We supporters of President Donald J. Trump have to listen every day as the Democrat Media Industrial Complex and Republican Never Trumpers call the President everything but a child of God. Because he is deified now, we never hear how President Abraham Lincoln was treated by the media of the time and even members of his own party. It’s almost heartening in these days to remember that the intelligentsia of the time is often very wrong about Presidents.

In the long term, historians will judge Donald Trump and his Presidency. And, whether or not he is judged a hero or a zero, it is helpful to look back and see how Lincoln was judged in his own time versus how Trump is viewed now.

Both Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln Are Made Fun Of For Their Looks

About Lincoln from the Irish Times from Carl Schurz in 1858:

Nothing had prepared him for the sight of this remarkably “homely, deeply furrowed, swarthy, haggard face, topped with a somewhat battered stovepipe hat”. The large and mobile mouth bent into a “kind smile”, and the “deep-set, melancholy eyes from time to time illuminated with a merry twinkle”. But the overall effect was bizarre, inexplicable. Something about the man was ugly, even repellent; something else was magnetic, almost irresistible.

From his own law partner:

John Todd Stuart, who became his first law partner, thought Lincoln looked “torpid” and “gloomy” and believed that the “pores of his flesh acted as an appropriate organ” for his “Evacuations”, adding, in something of an understatement, that he “differed with other men about this”.

Everyone, including moi, has made fun of Donald Trump’s comb over. He should shave his head. The haters call him an Oompa Loompa and, the popular, Orange-Man Bad.

Both Donald Trump And Abraham Lincoln Were Called Dictators

Lincoln considered the saving of the Union the highest priority. From Lincoln The “Dictator” by Dennis J. Hutchinson:

“The godfather of despotism”: the charge has haunted Abraham Lincoln
from the advent of the Civil War to the wake of his bicentennial. 1 From
partisans during the war to early twentieth century historians to post-World War
II political scientists fearing an “imperial presidency” to the latest libertarian
Lincoln-hater, Lincoln has been vilified as someone who destroyed the
Constitution in order to save the Union. The bill of particulars is lengthy and
grave: he suspended habeas corpus and jailed opponents, flouted a court order by
the Chief Justice of the United States, ordered troops raised and materiel
purchased, blockaded Southern ports, emancipated slaves after denying the
power to do so-all without prior Congressional authorization. Professor
Clinton Rossiter of Columbia put the case starkly in 1948: “dictatorship played a
decisive role in the North’s successful effort to maintain the Union by force of
arms …. Lincoln’s amazing disregard for the words of the Constitution was
considered by nobody as legal.”

Wow, when it is written that plainly, it’s breathtaking. Foreign Policy.com has a list of the 10 ways that DJT is becoming a dictator. Here is the first one:

1. Systematic efforts to intimidate the media.

This tactic has been a central feature of Trump’s presidency from the beginning, whether in the form of his constant tweets about “fake news” and his none-too-veiled attempts to threaten the owners of media outlets he dislikes (such as CNN or the Washington Post). As he reportedly admitted to CBS reporter Lesley Stahl, Trump has attacked the press quite deliberately. “He said, ‘You know why I do it?’” she later told PBS. “‘I do it to discredit you all and demean you all, so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.’”

Such efforts continue to this day. In May, for example, Trump signed an executive order that could eventually allow the government to oversee political speech on the Internet, a move that came the same week Twitter had marked two of his erroneous tweets with a “fact-checking” label. But that’s not all.

Pretty mild by the standards of President Lincoln. Personally, I love the idea of discrediting and demeaning the dishonest media. Speaking of the media:

Both Trump’s And Lincoln’s Speeches Were Panned By The Press

Every time that Donald Trump opens his mouth, the Democrat Media Industrial Complex has a collective heart attack. You can read some critiques of Trump’s acceptance of the Republican renomination here. Abraham Lincoln was ridiculed as “namby pamby” and ” making us the laughingstock of the world”. And the famous Gettysburg Address, Tom Kacich has researched the critiques of the time:

The Chicago Times, on Nov. 23, 1863, accused Lincoln of “ignorant rudeness,” “boorishness” and “vulgarity” for including “political partisanship” in his Gettysburg speech.

It was especially upset about his statement that “all men are created equal,” and cited the three-fifths rule, contained in the Constitution, for counting slaves.

“Do these provisions in the Constitution dedicate the nation to ‘the proposition that all men are created equal?’ Mr. Lincoln occupies his present position by virtue of this Constitution, and is sworn to the maintenance and enforcement of these provisions,” the anti-Lincoln, pro-Democratic Times said.

And:

But Lincoln’s hometown newspaper, the Illinois State Register, was especially savage in its criticism of the speech at Gettysburg.

“Nothing could have been more inappropriate than to have invited the prince of jokers, Old Abe, to be present at the consecration of the Gettysburg Cemetery,” the Register wrote on Nov. 24, 1863.

“But having been invited, it was hoped by his apologists that he would at least refrain from his clownish jokes about standing over the new-made graves of thousands who had been slain in the recent battle.”

Doesn’t that sound as if it could have been written about anything President Trump says? I recommend to you Donald Trump’s speech at the 2019 Remembrance of September 11, 2001:

Finally

It will always help to remember that just as there are Never Trumpers, there were Never Lincolnites. And, every Republican president since Abraham Lincoln; Reagan, both Bushes and Donald Trump among them, has been made fun of by the Democrat Media Industrial Complex.

The Victory Girls all endorse Donald Trump for reelection.

Featured Image: Alexander Gardner/Wikimedia Commons.org/cropped/Public Domain