Only four years ago, Donald Trump rose like a phoenix and was sworn in as 45th President of America and the first ever without holding a public office before. Like Julius Caesar of William Shakespeare, he came, he saw and he conquered. He was unique, weird and brazenly bold in so many ways which majority of Americans believed to be too honest. They followed him in every single word he said as he committed himself to his “Make America Great Again” dream-like project. Weary of wars and the ensued unrest emanating from ever increasing unemployment, his fellow citizens had hoped against hopes that he was the Messiah they had long been looking for, wistfully though. But, they were badly betrayed and foxed into believe in something which was far from truth. They were being made to believe in a manipulated narrative being churned out by a propaganda machine. He was soon being equated with a symbol of vanity, pride and prejudice. Absolute power not only corrupts absolutely, at the same time, it exposes people thoroughly.He turned a deaf ear to every voice of sanity just as he turned a blind eye to every reality that stared him in his face. When required to stand tall and deliver, he looked the other and chose to walk away with impunity. The Corona Pandemic in his last year in office came to stamp his shallow understanding of colossal issue of gigantic magnitude. He even questioned scientific facts and proven realities that he mocked at Corona virus as a Chinese conspiracy. Resultantly,since last February, more than a quarter of a million Americans have died from COVID-19, a fifth of the world’s deaths from the disease and the highest number of any country. Similarly, various socio-economic indicators also turned alarmingly worse. In the three years before the pandemic, 2.3 million Americans lost their health insurance, accounting for up to 10,000 “excess deaths”; millions more lost coverage during the pandemic. The United States’ score on the human-rights organization Freedom House’s annual index dropped from 90 out of 100 under President Barack Obama to 86 under Trump, below that of Greece and Mauritius. Trump withdrew the U.S. from 13 international organizations, agreements, and treaties. The number of refugees admitted into the country annually fell from 85,000 to 12,000. He preferred building walls and not bridges which could have united his own country and the world at large too. About 400 miles of barrier were built along the southern border. The whereabouts of the parents of 666 children seized at the border by U.S. officials remain unknown.Trump reversed 80 environmental rules and regulations. He appointed more than 220 judges to the federal bench, including three to the Supreme Court, 24 percent female, 4 percent Black, and 100 percent conservative, with more rated “not qualified” by the American Bar Association than under any other president in the past half century. The national debt increased by $7 trillion, or 37 percent. In Trump’s last year, the trade deficit was on track to exceed $600 billion, the largest gap since 2008. Trump signed just one major piece of legislation, the 2017 tax law, which, according to one study, for the first time brought the total tax rate of the wealthiest 400 Americans below that of every other income group. By his whimsical decisions and arbitrary rule, America under Trump became less free, lesser equal, more divided, more alone, deeper in debt, swampier, dirtier and meaner in more ways than one. It also became more delusional. By his whimsical decisions and arbitrary rule, America under Trump became less free, lesser equal, more divided, more alone, deeper in debt, swampier, dirtier and meaner in more ways than one. It also became more delusional. You can lie some time to some people but you cannot lie all the time to all the people. No number from Trump’s years in power will be more lastingly destructive than his 25,000 false or misleading statements. Super-spread by social media and cable news, they contaminated the minds of tens of millions of people. Trump’s lies will linger for years. Presidents lie but when the lies are consequential enough, they have a corrosive effect on democracy. Lyndon B. Johnson deceived Americans about the Gulf of Tonkin incident and everything else concerning the Vietnam War. After Jimmy Carter, in his 1976 campaign, promised, “I’ll never lie to you,” and then pretty much kept his word, voters sent him back to Georgia. Ronald Reagan’s gauzy fictions were far more popular.Trump’s lies were different. They belonged to the postmodern era. They were assaults against not this or that fact, but reality itself. They spread beyond public policy to invade private life, clouding the mental faculties of everyone who had to breathe his air, dissolving the very distinction between truth and falsehood. Their purpose was never the conventional desire to conceal something shameful from the public. He was stunningly forthright about things that other presidents would have gone to great lengths to keep secret: his true feelings about Senator John McCain and other war heroes; his eagerness to get rid of disloyal underlings; his desire for law enforcement to protect his friends and hurt his enemies; his effort to extort a foreign leader for dirt on a political adversary; his affection for Kim Jong Un and admiration for Vladimir Putin; his positive view of white nationalists; his hostility toward racial and religious minorities; and his contempt for women. Out of his pack of lies and twisted facts, two events in Trump’s last year in office broke the spell of his sinister perversion of the truth and cost him not only his re-election to Oval Office but also his most precious asset, his character. The first to come was the killer Coronavirus. The beginning of the end of Trump’s presidency arrived on March 11, 2020, when he addressed the nation for the first time on the subject of the pandemic and showed himself to be completely out of his depth. The virus was a fact that Trump couldn’t lie into oblivion or forge into a political weapon—it was too personal and frightening, too real. As hundreds of thousands of Americans died, many of them needlessly, and the administration flailed between fantasy, partisan incitement, and criminal negligence, a crucial number of Americans realized that Trump’s lies could get someone they love killed.The second event came on November 3, the elections day. For months Trump had tried frantically to destroy Americans’ trust in the election—the essence of the democratic system, the one lever of power that belongs undeniably to the people. His effort consisted of nonstop lies about the fraudulence of mail-in ballots. But the ballots flooded into election offices, and people lined up before dawn on the first day of early voting, and some of them waited 10 hours to vote, and by the end of Election Day, despite the soaring threat of the virus, more than 150 million Americans had cast ballots, the highest turnout rate since at least 1900. Never was the American nation so polarized nor were the Americans more paranoid than it was witnessed in recently held Elections, 2020. Thanks to constant Biden-bashing, by the incumbent in Oval Office, Mr. Trump who dug his grave and fell under his own weight. His harsh rhetoric, divisive politics and exclusionist policies drove him miles away from the noble ideals and lofty aspirations espoused by the founding fathers which are deeply embedded in American Dream. As the land of opportunity and equality for all, far above the petty prejudices of race, religion, caste or creed, America promised ever American a decent life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. America stood taller on high moral ground as a nation of nations and thus emerged as the sole superpower. The two mainstream political Parties-Republicans and Democrats- differed in their perspectives and priorities while keeping the national interests supreme. They were only political opponents, never the enemies. Before and after the elections, they were only Americans, all in all. Trump in his four years in office, divided America in Red, Blue, Black, White, and the rest. Thus, he badly bruised its body and soul. What had begun with bang eventually ended with a whimper! In the final analysis, Donald Trump will be remembered as the first president to be impeached twice. He fed the myth that the election was stolen, summoned his supporters to Washington to protest the certification of the Electoral College vote, told them that only through strength could they take back their country, and stood by as they stormed the US Capitol and interfered in the operation of constitutional government. When historians write about his presidency, they will do so through the lens of the riot too. He was shamelessly defeated with far too bigger margins than he would have ever imagined and thus voted out of office. But he still had the heart to question the outcome.To add to the woes of Americans and further damage his personal demeanor, he went on to boycott the swearing in ceremony of his successor Joe Biden on January 20. Thus, he chose to have yet another dubious distinction as an outgoing US President and the only one since 1869. He himself opted for an unceremonious exit, riddled with disgrace and dishonor. The writer is a civil servant by profession, a writer by choice and a motivational speaker by passion!