Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro revealed his list of the five worst presidents in American history in the latest episode of “Facts.”
In the episode, released on Presidents’ Day, Shapiro highlighted five presidents who ignored the Constitution, destroyed the economy, implemented harmful policies, and contributed to the Civil War. Shapiro also said that two frequently maligned modern presidents, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, deserve to be ranked higher than where many academics place them.
The fifth worst president was Jimmy Carter, whose one term in office was filled with inflation, gasoline shortage, and the Iranian Revolution. The Soviet Union also invaded Afghanistan after he downplayed the threat of communism during his time in office.
“That’s all the stuff he did while he was president. He wasn’t president for that long as president for four years and four years only. He was a horrible post-president. He built some houses for homeless people. That’s great. He also hung out with Hamas and actively wrote speeches for uber terrorist Yasser Arafat, claiming that Hamas’ election was actually legitimate,” Shapiro said.
The fourth worst president is Barack Obama, whom Shapiro said you need to understand if you want to know “where American politics truly went off the rails.”
During Obama’s two terms in office, he presided over a weak economic recovery while Americans became further polarized over race with anti-police sentiment rising to violent fervor in Baltimore and Ferguson. Shapiro also talked about how Obama weaponized the Justice Department to go after his political opponents and completely flipped his views on marriage.
The third worst president was James Buchanan, who served one term before the Civil War. Shapiro said that Buchanan did much to contribute to the country’s divisions which would soon boil over into war.
“He actually said that while secession was illegal, the government didn’t have the power to stop it, which led a lot of states to be like, okay, well, then I guess we can leave,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro’s pick for second worst president was Lyndon Johnson. Though Shapiro gave Johnson credit for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, he said everything else about Johnson’s administration was a disaster. One of LBJ’s biggest policy flubs was his so-called “War on Poverty,” which Shapiro said has had devastating consequences.
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“This amounts to spending trillions upon trillions upon trillions of dollars making government encroachment in nearly every area of American life, offering subsidies, threatening prosecution and fines. The government offered instead of prosperity the prospect of intergenerational poverty through sponsorship of single motherhood, through welfare programs that disincentivize marriage,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro’s selection for the worst president in American history is Woodrow Wilson, whom he said was an authoritarian who believed in rule by experts and not by elected representatives. He ripped into Wilson’s support for eugenics, his handling of World War I, his crackdown on civil liberties, his racial policies, and his nationalization of major American industries.
Wilson was, “a terrible president, economically terrible president, terrible wartime president, terrible president on race, terrible president in terms of structuring a massive federal bureaucracy. Just a horrific president,” Shapiro said.
He concluded the episode by saying that Trump and Bush were given unfair raps, with Bush’s economic failings rooted in Clinton-era policies and the fact that the Iraq war was broadly supported at the time. For Trump, he noted that most people just complain about his rhetoric while ignoring his successful economic record and peace deals in the Middle East.
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