Who else competes?

Listing the reasons that contribute as to why Donald Trump was the worst President of the United States would be excruciatingly long, so I'll just name a few.

→ He failed to put the interests of the American people before his own political needs. A prime example of how his disregard was detrimental to the American people can be seen in the dismantling of safety nets and laws protecting workers.

→ His refusal to accept defeat led to an insurgency.

→ The way he handled the coronavirus pandemic, like his lack of initial response, promoting unproven cures, partaking in superspreader events, downplaying its seriousness, and his unwillingness to contain the pandemic, leading to the staggeringly high death toll, many of which were avoidable.

→ His administration's turnover rate is exorbitantly higher than almost any other in history, and he failed at filing top government positions with qualified candidates.

→ His extreme incompetence and lack of mental capacity to check his outlandish public statements nearly started a nuclear war with North Korea at the start of his presidency.

→ He authorized a $1.9 trillion tax cut for the wealthy that caused a gaping hole in the budget that he then compensated for by cutting food and housing assistance to lower-income families.

→ He enacted atrocious executive orders pertaining to immigration and refugees. This included the denied sanctuary from violence to fleeing refugees, the encouraged abuse of immigrant detainees, and the demand for harsh penalties to immigrants attempting to access basic social services.

→He systematically undermined U.S. federal climate policy, withdrew from the Paris Agreement and diminished the prior administration's efforts to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases.

These are just some ways in which Donald Trump has cemented himself as a failure to the American people, democracy, and has crowned himself as being the worst appointed leader in U.S. history.

TL; DR - Don’t get me wrong, Trump was bad - like really, really bad. But I don’t know if he was the absolute worst.

• The Presidency of Donald Trump will go down in history for all the wrong reasons. The racist, sexist, xenophobic, misogynistic rhetoric he spouted, made him an awful President - I am not for a second doubting this. He incited and encouraged violence across the country, he attacked the media relentlessly, he baited North Korea over Twitter, he nominated an accused sexual assaulter to the highest court in America… the list goes on.
• When people read the statement above, I don’t think it’s uncommon to immediately think yes, of course, definitely! But to claim Trump was the worst President in the history of America, is to ignore and undermine some of the awful things done by previous leaders of the free world; namely James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson.
• For example, as the 15th President of the United States, James Buchanan believed black people were "not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution” . He was extremely problematic and is often credited with driving the country towards the eventual Civil War of 1861. Taking Office shortly after as the 17th President of America, Andrew Johnson was in charge as the Civil War was concluding. As an extremely racist segregationist, Johnson vetoed Civil Rights legislation and made life very difficult for many Black Americans.
• Trump was a bad President. I am not at all denying or defending his awful actions. But the term ‘worst’ is subjective, and rankings will differ depending on which party you support and the political opinions you hold. I am in absolutely no doubt whatsoever, that Trump was and hopefully will remain the worst US President of my lifetime. Except American history spans way beyond my lifetime, so it would be inaccurate to claim he was the worst without fully exploring the terms of previous Presidents.

Trump certainly is not the worst president in the history of the United States in that his presidency did not cause our country to politically tear apart as James Buchanan did, nor did he vehemently oppose African American civil rights as Andrew Johnson did.

It is of popular consensus among historians that James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson were the worst presidents in the history of the United States, since the former failed in curbing sectionalism and the growing conflict between north and south in slavery, and the latter caused great setback to African American civil rights during Reconstruction.

In order to counter the claim that Trump is not the worst, we simply need to show that Trump was better than these two presidents in our history.

One way or another, Trump was bad — he ignored and underplayed the covid pandemic, incited an insurgency in the Capitol. However, his domestic policy did not completely alienate a race or tear our country apart. His tax reforms may be controversial, yet there still are claims that they were beneficial in the long run. His foreign policy was not the best, yet it was effective at curbing terrorism and defeating ISIS.

Therefore, one way or another, Trump cannot be claimed to be the worst president in our history.

Just wonder if anyone would change their mind since Biden has been president after the withdrawal from Afghanistan and his botched handling of the war in Ukraine so far? Particularly in the area of international relations and global geopolitics I think is where we saw Trump's strengths. Ironically all the things that Trump did to make himself unpopular in the USA and western world is what other political leaders respected about him. I certainly think Putin would be having second thoughts about Ukraine right now. Trump managed to sit down and negotiate with Kim, unlike any other president. Also the development with the Abraham accords which earned him a Nobel peace prize nomination.

TL:DNR Trump is "the worst" because of a framing by media companies that were bought and surrogated by int'l conglomerates that got rich by lobbying politicians to secure longevity of their profitable exploitation of resources.

As for myself, NEVER do I hear him compare NOR contrasted to any presidents besides Obama. Obama being a president whose presidency came down to extending war crimes against Middle Eastern nations whose resources created American dependency on fossil fuels. AND, a presidency that came out SWINGING for the bail out of financial institutions that contribute nothing concrete to American exports, but to limit consumer spending especially ownership. Not to mention, a transfer of online platforms from advertising free-for-alls to data-selling strongholds.

Trump was among the lowest quarter in terms of presidents, but he doesn't quite make it into the worst of all time.
-George W. Bush started the Iraq War, which ended hundreds of thousands of lives and may have been responsible for over a million overall. This is far worse than what Trump has done.
-Ronald Reagan butchered the American political system and helped increase inequality, as well as funding various violent, brutal groups abroad. Also, not nearly as high in magnitude, but also a good demonstration of character, he actually asked the Iranians to delay releasing the hostages so they could be released once he became president.
-Nixon, before being president, requested that the North Vietnamese not negotiate with America, extending the war. He targeted civilian targets in Vietnam and engaged in pointless violence and destruction. Moreover, he was responsible for the War on Drugs, which has done incalculable damage to our country.
-Truman, although his domestic policy was largely beneficial, was responsible for hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths in dropping the nuclear bombs in Japan, as well as many more by involving America in the Korean war (in which the American side was responsible for more civilian casualties than the North Korean.

As others have covered, farther back there are some more horrible presidents, such as James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson.

Although Trump's rhetoric is highly damaging and will have a dangerous impact on America going forward, the actual policies he enacted while in office did not destroy the same quantity of human lives as many of his predecessors.