
yes he was always this useless. he has, for his entire time in politics from 2015 to now, been pretty strictly a faux "strongman" businessman who entered politics and won popularity with his personality and complaints about "culture," and not with policy or ability. he had lucky timing to come after 8 years of obama, who pieced together the shambolic economy after the financial crisis. trump was gifted stability and didnt change that much.
The difference between last term and this term was that last term he has career rebublicans in his offices which would still mostly follow precedent, and were mainly neo conservatives. This term he has surrounded himself with sycophants who will do whatever he says, but they often are ineffectual because they have no experience. In both terms he was terrible at leading congress
from 2015 to 2019 you could probably say his biggest gains were manufacturing type jobs being reshored by his twitter warrior-ship, complaining about harley-davidson or whoever having a factory somewhere. people were ok with the tcja, which wasnt super significant. but the second an actual problem came along, which was covid, it was a fucking disaster. when he was tasked with something, he floundered. legitimately let the entire nation fall into division with non solutions and no guidance.
2017-19, he wasnt that impactful overall. which worked for him. it was coasting on good and automatically improving grades that he inherited. comes into office in 2025 and things arent so neat. post covid inflation, russo-ukraine war, israel tweaking out. what happens? with strong and/or supermajorities in every branch, he makes it worse and worse. his wins are culture wins. and thats not substance. its complaining about nothing until something tiny and insignificant changes.