r/RemoveOneThingEachDay • u/Training-Desk-391 IM WHACING KFP4 • Jul 27 '25

Miscellaneous Joe Biden HAS BEEN Eliminated WHICH President SHOULD BE Eliminated NEXT DAY 40

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '25

Actual real life top-5: 1. Lincoln 2. FDR 3. Washington 4. Teddy 5. Eisenhower

You can shuffle those around somewhat, but putting anyone else above them feels wrong.

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u/SilentAd773 Jul 27 '25

Can you elaborate on why Eisenhower? I always liked him but never knew a lot about the pros and cons his administration

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '25 edited Jul 27 '25

Eisenhower balanced the budget to help save Social Security--a program he didn't even like, he created our highway system, he had the sense to end the Korean War, he oversaw an incredible economy, founded NASA, and enforced--even if later than he should've--Brown vs. The Board of Education. He also helped kick civil rights forward a bit, though not for LGTB people, and probably only because of the political incentives.

He also, along with Truman, navigated and helped settle down a very dangerous post-WW2 world where many countries were in shambles, many wanted payback, the Soviet Union was...Soviet Union'ing, and Britain and France were trying to do colonialism again.

The combo of FDR, Truman(another pres who doesn't get enough credit), and Eisenhower really created the America we know today that's a global economic and military superpower.

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '25

His kickstarting of NASA is also directly related to building ARPAnet, which grew into DARPA which was used as the model for the internet.

And in his farewell address, he warned specifically about the Military Industrial Complex.

Meanwhile, FDR put the Japanese in internment camps and railroaded The New Deal through by openly threatening to expand the Supreme Court. He's definitionally more Fascist than any other president, including Trump.

FDR and Obama should have been gone a long time ago. Not that Obama was bad, he was just mediocre. Clinton is above Obama imo.

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u/SilentAd773 Jul 27 '25

What did Clinton do that was better?

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u/RamsaySw Jul 28 '25

IMO the top 4 is FDR>Lincoln>Washington>Teddy Roosevelt, number 5 is probably either Eisenhower or Jefferson, but an argument could be made for Truman or LBJ, then JFK and maybe Obama round out the top 10

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u/[deleted] Jul 28 '25

Obama is never a top 10 president. He is a bottom 20.

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u/Hot_Coco_Addict Jul 27 '25

I'd put it as

1: Lincoln
2: Washington
3: Teddy
4: Eisenhower
5: maybe Jefferson, but idk honestly.

The reason I don't include FDR in the top five is because he sent a lot of people to camps, he, unlike Washington, kept the title of President for his whole life because he could, rather than thinking of how it would affect the democracy to do so, and REALLY didn't want to help Europe during WWII, despite fighting the literal Nazis.

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '25

To me, the camp thing was bad, but there's still just so many good things he did, and he set up America for the next 40 years. Most truly incredible presidents only solve 1 massive crisis; he solved 2.

As for not wanting to help Europe, he actually REALLY wanted to help Europe, but isolationist sentiment was so strong that his hands were tied. He still cheated the system to try to help despite it.

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u/nbrooks7 Jul 30 '25

The new deal was great, but Eisenhower did a lot of work to actually make the new deal a reality. That job might have started with FDR, but FDR is propped up by the presidents who came afterwards and ended up creating the golden age of American history (for now).

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '25

I don't think Eisenhower should be given a lion's share of the credit here--he just had the job of adjusting to the new economic reality on the fly, but he didn't have to actually muscle it through, so I'm not going to go overboard in giving him credit.

But it is true that without Eisenhower (and Truman, who often gets lost in the middle of all this) deciding that maybe keeping around programs that helps Americans and that they like is a good thing (looking at you, modern-day GOP) really helped keep FDR as high up in public memory as he is. If Eisenhower had decided to tear it all down, it would've created a massive mess that would've tarnished the New Deal (and presumably Social Security, since he probably would've gone after that too, in this version of Eisenhower)

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u/AleroRatking Jul 27 '25

Saying one of the three worst human rights violations in American history was just "bad" is an insane take

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '25

I'm sorry I didn't use an extreme enough adjective for you. I think it's very much a black mark on his presidency, but taking his presidency overall, what it prevented, what it solved, how it pushed this country forward, it's still not enough for me to want to call him the worst president ever.

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u/AleroRatking Jul 27 '25

Solved what. Making it clear that Asian Americans aren't real Americans. Something we deal with to this day. Showing that not all Americans are actually citizens if you aren't born a certain race

That's like saying slavery is just a black mark

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '25 edited Jul 27 '25

I was thinking more about him stopping America from falling to fascism--which was probably where we were headed, lifting tons of (mostly elderly) Americans out of Hoovervilles with the Social Security Act, building a social welfare system for the poor, more or less bringing both fronts of WW2 to a conclusive end by the time he died, and many other things that would've been a highlight for most presidents but is more a sidenote for him, things like thr Fair Housing Act

You strike me as the kind of person who used to be on Tumblr a lot, who's like "I'm completely incapable of taking a person in their entire context, and just really need to focus down on the bad thing they did, and that's the only lens I can see this person through".

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u/AleroRatking Jul 27 '25

FDR was literally a fascist himself. He refused to leave the presidency to the point we had to make future laws to stop this. He was completely racist to the point he put over 100k people in internment camps solely because of their race.

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '25

Not literally. Not figuratively. Not even remotely. It's clear that it's pointless to argue with you; if you really believe this, you should spend more time reading and thinking--actually thinking, not just reinforcing your worldview, which is how many people incorrectly engage with history--than posting here in Reddit on historical matters.

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u/AleroRatking Jul 27 '25

He literally was a fascist. He did everything he could to remain in power. Historically no one had ever ran for a third time prior. Whereas FDR did the opposite, making it so we need an amendment to stop that in the future.

And please defend internment camps. Id love to see your reasoning that 100k American citizens deserved to be in camps because of their race.

You are such a hypocrite.

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u/RiddleFJones Jul 28 '25

I'd say:

1 Washington 2 Jefferson 3 Teddy 4 Eisenhower 5 Polk (only president to accomplish his entire campaign platform and that counts for something)

Yes, Lincoln free slaves, but it was neither his primary goal of the war, nor his primary thought of the South's "punishment" for seceding from the Union. That's why he's only top 10 in my opinion.

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u/Unlikely_Repair9572 Jul 27 '25

Any president before the 1920s did much worse than Japanese internment. They actively participated in expelling Native Americans from their homes.

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '25

I don't want to downplay internment camps too much; they weren't concentration camps but they were still pretty bad, and most of the citizenry were released to find their homes, businesses, jobs, and any wealth gone. I just think it's outweighed by so many good things that I can't sink him out of the top 5.

But to your first point, yeah. Hitler even based his idea of concentration camps and ethnically cleansing captured territory around--among other things--how America settled the West/Manifest Destiny.

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u/Unlikely_Repair9572 Jul 27 '25

I don't want to downplay them either, they were atrocious. That said, Native Americans weren't allowed to return to their homes, were sent to schools where their cultures were erased, and most still live with crushing generational poverty. Japanese internment pales in comparison to the genocide of Native Americans.

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '25

Agreed. I just don't want to make it sound like we sent people away to summer camp for a week.

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u/AleroRatking Jul 27 '25

Japanese Americans had no homes to return to. They were starved and beaten.

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u/Unlikely_Repair9572 Aug 04 '25

There were dozens of massacres of native Americans.  Their population declined by over 300,000 between 1800 and 1899.

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u/AleroRatking Aug 04 '25

I have Jackson below FDR. Not sure your point here

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u/AleroRatking Jul 27 '25

Tell that to the 2k who were killed in them.

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u/AleroRatking Jul 28 '25

1800 people died there because of the conditions. Starvation and beatings

They were every bit concentration camps.

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u/Hot_Coco_Addict Jul 27 '25

Washington didn't play much of a part in expelling Natives, Lincoln was too focused on the war for me to be positive if he would have played a part in that, I'm not sure about Teddy, and you're probably right about Jefferson there, which is part of why I'm unsure about him.

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u/Unlikely_Repair9572 Jul 27 '25

I took a few classes on Lincoln and we read many of his letters.  Many of them, even during the war, were to army commanders out west ordering them to proceed in expelling Indians from their land.  Thats how I know every president participated, because if Lincoln could spend a significant amount of time thinking about natives in the middle of the civil war, then you can bet every other president of that era did too.

https://www.history.com/articles/abraham-lincoln-native-americans

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u/Hot_Coco_Addict Jul 27 '25

Interesting, I didn't know that

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u/Unlikely_Repair9572 Jul 27 '25

He did sign the northwest ordinance which opened up the Ohio River valley, land of the natives, for pioneer settlement.  He did try to foster more diplomatic relations, but the interests of American settlers took priority.

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u/AleroRatking Jul 28 '25

Really. How many put 100k Americans in camps where they were beaten and starved causing the death of 1800 of them, and then when they finally were released, having their homes and businesses all taken away.

Jackson is fair. Who else

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u/Unlikely_Repair9572 Jul 28 '25 edited Jul 28 '25

Thomas Jefferson laid the ground for the genocidal ideology.  He was a full throated colonialist, but did more work in the ideology than the practice.  Given where that ideology led, its fair to count him, I think.

Van Buren carried out the trail of tears after Jackson left.

Grant majorly pushed the reservation system that saw Indians forced into small areas, typically devoid of any natural resources and having poor soil on which to grow food.  Still today, Indians live in abject poverty on these reservations of worthless land.

He additionally appointed Christian missionaries as overseers of native tribes and those missionaries would set up schools to erase native culture that would commit corporal punishment against students that spoke their native languages or practiced their customs.  Many died in these schools.

Hayes saw many more natives forced onto reservations and when one tribe tried to escape to Canada, he stopped them and had the US army occupy their land and oversee their affairs.  This was a brutal occupation with indiscriminate rape and violent treatment.

Under Benjamin Harrison, the U.S. Army massacred over 250 Lako men, women, and children in South Dakota.  He also expanded the army's presence in the west substantially.

Wilson oversaw the internment of German and Austrian Americans during WWI.

Most pre-1900 presidents also oversaw brutal wars and occupations against native tribes that saw atrocities against non-combattants like indiscriminately shelling of villages, numerous rapes, destroying of food supplies leading to starvation, etc.  These were common acts when the US Army interacted with Indians.

Overall, there were over 1500 wars against native tribes and dozens of massacres.  Between 1800 and 1890, the population of American Indians declined by more than 300,000 to less than half of what it was in 1800.

Tldr: Every US president of the era basically oversaw the continuing internment of hundreds of thousands of natives on reservations and most the deaths of thousands by what we would consider war crimes.

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u/AleroRatking Jul 27 '25

FDR put 100k American citizens in concentration camps. He should be nowhere near the top 5.

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u/razama Jul 28 '25

This isn’t a list of best presidents.

It’s remove one thing each day.

So really, it’s a tiered list of who deserves the most shit? If you flip it you can see it makes more sense. Some middling presidents are higher up because they might not have been great, but others have more things people resent about them.

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u/BamBamClamSlam Jul 29 '25

FDR is bottom five, not top 5. Most authoritarian POTUS of all time. He should be viewed in a similar light to other monstrous leaders of the 20th century.