December saw 138 examples of horrible behavior, with the biggest increases coming in the categories of sexual harassment/assault, race baiting, splitting up immigrant families, attacking equal protection under the law, and demagoguery.

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For the first time since July, I recorded fewer examples of horrible behavior by Donald and his Administration month over month. I suspect this is due in large part to the holidays rather than Donald being any less horrible in December than he had been in November. In fact, five categories saw significant increases from prior months: normalizing sexual harassment and/or sexual assault, race baiting, attacking equal protection under the law, splitting up immigrant families, and demagoguery.

As of October, 2017, at least 12 women have accused Donald Trump of sexual harassment, assault, and/or rape. (image credit: Yahoo news)

I counted a total of eight examples of normalizing sexual assault or outright sexual harassment by Donald and members of his Administration, more than double the previous high in November. Most related to Donald’s support of Roy Moore, but one of Donald’s lawyers also asked a judge to dismiss a defamation case against Donald by one of the 19 women who has accused him of sexual assault. And in yet another case announced by the ACLU, Donald’s Administration was again trying to deny an undocumented minor in detention an abortion she asked for and that is guaranteed by the Constitution.

Race baiting (the unfair use of statements about race to try to influence the actions or attitudes of a particular group of people) was up ias well, with seven of the 10 instances I’ve recorded thus far occuring in December. This is partly because I changed how closely I was tracking this category, however, but it’s hard to call Donald’s attempt to lecture civil rights icon John Lewis on civil rights anything but race baiting.

Map showing the reduction in the Bear’s Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments proposed by Donald (image credit: Grand Canyon Trust/Stephanie Smith)

Denying, or rejecting the importance of, equal protection under the law was another major theme of Donald’s this past month. 21 examples of horribleness (15.2% of total) fell into this category. Donald denied natives equal protection when he announced he was shrinking two national monuments in Utah dramatically (although there was a lawsuit filed immediately to stop him). The Supreme Court, with Donald’s choice Gorsuch now on the bench, refused to hear an LGBT discrimination case. And the Administration has been refusing to allow legal counsel to an American citizen arrested in Iraq, treating him as a non-citizen and erecting a legal Catch-22 around him in the process.

There were double the usual number of mentions in the media of the Administration advocating splitting up immigrant families (10 vs. 5 or 6) in December. The most egregious example of this by far is how the US Customs and Immigration Service is considering intentionally separating children from their parents at the border in order to discourage crossing the border illegally.

Donald and his Administration engaged in a lot more demagoguery (seeking support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than by using rational argument) in December than in prior months – nearly 19% of all of the examples of horrible behavior involved demagoguery on some topic or another. For example, Donald claimed that he ended the supposed “war on Christmas,” repeatedly called Hillary Clinton “Crooked Hillary” (which is belittling and misogynistic too) even when there’s still no evidence she’s a criminal, made multiple claims about the tax plan that were irrational but sounded good, and his Administration alleged that a Pennsylvania shooting was terrorism even though there has never been any evidence of that.

Summary
In December 2017, I identified 138 unique items that met one or more of my 51 categories (see below for a complete list). This down from November, when I recorded 145 items. In total, between July 1 and December 31, 2017, I recorded 708 unique examples of horrible behavior.

Horrible categories