Between his "American carnage" inaugural address in January and the economic carnage promised by his tax-cut bill passed last week, Donald Trump bestrode our editorial pages like a colossus. The trail of political and social destruction he left in 2017 leaves little hope for less turmoil in 2018.

Every president dominates the news, of course, but Trump — by virtue of his ego, his need for attention, his uneasy relationship with truth and casual disregard for the institutions of American democracy — dominated like no other. Even natural disasters like hurricanes and cultural tsunamis like the #MeToo movement could not escape Trump's special touch.

Not since 1933, when Franklin D. Roosevelt upended government to pull the nation out of the Depression, has a president been such a force in his first year. In Trump's case, it was not a force for good.

His inaugural address was long on populist promises to halt the nation's exploitation by the rich and powerful: "For too long, a small group in our nation's capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. ... Politicians prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed."

And yet politicians and the wealthy elite who fund them have prospered as never before in Trump's first year, their bidding served throughout the executive branch by the wealthiest Cabinet in history. A taste for private jets cost Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price his job and embarrassed Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke (who has his own special flag) and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.

Until the tax-cut bill that Trump signed Friday, he could claim no major legislative accomplishments. His repeated attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act failed. As if to advertise his own ignorance about health care and the legislative process, he admitted in February, "Nobody knew health care could be so complicated." In May, he held a Rose Garden ceremony to celebrate the passage of a House health care bill, then turned around and called it "mean." That attempt died in the GOP-controlled Senate. Trump couldn't even get his own party on board with his program.

On the regulatory side, Trump had a major impact by using his executive powers to roll back dozens of regulations imposed by President Barack Obama. Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, announced plans to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords and demanded that the North American Free Trade Agreement be renegotiated. His Federal Communications Commission nuked net neutrality.

The Environmental Protection Agency undid clean water rules and the Clean Power Plan. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was recast to protect the very banks whose abuses prompted the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Financial advisers received a break on putting their clients' interests first. Any decision where the public's interest conflicted with corporate interests was decided for the elites. Some populist.

Trump named a corporate conservative justice, Neil Gorsuch, to the Supreme Court and then had second thoughts because Gorsuch criticized Trump's attacks on the federal judiciary. Gorsuch wasn't being loyal, Trump complained, exposing his misunderstanding of the separation of powers.

Loyalty is everything to Trump. He sent his first press secretary, Sean Spicer, out to lie about the size of his inaugural crowd. He sent adviser Kellyanne Conway out to explain Spicer's use of "alternative facts." Spicer got tired of taking bullets and resigned in July. Conway remains, which is more than can be said about top advisers Stephen Bannon, Reince Priebus and Michael Flynn.

Trump's own lying was epic, so much so that news organizations began keeping track — 1,628 to date, according to The Washington Post. He invented the "fakenews" hashtag to describe anything true but unflattering. He set up a voter integrity commission to investigate nonexistent election fraud.

Trump shocked the nation by blaming violence "on many sides" for deadly confrontations in Charlottesville, Va. He said marchers on the KKK and neo-Nazi side of the dispute included "some very fine people." These statements, like scores of others spoken or tweeted in haste on major national or international issues, underscore how Trump is his own worst enemy. His public approval ratings are abysmal because of his frightening impulsiveness.

Trump has destroyed longtime alliances across Europe, Canada and Australia. His tweeted insults about North Korea's Kim Jong-un were childish and dangerous.

His ineffectual response to the hurricane victims in Puerto Rico called into question Trump's managerial skills. He tried but failed to ban Muslim immigration. He was quick to blame Islam for terrorism involving Muslim suspects but offered no leadership whatsoever after the slaughter of 58 concert-goers in Las Vegas in October and 26 churchgoers in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in November. Those massacres were carried out neither by Muslims nor immigrants, depriving Trump of the crucial wedge that he typically uses to exploit tragedy for political gain.

Congress, as usual, did nothing about these horrors, enabled by easy access to high-powered weapons and accessories such as "bump stocks" that convert assault rifles into military-style killing machines. A brief flirtation with banning bump stocks went nowhere, aided by a president who tried his best to hide from the issue rather than exercise leadership.

Trump remains immersed in the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Unable to accept the possibility that agents of the Russian government may have helped him win election, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May and then lied about the reason. When Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the decision to hire a special prosecutor, he was labeled "disloyal," too. The investigation forges ahead despite Trump's best efforts to derail it or to assert, as he has on multiple occasions, that the probe is wrapping up and that his exoneration is imminent.

Putting Sessions into the Cabinet created an open Alabama U.S. Senate seat that a racist, homophobic ex-judge named Roy Moore stood ready to fill. Allegations surfaced that Moore, then in his 30s, had stalked teenage girls in the late 1970s. Moore's problems surfaced just as the nation became immersed in scandalous reports of sexual harassment by major political, media and entertainment figures. Alabama's staunchly Republican electorate ultimately decided that despite Trump's endorsement of the ex-judge, it would be better to have a Democrat representing the state in the Senate than to send Moore to Washington. It was the right choice for the right reasons.

Another victim of the #MeToo movement is Trump himself, who for years has faced similar accusations of sexual harassment. Trump went so far as to deny to aides that it was his voice on the sleazy 2005 "Access Hollywood" recording, even though he had already apologized for it. Twice.

Trump's business conflicts of interest remain unresolved. He still won't share his tax returns, even while he asserts with no foundation in fact that the GOP tax cut will hurt him financially.

It should be no surprise that Americans are turning away in droves from a president who lies with reckless disregard and who stokes his massive ego by exaggerating his scant successes at every turn.

That Trump continues to dominate headlines should come as no surprise to anyone. Nor should his embarrassingly low 35 percent approval ratings.

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