Harris and Trump in the final stages before election day
In the final stretch before Election Day, both Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will hold events in North Carolina and Wisconsin today.
Fox-Seattle
WASHINGTON – Way back in 2016, volatile businessman and television celebrity Donald Trump built a political career by attacking recent American presidents, both Republicans and Democrats.
Eight years later, former President Donald Trump is trying to retake the White House by doing the same – and expanding his target list by throwing shade celebrities like Abraham Lincoln And George Washington.
At an issues forum in Pennsylvania last week, Trump repeated a common narrative in which he claimed that unnamed border union officials said they supported him for a second term because he was “the greatest president in general that we’ve ever had.”
“I said, ‘Does that include Abe Lincoln?’” Trump told his supporters. “‘Does that include George Washington?’ …yeah…I said, ‘that’s good.’”
Political analysts and historians – none of them place Trump anywhere near the top presidential rankings – said he is driven to criticize and doubt others through a combination of ego, arrogance and self-esteem issues.
“He thinks he’s better than anyone,” said Jack Pitney, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and a former Republican who spent decades studying conservative politics. ‘That’s the short answer. He doesn’t know much about history and he doesn’t care. His arrogance is surpassed only by his ignorance.”
Trump and former presidents
It used to be rare for presidents to speak ill of each other, at least in public. Trump, never been a member the so-called ‘President’s Club’, has changed the rules in his campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris (and, before her, the seated President Joe Biden).
Some former presidents do manage to join Trump.
Over the years, he has complimented and praised Republican predecessors Ronald Reagan And Dwight Eisenhowerwith a recent emphasis on the Eisenhower administration’s immigration policies. “He was a very big deporter,” Trump said during the forum in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania.
As for Reagan, Trump named his political movement after a Gipper slogan: Let’s Make America Great Again. At MAGA rallies in recent days, Trump begins with a question that Reagan made famous during his successful 1980 presidential campaign: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?
It’s fair to say that Trump has also praised Lincoln, even if he occasionally makes unflattering comments about it the respected 16th presidentabout the civil war.
During a “Fox & Friends” interview this month, Trump reiterated that he does not understand why Lincoln did not “settle” the dispute with the Confederate states before the war broke out. A Fox host pointed out that the Southern states had seceded before Lincoln’s inauguration in March 1861.
“Lincoln was probably a great president — although I always said, why hadn’t that been taken care of yet, you know?” Trump said. “It makes no sense that we had a civil war.”
On the Joe Rogan podcast last week, Trump contrasted Lincoln with a historical figure he has often praised, Confederate military leader Robert E. Lee, citing Lee’s success on the battlefield.
“Lincoln had the yips… as the golfers would say,” Trump said. “He had a phobia of Robert E. Lee.”
Trump has also praised George Washington, but lumped him in with Lincoln in an interview with the authors of the 2021 book ‘I alone can fix it: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year.”
“I think it would be tough if George Washington came back from the dead and chose Abraham Lincoln as his vice president,” Trump said of the pre-COVID phase of his presidency. “I think it would have been very difficult for them to beat me.”
Historian Sidney Blumenthal, who is writing a five-part biography of Lincoln, said that “Trump’s malignant narcissism forces him” to pretend he is better than everyone.
“Good luck fighting Lincoln,” said Blumenthal, a former senior White House aide to President Bill Clinton.
Trump likes issue-based presidents
Trump tends to praise his predecessors to promote his own agenda.
The country’s former 45th CEO, for example, has praised President William McKinley about the high rates he instituted this during his presidency, which began in the late 19th century and ended with his assassination in the early 20th century.
President Andrew Jacksonthat of the nation seventh president from 1829 to 1837has won Trump’s admiration for his populist political style.
Trump, the only president who is dropped off twice and also criminally charged, in four separate caseshas also praised Jackson for being the most politically attacked CEO in the country – with one exception. “No one has been treated badly like Trump,” Trump told Newsmax in March.
Of course, the less popular former presidents – like Republican Richard Nixon – not getting support from Trump.
At a recent rally in Duluth, Georgia, Trump said he sometimes wants to record every conversation he has, but “the problem is I start thinking, Richard Nixon did that… Let’s do it without the tape.”
President Jimmy Carter is also often a target for Trump, who keeps the Georgian Democrat at hand who recently turned 100 years old as a way to attack Biden and Harris.
“Their administration makes Jimmy Carter’s administration look absolutely brilliant,” Trump said Wednesday in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
One President Trump has rarely, if ever, said: Grover Clevelandthe only president in American history to lose his re-election bid and return four years later in 1892 to win the White House again.
Trump and current presidents
Trump’s attacks on more recent presidents have to do with current politics.
When he sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, Trump was criticized Republican President George W. Bush about the war in Iraq and the financial crisis of 2007-2008. That was also a way to get at one of his Republican primary opponents: former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, brother of George W. Bush and son of former Florida Governor. President George H. W. Bush.
Trump went after it in the 2016 general election President Barack Obama as a way to challenge heir apparent and Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. Trump is still attacking Obama – “a real jerk” – while his predecessor is campaigning for Harris across the country.
Of course, Trump hammered Biden for running against him before the incumbent president withdrew in July; he’s still attacking Biden as a way to get at Harris.
Although George W. Bush has not publicly responded to Trump’s jibes, other living presidents have happily done so.
Biden routinely describes Trump as a threat to democracy, citing its role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection attempt and efforts to undermine the electoral system in general.
“He’s out of control,” Biden said at a campaign event in October Harris.
Obama mocks Trump at every campaign stop, from his obsession with crowd size to his tweeting.
“Here’s a man, a 78-year-old billionaire, who hasn’t stopped whining about his problems since he rode down that golden escalator nine years ago,” Obama told Democratic supporters in Philadelphia on Monday.
Former President Bill Clintonmarried to Hillary Clinton, Trump also mocked Trump at a recent rally in Durham, N.C., for his threats to go after political opponents. Clinton joked that he would rather be locked up in Guantánamo Bay in balmy Cuba than in the Super Max facility in frigid Colorado.
“Because when you’re 78, you’re much more worried about it being too cold than about it being too hot,” Clinton said.
Political scientist Lara Brown, author of “Amateur Hour: Presidential Character and the Question of Leadership,” says most scholars think Trump may be the worst president in history.
Part of his attempt to elevate himself above the Lincolns and Washingtons of the world is to change public perception of him. They are also very indicative of Trump, who proclaims himself an expert in areas ranging from business deals to foreign diplomacy and has often said, “I’ve been right about everything.”
“He never stops talking about his perceived abilities and past successes,” Brown said. “We should not be surprised that he is trying to do this with historical figures whose reputations as great leaders and brilliant statesmen far exceed his own.”
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