Before he became president in 2016, Trump was known for the Trump University, and other controversial real estate dealings, in addition to his television persona. He interviewed with Alex Jones for publicity with the conspiracy minded crowd and has had various allegations of misconduct with various women.
His controversial alleged ties to Russia and Russian election interference and money laundering have been the subject of many books and articles, the most interesting of which were in response to the unprecedented step of privately meeting with Vladimir Putin during his presidency.
Donald Trump is also known for controversial renegotiations with trade deals and the Paris agreement on climate change. He fast tracked vaccine funding during the Covid-19 crisis and negotiated a peace agreement between Arabs and Israelis in 2020.
COVID-19
President Trump in 2019 famously said that the plan was to lock down for weeks before Easter 2019, after which all should be back to normal. Not only was this a false prediction, but he had had evidence earlier to know that it was far greater threat than he initially led the public to believe.
Worse yet, he had peddled some odd cures such as hydroxychloriquine and dismissed general scientific advice on masks and distancing – same as many Democrat politicians did.
Perhaps the worst well known case of his disagreement with health and science officials was the awkward statement of possibility of light or injecting some sort of “cleaning”. This was actually a reference to an obscure Miracle Mineral Solution sold by a man who pretended to be an extraterrestrial alien working against other malicious alien beings.
Climate
After the California Wildfires, Trump infamously interviewed the local politicians about his policy around climate change. He asserted that “It’ll start getting cooler”… “don’t think science knows, actually”.
Unfortunately in the years following, the mainstream majority scientific theory on this issue turned out to be correct – adding billions of tons of greenhouse gas each year does have a long term effect, and record high temperatures were hit again and again. Even so, Trump and those politically aligned with him plan to expand new fossil fuel plants and pipelines.
This was particularly ironic considering that a large part of Trump’s support base is self-proclaimed pro-life evangelicals. New England Journal of Medicine links combustion of fossil fuels, and smog to an increase in infant mortality, among other health issues.
Criminal Indictments
This is one prediction that came true years later, but not in the way he would have hoped – in 2016, Donald Trump said of Hillary Clinton:
We could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and ultimately a criminal trial
It would grind government to a halt
This was oddly prescient as 7 years later, a previously sitting president is under felony indictment and criminal trials. Donald Trump had documents from his presidency – even reportedly top secret papers, at a Mar-a-lago resort. He was also faces charges of alleged inciting of the altercation on January 6th 2021.
Grinding government to a halt – In 2023, the rift between Donald Trump supporters and the traditional Republican party (that still believe in republican values like personal responsibility) had greatly widened and become instrumental in ousting the House speaker McCarthy, leading to “Chaos” during a time with upcoming government shut-down. This was something that had not happened in 100 years… and Trump predicted it.
Overall Rating
D – Most predictions were sorely wrong. For those predictions that came true, they had come true in nearly the opposite way that he had hoped.