than on whether the policy was actually good. For example, they mention that Trump “Reverse[d] North Korea sanctions,” but the thing they choose to emphasize is that he did it “by tweet” and created confusion as a result. They don’t actually make any point about whether the decision itself was good or bad (Considering that sanctions have had a devastating impact on the people of North Korea and been ineffective at getting the regime to denuclearize, I’d argue that declining to put more sanctions on them is one of the few good things Trump did.) 

Many of the other things the Times emphasizes are simply instances of Trump being a gigantic dumbass: staring directly at a solar eclipse, saying that Obama attempted to “tapp” his phones, lying about the size of his inauguration crowd, calling himself a “very stable genius,” drawing on a hurricane map with a Sharpie… the hits. It’s not that these things are unimportant. Understanding that the president was a stupid, narcissistic baby who lied constantly is certainly critical to understanding the Trump presidency as a whole. But this timeline is pretty compact, so to waste scarce real estate on things of such little importance in the grand scheme of things is a questionable decision. 

Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson has made the point that we are often told to ignore Trump’s worst crimes. His article from immediately after Trump’s felony conviction, titled “Trump’s Worst Crimes Remain Unpunished,” lists many things Trump has done that are much worse than illegally paying off a porn star. Most of those crimes—including Trump’s expansion of drone strikes, his ordering of an illegal assassination against a top Iranian general, and his support for Saudi Arabia’s devastating bombing campaign against  Yemen—do not appear in the Times’ history of his administration. This is somewhat expected, since many Times opinion writers are  notoriously hawkish on foreign policy. But if you are trying to make the case that Trump is a bad and dangerous president, excluding them is pretty inexcusable. Likewise, the Times often writes, correctly, that Trump is a dangerous authoritarian, but they don’t mention in their timeline that he ordered the extrajudicial assassination of an American protester for the purposes of “retribution,” which may be the most glaring example of how his first term behavior serves as a dire “warning” for what he may do in the second.

A lot of the most consequential things Trump did while in office were not outright crimes, but were just disastrously bad, cruel policies. The Times listed some of them, like proposing to end federal healthcare protections for transgender people, shutting down the government over border wall funding, imposing indefinite detention on migrant families, and rolling back Michelle Obama’s health standards for school lunches. These are all important. But there are still loads of extremely significant things Trump did that the Times neglects to mention. Here are just eleven of them that I thought of, in roughly chronological order:

1. January 2017: Trump imposes an expanded version of previous Republican presidents’ “Mexico City policy.” Where previous iterations banned federal funding to overseas organizations that provide abortions or family planning, Trump’s also forbids funding for global HIV prevention. He later proposes funding cuts to the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program that has prevented millions of AIDS cases worldwide.
2. February 2017: He appoints a secretary of education, billionaire GOP donor Betsy DeVos, who is opposed to the existence of public schools. She proposes massive cuts to the public school system, eliminates protections for transgender students, destroys a program that refunded public servants who received misleading student loans, and supports arming teachers.
   
   
3. 2017: He orders the assassination of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad after receiving intelligence that Assad had launched a chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma. The only reason the U.S. does not carry out the assassination is because Secretary of Defense James Mattis refuses to follow the order. In a similar fashion, Mattis later refuses to draw up plans requested by Trump to attack North Korea.
4. July 2017: He comes within a single vote of getting the Affordable Care Act repealed, a decision that could have led millions of people with pre-existing conditions to pay more for health insurance. Failing that, his administration undertakes aggressive efforts to undermine the law at every turn, resulting in 2 million people losing insurance coverage. (The New York Times timeline, astonishingly, does not mention the ACA once even though repealing it was one of Trump’s top priorities during his first year.)
5. September 2017:  He ends the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) protection, which exempted the children of undocumented immigrants from deportation. The end of this policy put 800,000 young “DREAMers” at risk of being expelled from the country. (I can’t believe they didn’t include this one.)
6. 2017-2018: He meets with coup plotters within Venezuela’s security forces, including figures who’d been accused of serious human rights violations. Trump’s then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo later admits that he and national security advisor John Bolton suggested a “military option” to overthrow the Venezuelan government. 
7. November 2019: He supports a successful right-wing military coup against Bolivia’s socialist president Evo Morales. The Christian fundamentalist leader who takes Morales’ place, Jeanine Añez, inflicts a crackdown on pro-democracy protesters and politicians and sells off Bolivia’s natural resources to U.S. companies. After she is voted out, Trump allows the coup leaders to take shelter in the U.S.
8. September 2018: Trump nominates Brett Kavanaugh, a federal judge who’d been credibly accused of sexual assault, to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh lies voluminously throughout the hearing, but is confirmed anyway. Along with two other Trump appointees, he goes on to repeal the rights of women to obtain abortions in 2022. (I also can’t believe they didn’t include this one.) 
9. November 2019: Trump advisor Stephen Miller, the architect of policies like the Muslim ban and family separation, is revealed to have frequently emailed colleagues articles and texts from explicit white nationalists. Trump does not fire him, and he serves out the remainder of Trump’s term of office. Miller goes on to draw up plans for Trump to deport 15 million immigrants should he retake power in 2024.
10. December 2019: The Trump administration imposes new work requirements for food stamps, kicking 750,000 people off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). 
11. 2017-2021: Trump’s government introduces dozens of anti-worker measures that lower workplace safety standards, dramatically reduce the ability of workers to unionize, allow minors to perform more dangerous types of work, and allow employers to pocket their employees' tips.

All of these choices from Trump were hugely consequential, in some cases to millions of people, or had the potential to be if Trump had gotten his way. My question is why the New York Times didn’t view them as significant enough to include in a documentation of why another Trump administration would be dangerous. If the goal of this piece is to persuade American voters to “reject” Trump, as its writers claim, then I can’t understand why the New York Times excluded so many deeds that greatly impacted or threatened to impact ordinary people’s lives.

It makes me wonder what type of audience the Times believes it is writing for. Are there really that many people who believe that Trump firing the FBI Director or “insulting NATO allies” are more impactful actions than kicking nearly a million people off food stamps, trying to gut the Department of Education, nearly starting multiple foreign wars (in at least one case, with a nuclear-armed power), and making healthcare unaffordable for millions of people? I would assume not. But even if the Times’ readership does have those skewed priorities, they generally aren’t what the broader public—the people who actually need to be persuaded—care about.

 People want to know that they can feed their families, send their kids to good schools, and pay their bills. As a persuasive effort, this piece fails to demonstrate many of the ways that Trump would make those things  harder for lots of people