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WASHINGTON -- Donald Trump is not just a bad president. "King" is too good a word for the likes of him. What Trump truly is shall be written in the end.

Andrew Johnson was the worst president we've had until now. A Southerner who was Abraham Lincoln's vice president, he took office in 1865 when the Civil War president was murdered by a Confederate sympathizer.

Lincoln's worst mistake, Johnson restored Confederate leaders and generals back to power and undermined the meaning of the war. For that, the hated, bitter and racist Johnson was impeached and almost removed from office in 1868.

So let's review the latest White House news. The pet "stars" in the Cabinet, Pete Hegseth and Bobby Kennedy Jr., are actively undermining the nation's military and the health agencies. These institutions are on a precipice, at a crisis point, no secret around here.

The pair are Trump's loud, conceited henchmen, hollowing out Pentagon leaders while there's a war on and making up stuff about vaccines, resulting in measles outbreaks and confusion. Vaccines are a great advancement for all of humanity. Measles in a child can cause brain damage in old age, by the way.

Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff, and Russell Vought, Office of Management and Budget director, the two nerdy, invisible henchmen, are doing dirty work that violates shared American values and law.

Miller is running a violent secret police force that arrested more than 100,000 people in their homes, jobs and cars this summer. It's called ICE for short. Family separation is cruel and unusual, but it's back behind our detention centers.

Vought is seizing back $810 million Congress voted to spend mostly on services to refugees, asylees and other noncitizens. He has no right to do that, under the Constitution. Congress has the sole spending power. But we are so past all that.

Trump just weakened fuel emissions standards so that we can all breathe in more polluted air. He says he loves coal and hates clean energy. He may build a Major League Baseball stadium in the gorgeous Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. You tell me how that can be.

Trump spent the weekend on "social" media threatening the world and warning about communism. That's a trick he learned at the lap of his Svengali mentor, lawyer Roy Cohn, a player in Sen. Joseph McCarthy's Red Scare in the 1950s.

Then Trump put up the same clip on TV as a political ad, "paid for by the U.S. government." That, again, is patently illegal, government ethics lawyers say.

The rules are, there are no rules. That should sober us up for the Nov. 3 midterm elections, and the Jan. 3 swearing-in of new members of Congress.

That period, after Democrats are likely to win both houses, will be dicey and dangerous. Trump will be a man with a plan to undo the people's voice and choice.

Never forget Jan. 6, 2021, when he incited mob violence on Congress in the Capitol.

Why might we see more sound and fury after an election? Trump foolishly personalized the midterms, like no president ever before. It's all about him, and so he'll campaign -- in vain -- constantly in October. But remember, while he has no book learning, he's as cunning as they come.

In fact, Trump openly urged his own voters to "cheat." What has become of our body politic?

As a Washingtonian, I must say he's crushed the life and joy out of our gracefully planned city, laid out to look a little like Paris. No president should destroy our historic buildings, squares and sightlines; no president tried before now.

Since thousands of career federal employees lost their jobs, it feels like the town factory closed. Congress is gone half the time when they're not genuflecting to the man in the Oval. The meek White House press, like the old gray mare, ain't what it used to be.

If the late lion Sen. Edward M. Kennedy were alive, the national arts center honoring the other beloved slain president, his brother John F. Kennedy, never would have closed.

Benedict Arnold and Robert E. Lee, move over. In the annals of American traitors, Trump is winner-take-all.

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The author may be reached at JamieStiehm.com. To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, please visit creators.com.

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