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From suppressing revolutions to launching disastrous wars, even the most celebrated presidents have dark chapters in their legacy. Join us as we examine the worst act committed by each U.S. president, from Washington's betrayal of Haiti to Biden's chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal. Every administration has its shameful moments that history cannot—and should not—forget.
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00:00I think right here we're going to walk down to the Capitol.
00:03Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the worst act committed by every U.S. president.
00:09Tom will have copies made of this statement and distributed to you later, so you don't need to take it very bad and you may want to take notes.
00:18George Washington's Haitian intervention.
00:20You'd think that after winning his own revolution, George Washington would support in other countries.
00:24This is our land, gentlemen.
00:28Our country.
00:30Ours.
00:34It is that for which we fight.
00:36When Haitian slaves rebelled against their French masters in Haiti, he did the opposite.
00:40In 1791, his administration sided with France, sending money, weapons, and supplies to crush the revolt.
00:45You'll notice the irony of a former colony which had freed itself from the shackles of empire, now helping a different empire keep the literal shackles on subjects.
00:56The decision tied America's early foreign policy to the defense of slavery abroad.
01:00John Adams' authoritarian crackdown.
01:02After fighting for democracy, President John Adams went full authoritarian.
01:06These war measures will protect us from insurrection and subversion.
01:10There is no war, and that is the principle behind these measures, the prevention.
01:18The Alien and Sedition Acts let his government deport immigrants and imprison critics for insulting federal officials.
01:23It was a direct attack on the First Amendment.
01:25Sold as national security during tensions with France, the laws were really about silencing opposition.
01:30Adams failed America's first big test of liberty.
01:33The states will have no alternative but to resist these measures, which are an assault on the liberty of their people.
01:44But the people's representatives demanded these acts.
01:47The embargo of Thomas Jefferson.
01:49Thomas Jefferson was determined to flex America's economic muscle.
01:52In all competitions of interest, and we need not doubt that truth, reason, and their own interests will at length prevail, will gather them into the fold of their country, and will complete their entire union of opinion, which gives to a nation the blessing of harmony and the benefit of all its strength.
02:11He was open to punish Britain and France for harassing American ships.
02:15Instead, he ended up punishing Americans.
02:17His 1807 Embargo Act banned nearly all foreign trade, crippling the U.S. economy overnight.
02:22I mean, exports dropped by 80 percent.
02:24Ports emptied, unemployment soared, and smugglers thrived.
02:27Jefferson called it peaceable coercion.
02:29Everyone else called it a disaster.
02:31Mr. Madison's War
02:32James Madison led America into its first ever declared war.
02:36It almost ended the country.
02:37British ships have continually violated the American flag on the Great Highway of Nations.
02:41and have seized and carried off persons sailing under its protection.
02:46They spill American blood within the waters under our territorial control.
02:51The War of 1812 was meant to defend U.S. honor and its maritime rights.
02:54It quickly spiraled into chaos.
02:56Washington, D.C. was burned, trade collapsed, and thousands died for almost nothing.
03:01The destruction of Washington's public buildings, these fires, the glow of which were seen 50 miles away,
03:07struck at the hearts of many Americans wherever they were.
03:12Madison believed it was a second war of independence.
03:15Most considered it pointless.
03:17Monroe supports the Missouri Compromise.
03:19James Monroe desperately wanted to keep the peace.
03:22He bought it for a terrible price.
03:23The traditional view of Monroe's role in the Missouri crisis is one of passivity and indecisiveness.
03:31The Missouri Compromise admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free one,
03:35drawing a line that divided the nation by law.
03:37Monroe signed it to preserve unity, but it only postponed the inevitable.
03:41Tensions between free states and slave states rose year by year.
03:44The admission of Missouri as a slave state only fanned the flames of the national debate over slavery,
03:49a fierce disagreement that wouldn't be resolved until the end of the Civil War.
03:53The corrupt bargain of John Quincy Adams.
03:55John Quincy Adams won the presidency without winning over the people.
03:59In the chaotic 1824 election, no candidate secured an electoral majority,
04:03so the House of Representatives decided.
04:05The top three candidates, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and Andrew Jackson,
04:09were all from the Republican Party, the only party that existed at the time.
04:13Adams struck a deal with Henry Clay, promising him the role of Secretary of State in exchange for support.
04:18Andrew Jackson's furious followers called it what it was, a corrupt bargain.
04:23Jackson's followers drop the Republican part of Democratic,
04:26and they just become known as the Jacksonian Democratic Party or the Jacksonian Democrats.
04:31Jackson's Constitutional Crisis Over Indian Removal Act.
04:34Andrew Jackson defied the Constitution to force Native Americans off their land.
04:38Jackson believed in manifest destiny, represented in this 19th century painting,
04:43the concept that Americans were destined to expand west to the Pacific Ocean.
04:47When the Supreme Court ruled that Cherokee territory was sovereign, he ignored it.
04:51Instead, he reportedly sneered,
04:52John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.
04:55Enforcement of the 1830 Indian Removal Act led to the Trail of Tears,
04:59a death march that shamed the nation.
05:01Today, it serves as a reminder of the destructive effects of forced assimilation on indigenous people.
05:08Martin Van Buren.
05:09Martin Van Buren inherited an economy that was on edge.
05:12His presidency saw it crumble.
05:13It's incredible how fast he fell, given how high he had climbed up.
05:20Months after taking office, the panic of 1837 hit, triggering one of the worst depressions in U.S. history.
05:26Banks collapsed, businesses failed, and unemployment soared.
05:29What's more, there wasn't a national bank to keep things stable, because Jackson got rid of it the year before.
05:35Van Buren's ill-considered hands-off response earned him the nickname Martin Van Ruin.
05:39By the time recovery began, his presidency was already over.
05:41William Henry Harrison, killed by his own speech.
05:45William Henry Harrison wanted to prove his toughness.
05:47His ego killed him.
05:48At a time when life expectancy was just 39 and a half years old,
05:52William Henry Harrison was sworn in at age 68.
05:56On a cold, wet inauguration day in 1841, he delivered a nearly two-hour speech without a coat or hat.
06:01He caught pneumonia soon after and died just 31 days later.
06:04He's a great lesson in bringing an umbrella.
06:07An umbrella and wearing a hat?
06:09And not making a two-hour speech.
06:10America's shortest presidency began and ended with Greek tragedy levels of hubris.
06:15Tyler annexes Texas.
06:17John Tyler wanted a presidency defining legacy.
06:19He found it in Texas.
06:20Tyler, a firm believer in Manifest Destiny, saw Texas as a potentially valuable part of the Union
06:25and didn't think that Mexicans would risk a war to stop the U.S. from taking over.
06:30After being expelled from his own party, he pushed through the annexation of Texas in 1845.
06:35He used arcane rules to bypass the will of the Senate with a joint resolution of Congress.
06:40The move inflamed tensions over slavery, enraged abolitionists, and infuriated Mexico, setting the stage for war.
06:46The annexation of Texas sparked conflict.
06:48The Mexican-American War would last two years and claim some 40,000 lives.
06:52The Galfin Affair sunk Zachary Taylor.
06:54Zachary Taylor campaigned on integrity.
06:56In barely more than a year, his brief administration was buried in scandal.
07:00The Galfin Affair erupted with Taylor's Secretary of War, George Crawford.
07:03He pocketed massive interest payments from a decades-old government claim on an estate.
07:08Though Taylor wasn't directly involved, the corruption shattered his clean image, crippling his presidency before his sudden death in 1850.
07:14Conspiracy theories arose, suggesting he was actually poisoned, making him our first assassinated president.
07:22Millard Fillmore signs the Compromise of 1850.
07:24For all the faults of the Taylor administration, the man fought the expansion of slavery with conviction.
07:29He actually proposes that California and New Mexico come in as free states.
07:35His successor, Millard Fillmore, did not.
07:38Fillmore quickly signed one of the most divisive laws in U.S. history.
07:41The Compromise of 1850 briefly eased tensions between North and South, but came at a moral cost, forcing free states to return escaped enslaved people.
07:49And even though it appeared for a couple of years that it would succeed, very quickly the fabric of the so-called Compromise of 1850 fell apart.
07:58Kansas bled thanks to Franklin Pierce.
08:00Franklin Pierce poured fuel on the slavery fire that became Bleeding Kansas.
08:04In 1854, he signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, letting settlers there to decide whether to allow slavery themselves.
08:10While Georgia's Alexander Stevens, future Confederate vice president, hailed the act's passage as glory enough for one day, the New York Tribune reported,
08:20The law repealed the Missouri Compromise, unleashing violent chaos as pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces flooded the territory.
08:30The violence that followed turned Kansas into a battlefield.
08:33In the end, more than 50 people died in Bleeding Kansas.
08:37Buchanan threw up his hands over civil war.
08:39James Buchanan watched the country fall apart and did almost nothing to stop it.
08:43He feared that if you handled the issue of slavery too robustly, that it would create what he believed would be the end of the Union, secession.
08:58And that's exactly what happened.
09:00As the Southern states seceded, he insisted the Constitution gave him no power to act.
09:05His passivity let the Union unravel in slow motion.
09:07By the time Lincoln took office, the Confederacy was already forming.
09:11Buchanan is regarded by many as America's worst president.
09:14Oh, he's definitely the worst.
09:15The worst ever?
09:16The worst president ever.
09:18Lincoln suspended habeas corpus.
09:20Even universally revered people can make terrible mistakes.
09:23We're stepped out upon the world stage now.
09:26Now!
09:27With the fate of human dignity in our hands!
09:30Abraham Lincoln may have saved the Union, but he bent the Constitution to do it.
09:34Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, allowing the military to jail civilians without trial.
09:38And the Constitution says that Congress can do that under times of emergency, but Lincoln did it on his own without Congress, and he continued to do it for several years.
09:46Thousands were detained for suspected disloyalty, including journalists and politicians.
09:50Lincoln argued it was necessary, but in retrospect, it was just tyranny in the name of freedom.
09:54So, my suggestion is that Lincoln himself took the already broken Constitution and broke it even further in the hopes of recreating it into something new.
10:02Lincoln's dream of Reconstruction, destroyed by his successor.
10:05Abraham Lincoln envisioned a merciful Reconstruction that would reunite the nation while also protecting freed slaves.
10:11After his assassination, Andrew Johnson destroyed Lincoln's vision.
10:14Instead, the Tennesseans sided with the South.
10:17Johnson pardoned Confederate leaders, vetoed civil rights bills, and fought Congress' efforts to guarantee Black equality.
10:23His leniency empowered white supremacist terrorists like the KKK.
10:26Johnson undermined Lincoln's legacy before Reconstruction had even begun in earnest.
10:31When it came back to session, Congress tried to reverse Johnson's white supremacist rampage.
10:36In retaliation, the petty, vengeful Johnson fired Republicans from federal government and vetoed every civil rights bill he could.
10:44The corrupt administration of Ulysses S. Grant.
10:46Ulysses S. Grant may have won the Civil War, but he lost utter control of his own presidency.
10:51Grant is known by many as the Butcher. Grant is known as the Drunk.
10:55Surrounded by crooks, his administration became a poster child for corruption.
10:59Scandals like the Whiskey Ring and Crédit Mobilier exposed officials who lined their pockets while the nation recovered from war.
11:05The scandals of the 1870s essentially weigh down Grant's administration and divert a lot of attention and energy so that they lose a lot of political capital.
11:14Grant himself wasn't corrupt, but he was loyal to all the wrong people.
11:17Hayes' corruption kills Reconstruction.
11:18Rutherford B. Hayes became president through a backroom deal.
11:21The bipartisan commission voted to give the electoral votes of the disputed states to the Republican, Hayes.
11:29In exchange, Democrats got something they wanted.
11:32The price he paid was the death of Reconstruction and racial progress.
11:35The disputed 1876 election was resolved by the Compromise of 1877,
11:39which gave Hayes the presidency in exchange for pulling federal troops out of the South.
11:43The move ended black political power and unleashed nearly a century of Jim Crow oppression.
11:47By 1880, elected officials in more than a third of U.S. states enacted felony disenfranchisement laws.
11:55Garfield didn't put his money where his mouth was.
11:58James Garfield entered office vowing to clean up Washington's corrupt patronage system.
12:01Journalist and historian Scott Greenberger says that under that spoils system,
12:06the main job requirement for most federal employees was loyalty.
12:12His short presidency exposed just how deep it ran.
12:14Instead of dismantling it, Garfield got tangled in party infighting.
12:18He rewarded allies, feuding with powerful Republican boss Roscoe Conkling over plum appointments.
12:23The conflict consumed his presidency, indirectly leading to his assassination by a disgruntled office seeker.
12:28Gajow had campaigned for Garfield and believed the president owed him.
12:32Chester A. Arthur's Chinese Exclusion Act
12:35Chester A. Arthur caved to racism, cementing it in law.
12:39In 1882, he signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first major U.S. law to ban immigration by nationality.
12:44It was the first in a long line of acts, targeting the Chinese for exclusion,
12:49and it would remain in force for more than 60 years.
12:52It halted Chinese labor immigration for 10 years and denied citizenship to those already here.
12:57The act legitimized xenophobia and set the stage for decades of bigotry and exclusionary immigration policy.
13:03And it's also the first and only time in the entire history of the United States
13:06that a group is singled out by name, Chinese, by name, as being undesirable.
13:15Grover Cleveland, violent union buster
13:17Grover Cleveland didn't merely break a single strike.
13:19He shattered the American labor movement as a whole.
13:22In 1894, when Pullman Railway workers walked out, he sent federal troops to crush them.
13:27He thought he was well within his rights as president, but Democratic labor leaders in the North were furious.
13:32The Illinois governor, John Altgeldt, begged the president to hold them back.
13:35The confrontation turned bloody, leaving dozens of workers dead.
13:38The strike-breaking effectively wiped out support for the Democrats in the industrial North.
13:43Grover Cleveland set organized labor back for decades,
13:46an otherwise forgettable president's massacre at Wounded Knee.
13:49Benjamin Harrison's presidency is mostly forgotten, with the notable exception of its bloodiest chapter.
13:54Manny Ironhawk pays his respects at the Wounded Knee site,
13:57where he says his great-great-grandfather Ghost Horse was massacred.
14:02My grandfather and his son went out, and only my grandfather came back.
14:07In 1890, under his administration, U.S. troops slaughtered nearly 300 Lakota men, women and children, at Wounded Knee.
14:13The massacre marked the end of the Indian War as in the death of the Plains tribe's resistance.
14:17Harrison never faced accountability, nor did the soldiers who received medals of honor.
14:21William McKinley's imperialist America
14:23William McKinley forged an American empire, filling the South Pacific in blood.
14:27We cannot let these islands go to Japan.
14:31Japan has her eye on them.
14:33In 1898, he oversaw the annexation of Hawaii,
14:36and soon thereafter the bloody takeover of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War.
14:40When Filipinos resisted U.S. rule, the war that followed killed hundreds of thousands through violence, famine, and disease.
14:46Many of the tactics that had so outraged Americans when used by Spain on Cuba
14:51were now turned on the Philippines with predictably awful results.
14:55McKinley called it benevolent assimilation.
14:57Roosevelt's War Crimes in the Philippines
14:59Theodore Roosevelt inherited a brutal war in the Philippines and defended its worst abuses.
15:03American troops were not greeted as liberators by the Filipinos,
15:10but as occupiers, as oppressors.
15:13Under his watch, U.S. troops used torture, burned villages, and killed civilians in the name of pacification.
15:18Atrocities like General Jacob Smith's massacre on Samar turned the islands into a howling wilderness.
15:24Roosevelt called it necessary.
15:25History calls it America's first modern war crime.
15:28Taft's Nicaraguan Intervention
15:29William Howard Taft claimed America was spreading regional stability,
15:33but in truth, he was aiming for U.S. control.
15:35Taft believed that whoever controlled the railroads of a country also controlled its economy.
15:40In 1909, he sent Marines to Nicaragua to protect American business interests and back a friendly regime.
15:46The intervention sparked years of occupation, rebellion, and bloodshed.
15:49Taft called it dollar diplomacy, and it repelled generations of Nicaraguans.
15:53Regardless of Taft's intentions, dollar diplomacy both embarrassed the United States and angered our southern neighbors.
16:01Wilson's Authoritarian Move
16:02Woodrow Wilson preached democracy abroad.
16:04At home, he took a different tack.
16:06During World War I, he signed the Espionage and Sedition Acts, making it a crime to criticize the government or the war.
16:12The FBI triples in size during this time period to enforce these new federal regulations.
16:18Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison just for giving an anti-war speech.
16:23Debs wound up running for president from his jail cell.
16:25And he drew a significant number of votes, but I'm not sure he ever even got to vote for himself.
16:30Harding's Teapot Dome Scandal
16:32Warren G. Harding promised a return to normalcy, but delivered corruption instead.
16:35Harding today is remembered, if at all, for his womanizing and for the scandals that engulfed his administration after he died suddenly in 1923.
16:46His administration was riddled with scandals, the worst being the Teapot Dome affair.
16:50Interior Secretary Albert Falls secretly leased federal oil reserves to private companies for bribes.
16:55That was a fairly big deal because it was done in secret and without due process.
17:00Harding claimed ignorance, but his cronies sold the government cheap.
17:03The fallout made Teapot Dome a synonym for political corruption.
17:07Coolidge's laissez-faire economics
17:08Silent Calvin Coolidge believed the best government was one that did the least.
17:12He was president during the Roaring Twenties, and Coolidge thought government should stay out of the way of a growing economy.
17:17His strict laissez-faire policies let corporations boom while ignoring the growing gap between rich and poor.
17:22During the Roaring Twenties, that seemed great.
17:24But under his watch, speculation soared and regulation vanished.
17:27The 30th president was so committed to small government, for example, that it sometimes eclipsed his humanity.
17:33His hands-off approach helped build the bubble that burst into the Great Depression.
17:36Hoover bungles a depression.
17:38Herbert Hoover entered office as a self-made hero.
17:40He left it as one of the most despised presidents in history.
17:42This man lived 90 years, and he is judged for four of them.
17:48When the Great Depression hit, he refused to provide direct relief.
17:51He believed Adam Smith's invisible hand would right the economic ship.
17:54Even as banks failed and millions-starved, Hoover clung to rugged individualism.
17:58His inaction guaranteed the worsening of the Depression.
18:01Most Americans believe that on the day Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated, the Depression ended.
18:07Why?
18:08Because Roosevelt gave them something Hoover couldn't give them, a sense of hope that better times will be coming.
18:14FDR inters tens of thousands of innocent Japanese Americans.
18:18Franklin D. Roosevelt led America through the Great Depression and most of World War II.
18:21Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
18:31A hero to many, he was also responsible for one of the country's darkest injustices.
18:35In 1942, he signed Executive Order 9066, forcing more than 100,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps.
18:43At first, Japanese Americans were pushed to leave restricted areas and migrate inland.
18:48But as the government froze their bank accounts and imposed local restrictions such as curfews, many were unable to leave.
18:56Families lost homes, businesses, and freedom overnight.
18:58The Supreme Court upheld the policy, its shameful legacy lasting for generations.
19:03I can still see that.
19:04Truman drops the bomb.
19:06Harry S. Truman made one of the singularly deadliest decisions in human history.
19:09It was just one plane, so I assume that it was passing by as usual.
19:13In August 1945, he ordered atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
19:18More than 100,000 civilians were killed instantly.
19:21Many more would succumb to radiation sickness.
19:23Truman said it ended the war and saved lives.
19:25But historians still debate whether it was truly necessary.
19:28What do you want the world to remember?
19:31Eliminating nuclear weapons is the path to peace, ensuring this tragedy is never repeated.
19:36Eisenhower and Operation Ajax
19:38Dwight D. Eisenhower, savior of the West in World War II, preached freedom even as he greenlit the toppling of a democracy.
19:45We know beyond this that we are linked to all free peoples, not merely by a noble idea, but by a simple need.
19:55In 1953, he approved Operation Ajax.
19:58After Iran's elected Prime Minister Mohamed Mossadegh nationalized oil, the West conspired against him.
20:03The coup was a covert CIA-British plot, restoring the Shah's friendly dictatorship.
20:08It also sowed the seeds of revolution.
20:10Demonstrators celebrate the ouster of the Shah and the return from exile of Ayatollah Khomeini.
20:16Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs
20:17John F. Kennedy's first major foreign policy test was a disaster.
20:21In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger.
20:33Months after taking office, he approved a CIA plan to invade Cuba using anti-Castro exiles at the Bay of Pigs.
20:39The mission collapsed within days, humiliating the U.S. and strengthening Fidel Castro's regime.
20:44The CIA had predicted that once the invading force landed on the beaches, there'd be a popular uprising here against Fidel Castro.
20:53In the end, the exact opposite happened.
20:56Kennedy took public blame, but the fiasco haunted his presidency, pushing Cuba closer to the USSR.
21:01If the nations of this hemisphere should fail to meet their commitments against outside communist penetration,
21:11then I want it clearly understood that this government will not hesitate in meeting its primary obligations,
21:19which are the security of our nation.
21:21Johnson pushes the U.S. into Vietnam.
21:23Lyndon B. Johnson declared he wouldn't send American boys to fight in Vietnam.
21:27He lied, eventually sending hundreds of thousands.
21:30Our people in South Vietnam are helping to protect people against terror.
21:35After the disputed Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, he won near-unlimited war powers and escalated U.S. involvement into a full-scale conflict.
21:43More than 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese died in a war America couldn't win.
21:48Nixon bombs Cambodia and Laos.
21:49Richard Nixon promised to end the Vietnam War.
21:52Then he expanded it in secret.
21:54Priority, foreign policy objective of our next administration will be to bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam.
22:03In 1969, he ordered massive bombing campaigns in Cambodia and Laos under Operation Menu, targeting communist supply lines.
22:10The strikes killed tens of thousands of civilians, destabilized Cambodia, and helped the Khmer Rouge rise to power.
22:15The bombing eviscerates the country.
22:18Nixon's secret war left scars that still linger today.
22:22Ford pardons Nixon.
22:23Gerald Ford began his presidency by forgiving the unforgivable.
22:26A month after Nixon resigned over Watergate, Ford granted a full pardon for any crimes he may have committed.
22:32The move outraged the nation and tanked Ford's approval overnight.
22:35He said it was to heal the country, but it gave future bad actors in the White House a friendly precedent to point to.
22:39In the passing of time, I'm more convinced now than I was then, it was the right thing to do.
22:46Carter and the Iranian Hostages.
22:47Jimmy Carter faced many issues during his presidency, but the Iran hostage crisis was the straw that broke his administration's back.
22:53The authorities in Iran should realize, however, that the availability of peaceful measures, like the patience of the American people, is running out.
23:04Iranian revolutionaries stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
23:11Carter's failed rescue mission and cautious diplomacy made him look powerless.
23:14The hostages were released minutes after Ronald Reagan took office.
23:17Members of the Iran working group at the State Department could take their first sigh of relief and begin formally informing hostage families that everyone was out and safe.
23:26Reagan ignored the AIDS crisis.
23:28Ronald Reagan preached family values while ignoring a national tragedy.
23:31If you think about it, you'll see that it's in the family that we must all learn the fundamental lesson of life.
23:37Right and wrong, respect for others, self-discipline, the importance of knowledge, and, yes, a sense of our own self-worth.
23:45As AIDS swept through America in the 1980s, his administration stayed silent for years.
23:50By the time Reagan finally addressed the epidemic publicly, tens of thousands were already dead.
23:54His indifference turned stigma into a state policy written in blood.
23:58To raise awareness, the AIDS memorial quilt was unveiled on the National Mall.
24:02Joe Fritano.
24:04His organizers read the names of those who died.
24:08H.W. Bush invades Panama.
24:09George H.W. Bush kicked off his presidency with bombs over Panama.
24:13In 1989, he launched Operation Just Cause to capture dictator Manuel Noriega.
24:18I will continue to seek solutions to the problems of this region through dialogue and multilateral diplomacy.
24:25The mission on paper and on television was to defend democracy.
24:28U.S. forces leveled whole neighborhoods, slaying hundreds of civilians and sparking international outrage.
24:33Noriega was hauled off to prison, but the invasion left Latin America seething.
24:37La destrucción de la sociedad panameña fue a tal grado que elevó, elevó los grados de delincuencia, de violencia, de pandillas, la corrupción.
24:50Clinton's Crime Bill.
24:51Bill Clinton's triangulation strategy was meant to make Democrats look tough on crime.
24:55We have to prove here in America that we can make progress on this.
24:59We have to prove that we can make a difference.
25:02The 1994 Crime Bill did exactly that, devastating entire communities.
25:05It poured billions into prisons, expanded the death penalty, and pushed states toward harsher sentencing.
25:10Crime rates fell, but mass incarceration soared, disproportionately targeting black and brown Americans.
25:16Do you think you'll be coming back here again?
25:19That's hard to say.
25:20Clinton later admitted it went too far.
25:22Bush invades Iraq.
25:23George W. Bush launched the Iraq War on a lie.
25:26At this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger.
25:37In 2003's administration claimed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but none were ever found.
25:42The invasion toppled the dictator, but unleashed chaos, insurgency, and years of bloodshed.
25:47The war killed hundreds of thousands and cost over a trillion dollars.
25:50America is still paying for it.
25:52America said, we are coming for you to give you freedom.
25:56Where is the freedom?
25:57Obama's drone war.
25:58Barack Obama modernized warfare, but blurred the rules of warfare in the process.
26:02First, we must remain unwavering in our fight against terrorist organizations.
26:09Between 2011 and 2017, his administration carried out thousands of drone strikes across Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.
26:16The government may have executed suspected terrorists, but they also killed hundreds of civilians.
26:21The U.S. must explain why these people have been killed.
26:23People who are clearly civilians.
26:25There were no trials and little oversight.
26:27Obama called drones precise, but the unintended body count belies the claim.
26:30January 6th.
26:32Donald Trump's first term ended the same way he ran his entire administration, in chaos.
26:36You'll never take back our country with weakness.
26:40You have to show strength and you have to be strong.
26:42On January 6th, 2021, he urged supporters to fight like hell, and a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol to stop the election certification.
26:49Five people died, hundreds were injured, and democracy itself was shaken.
26:52And they were pounding on our door and trying to open it.
26:58And my husband sat with his foot against the door, praying that it would not break in.
27:04Trump was impeached for incitement, but never convicted after the 2024 election.
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27:24Biden executes a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
27:27Joe Biden ended America's longest war, but the pullout was mired in controversy, fear, and suffering.
27:32It's time for American troops to come home.
27:35In 2021, his administration oversaw a rushed withdrawal from Afghanistan that collapsed into panic.
27:40The Taliban reclaimed power within days, and desperate Afghans clung to departing planes.
27:45We are trying to protect my kids and my mom.
27:47I have my senior mom here, both of my daughters.
27:53And we're just going through a disaster here.
27:56Thirteen U.S. troops and countless civilians were killed.
27:58The disaster defined, for many, his foreign policy.
28:01The U.S. presidency has a long history of big mistakes and moral failures.
28:05Did we leave any presidential catastrophes off our list?
28:07Let us know in the comments below.
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