There's at least one thing that Donald Trump's critics and supporters can agree on about his presidency, according to Jeffrey Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University: "He came in to be a disrupter, and of all of his accomplishments, I think it's very easy to say that he accomplished that one."
Engel is one of a group of historians from leading universities around the country who convened via Zoom last March. Their mission: assessing one of the most unusual presidencies in American history.
During the call, Timothy Naftali of New York University remarked, "His concept of a national interest was identical with his concept of his own interest."
Daniel C. Kurtzer, of Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs, said, "Trump inherited a mess. It was not that he created a mess; the Middle East was in very bad shape."
Julian Zelizer of Princeton assembled the panel, which will soon publish a book of essays on Mr. Trump's time in office – a presidency he described as "one of the most unstable, unconventional.
"One thing that historians who've lived through the moment have, that historians 200 years from now won't have, is a sense of what it felt like to live in the moment," Zelizer told correspondent Rita Braver.
It will be the third volume in a series which offered mixed assessments of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. But unlike his predecessors, former President Trump requested to meet via Zoom with...
Mr. Neugebauer's Pattern of Falsehoods Reinforce that He Cannot be Trusted to Oversee Fermi; His Gaining Control of the Company Would Jeopardize Shareholder Value Fermi Urges Shareholders to Return...