As I said in my last post, President Donald Trump added his friend and former FBI agent and former New York City major Rudy Giuliani to the president’s legal team. So, Giuliani has been making the rounds this week doing interviews on television defending the president. One of the things he said this week of Donald Trump is this: “This is the best president in my memory.”
This statement is reminiscent of President Trump’s statement about himself last July, in which he said, “I can be more presidential” than all U.S. presidents except Lincoln.
This statement by President Trump then caused Los Angeles Examiner columnist Sidney Blumenthal to write an article the Examiner and other newspapers published entitled, “What Would Lincoln Think of Donald Trump?” Blumenthal put together some of Abraham Lincoln’s comments from his first major speech he delivered as a 29-year old Illinois legislature, in 1838. The title of the speech was, “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.” Remember, Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer.
In Blumenthal’s article, he provides the following quotes from this Lincoln speech:
“He spoke of ‘the caprice of a mob’ [referring to a recent lynching of a black prisoner].
“Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation.”
“[In response to the recent murder of an abolitionist, Elijah P. Lovejoy, who owned a newspaper, Lincoln] condemned the ‘bands of hundreds and thousands’ who ‘throw printing presses into rivers, shoot editors.’
“The institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy.”
Blumenthal then finished his article with the following:
“Then Lincoln pointed to an even greater menace than rampaging mobs, ‘a probable case, highly dangerous.’ He warned against the emergence of a man driven to power by a fierce desire for ‘celebrity and fame’ who ‘thirsts and burns for distinction.’ This demagogue ‘scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious,’ and believing that ‘nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.’
“There is a contemporary figure who resembles that fame-hungry demagogue, one who tears down institutions and incites the mobocratic spirit, subverting the right to free expression and, with it, our national freedom. These Lincolnian terms describe our reality-TV-star-turned-president, who called the ‘FAKE NEWS media’ the ‘enemy of the American people,’ and tweeted an altered video that showed him body-slamming a man with the CNN logo in place of his head.
“But Trump would no more understand Lincoln’s forewarning than he will accept responsibility for his incitement. Trump’s sense of history is as limited as his self-control.
“If we can deduce how Lincoln would perceive Trump, we can also surmise how he would advise Americans to handle him. This is what he said about the possible rise of an American demagogue: ‘And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.'”
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