Turns out the real bully pulpit was the one Donald Trump could bully from (Twitter) and not the one Teddy Roosevelt was talking about.

Trump was never particularly interested in governing, nor in the wealth of confidential information the president is entitled to (he refused to read the presidential daily brief, relying on oral briefings). Since legislation ended up being too complicated for the reality television host, the only power that Trump wound up able to use was the attention that the president of the United States commands with his tweets. Trump was able to target that attention like the Death Star toward his enemies. And when he was deplatformed, he lost all his power, as if his iPhone were suddenly made of Kryptonite.

This is not to say Trump didn’t do a lot of damage with legislation (really mostly with executive orders), from tax cuts for millionaires to jailing children to taking away protection for people who desperately need them, to Arctic drilling, to killing 443,000 people by trying to wish away a pandemic.