Donald Trump,
the 45th United States President, has lived a chequered life. His
presidency was perhaps one of the most controversial tenures among recent US
presidents. While the Bush administration was immense in its foreign policy
impact, the Obama administration in its liberal goody-two shoes do-nothing
approach, the Trump administration was unarguably the most sensational. Now, out
of office for two years and apparently on the brink of announcing another run
for presidency, Trump is mired in a web of investigations and controversies.

But making
the news is not new for Trump. For nearly half a decade, the man has been
adroit in his use of television, and more recently, social media. Scandal after
scandal has followed Donald Trump even as his popularity has soared. Here’s an
in-depth look into the scandals in Trump’s cupboard.

January
20-21, 2017: ‘Scourge of crime’

Donald Trump’s
presidency began with a with a dark, morbid speech. The then-President spoke of
a “scourge of crime” in the United States where crime rates had consistently been
on the decline. Trump’s mission to Make America Great Again (MAGA), began with
an attack on immigration and free trade. Attacking the “Washington
establishment,” Trump said power was being returned to the people.

Trump’s inauguration
speech did not make the impact it would. While pictures taken by news outlets
showed a smaller crowd than the one that was at Obama’s inauguration in 2009,
his press secretary Sean Spicer famously said there were more people that ever –
“both in person and around the globe”. This began a four-year-long tiff with
the mainstream media which then continued to this day.

January 27,
2017: The Muslim ban

Donald Trump
has often used Islamophobia as bait to keep his alt-right ecosystem happy. His
anti-immigration stance culminated in a travel ban that barred foreign
nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries. The move sparked protests
and was challenged in court, several times successfully. A new version of the
ban was finalised in 2018. It was later undone by the Biden administration.

June 1, 2017:
Out of Paris, not going green

It was on
June 1, 2017, that the Trump Administration took the United States out of the
2016 Paris Agreement that his predecessor had done a great deal to broker. The
Agreement, also called the Paris Climate Accords, is an international treaty on
climate change, adaptation and finance.

2019: Trump impeachment

In July of
2019, news surfaced that Donald Trump had asked the leader of Ukraine to
investigate Joe Biden, now US President and Vice-President in the Obama
administration. The Democrat-run House voted to impeach Trump for this in
December the same year. He became the third president to be impeached. However,
Republican dominance in the Senate meant Trump would not be forced out of
office.

November 3,
2020: The Capitol Hill riots

Donald Trump
lost the election but refused to go. Claiming that there had been fraud, Trump provoked
a crowd to enter the Capitol and create mayhem. The seat of governance of the
United States of America (USA) was shaken. Speaking at the rally which would
eventually go on to attack the Capitol, Trump said he would “never concede.”

January 13, 2021: The second impeachment 

Donald Trump was impeached for the second time on January 13, 2021, a week before his term in office expired. This was the fourth time an US President was impeached and the second time after his first impeachment in 2019. 

August, 2022:
FBI raids Mar-a-Lago

The Federal Bureau of Investigation
executed a search warrant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida’s Palm
Beach, as part of an investigation into the handling of presidential documents.
These included classified documents. Now, Trump’s legal problems are on several
fronts.