Evaluating Leadership Using the Karl Bimshas Consulting Leadership Scorecard

Case Study: The First 100 Days of Donald Trump’s 2nd Presidency

Leadership defines culture. What we tolerate, we normalize. What we normalize, we replicate. Karl Bimshas Consulting doesn’t tolerate incompetence dressed as strength or deception weaponized as communication. In this evaluation, we use our Leadership Scorecard to expose what happens when charisma replaces character and fear replaces service.

At Karl Bimshas Consulting, we help discouraged, underestimated, or overwhelmed professionals become confident, competent, and accountable leaders without becoming jerks. One of the tools we use to promote this transformation is our Leadership Scorecard, a framework that evaluates five critical traits of effective leadership: Situational Awareness, Curiosity, Stewardship, Empathy, and Education.

In this analysis, we apply the Leadership Scorecard to the findings from “Fact check: Debunking 100 Trump false claims from his first 100 days,” as documented by CNN journalist Daniel Dale.

Brief Summary of Source Material

According to Dale’s report, “Fact check: Debunking 100 Trump false claims from his first 100 days”

Trump made over 100 demonstrably false claims in his first 100 days back in office. These weren’t limited to impromptu remarks; they were woven into formal speeches and official messaging, often repeating falsehoods that had long since been debunked. Topics ranged from the economy and immigration to foreign policy and the January 6th Capitol attack.

CNN characterized this pattern as a systematic and strategic campaign of misinformation, not merely political spin.

Observed Patterns and Themes

• Repetition of Debunked Narratives — Trump routinely recycled false claims, despite there being longstanding and widely available evidence that refuted them. This was patterned and purposeful, aimed at reinforcing political messaging and controlling the narrative.
• Breadth of Falsehoods Across Topics — From economic distortions to election denialism and misrepresentations of foreign policy, the range of misinformation was extensive and far-reaching.
• Economic Misrepresentation — Claims regarding gas prices, trade balances, tariffs, and inflation presented an alternate reality in which Trump’s policies were heroic and current conditions were disastrous, even when federal data contradicted this.
• Exaggerated Immigration Claims — Trump falsely asserted that foreign governments were “emptying prisons” into the U.S., exaggerated border crossings, and fabricated claims about immigration law. These stories stoked fear and undermined institutional trust.
• Election and Popularity Lies — The 2020 election was again called “rigged,” turnout numbers were inflated, and key states were falsely claimed as victories — all used to delegitimize past and future elections.
• January 6th Revisionism — Trump denied the violence and responsibility surrounding the Capitol attack, instead deflecting blame to political opponents and investigative efforts.
• Foreign Policy Falsehoods — Claims about NATO, Japan, Afghanistan, and Ukraine were often factually incorrect, distorting public understanding of international commitments.
• Institutional Undermining — Media outlets, investigators, and political adversaries were repeatedly targeted with falsehoods, eroding public trust in essential democratic structures.
• Disregard for Data and Evidence — Many claims directly contradicted government data, public records, and expert analysis, highlighting a disregard for fact-based leadership.

Inferred Leadership Styles

Communication, by its nature, is a content-rich resource for understanding leaders, even if it requires extrapolation or inference. While Daniel Dale doesn’t philosophize on communication in the article, his analysis provides a concrete demonstration of how a leader’s public statements, when rigorously analyzed and cross-referenced with verifiable information, form a foundational “content rich environment” for understanding their policy positions (even if misrepresented), their command of facts, their communication patterns, and potentially their character.

Trump’s communication and leadership behaviors during this period reveal a fusion of several problematic leadership models:

1. Populist Leadership

• Evidence: Emotionally charged rhetoric, “us vs. them” framing, self-positioning as voice of the people.
• Traits: Mobilizes via grievance, simplifies complex issues, favors emotion over nuance.

2. Demagogic Leadership

• Evidence: Repetition of debunked claims, fear-driven messaging.
• Traits: Appeals to emotion over fact, builds loyalty through myth-making, undermines institutional trust.

3. Authoritarian Tendencies

• Evidence: Calls for retribution, delegitimization of democratic processes.
• Traits: Rejects dissent, centralizes power, demands loyalty over merit.

4. Charismatic Leadership (Caveated)

• Evidence: Mass rallies, direct communication, branding.
• Traits: Personal loyalty via spectacle, equates disagreement with betrayal.

5. Impulsive and Reactive Communication

• Evidence: Off-the-cuff falsehoods, contradiction of official reports.
• Traits: Lacks deliberation, emotionally reactive, strategic only in hindsight.

The Leadership Scorecard

Karl Bimshas Consulting’s Leadership Scorecard is a quick diagnostic tool that evaluates a leader’s observable behavior across five traits: Empathy, Curiosity, Situational Awareness, Education, and Stewardship. Each trait reflects how a leader builds trust, adapts, makes decisions, communicates, and upholds values. The aim is to answer one overarching question: Is this leader currently worth following?

Leadership Scorecard Evaluation:

Donald Trump — First 100 Days of 2nd Presidency

Situational Awareness

Score: 5/20
Definition: Situational Awareness is a leader’s ability to read the room, anticipate consequences, and respond with clarity and accuracy, especially under pressure. It reflects judgment, adaptability, and a commitment to reality over rhetoric.

Evaluation: Trump’s leadership remained impulsive and reactive. His persistent disregard for facts, along with an overreliance on simplified, emotionally charged narratives, undermined his ability to lead with clarity. Instead of engaging with nuance, he misrepresented complex issues, often for political gain. This is not strategic awareness; it’s calculated detachment.

Curiosity

Score: 5/20
Definition: Curiosity reflects a leader’s willingness to explore unfamiliar perspectives, question assumptions, and adapt to new information. It is a discipline of growth, not stubborn certainty.

Evaluation: Trump repeatedly promoted disproven claims and refused to correct them, even when evidence was presented. His leadership revolved around maintaining a fixed personal narrative rather than inviting learning or dialogue. This was not ignorance; it was willful incuriosity in service of control.

Stewardship

Score: 5/20
Definition: Stewardship assesses a leader’s commitment to serving a purpose greater than oneself, safeguarding institutions, communities, and future generations. It is a measure of character and ethical intent.

Evaluation: Trump’s actions prioritized short-term personal and political advantage over long-term ethical governance. His repeated falsehoods and divisive rhetoric eroded public trust and diminished institutional credibility. Stewardship demands a legacy-minded responsibility. What he offered was self-serving opportunism.

Empathy

Score: 5/20

Definition: Empathy is a leader’s ability to connect across differences, understand emotional impacts, and lead with a human-centered intention. It’s not sentimentality; it’s strategic emotional intelligence.

Evaluation: Trump’s leadership centered on his narrative, often ignoring or inflaming the pain of others. His rhetoric divided rather than unified, and he rarely acknowledged the human consequences of his actions. This wasn’t a blind spot; it was a deliberate dismissal of shared humanity.

Education

Score: 5/20
Definition: Education in leadership involves modeling learning, sharing the truth, and enhancing others’ understanding. It commits to clarity over confusion and empowerment over manipulation.

Evaluation: Rather than educate, Trump amplified misinformation and prioritized loyalty over learning. His refusal to accept accountability and frequent distortions of fact undermined critical thinking and civic understanding. Leadership presents an opportunity to teach, yet he chose to indoctrinate.

🔴 Final Score: 25/100 — “Lousy”

Visual Scale: 🔴⚪⚪⚪⚪

Summary Insight

This leadership performance reflects a personality-centered approach reliant on:

• Grievance and fear instead of hope and service
• Manipulated narratives instead of truth-based communication
• Spectacle and division rather than unity or shared purpose

Conclusion

This is not merely an exhibition of poor leadership — it is anti-leadership:
A style that sabotages trust, rejects responsibility, and impedes collective progress, all in service of personal dominance and emotional control.

Karl Bimshas Consulting Postscript: Stop Mistaking Noise for Leadership

We cannot afford to be lulled into thinking this behavior is strong, effective, or even remotely acceptable leadership. What we’re witnessing isn’t a bold vision; it’s a deliberate distortion. A manipulation of truth. A degradation of public trust.

This is what happens when leadership standards collapse, when we reward spectacle over substance, loyalty over accountability, and dominance over service.

We are not witnessing an outlier. We are living through the normalization of anti-leadership.

At Karl Bimshas Consulting, we stop leadership drift. We confront it. We call it what it is. We raise the bar.

If this is what passes for leadership in America today, then we’ve drifted dangerously far from what leadership and good governance require.

The collective snooze button has been hit too many times by reluctant leaders who were served a wake-up call long ago. If you claim to care about integrity, vision, and responsibility, it’s time to rise.

Raise your standards. Face the uncomfortable truths that are holding you, your team, and the nation back.

We are not just scoring one man; we are measuring what we’re willing to accept in leadership.

This is about standards. And ours have collapsed.

If you are in a position of power and remain silent, you are complicit. If you call yourself a leader and dodge accountability, you are part of the drift. The next era of leadership must be marked by clarity, courage, and uncompromising service.

Start with yourself. Or step aside.