Since he first came down that escalator, Donald Trump has been presented by both enemies and friends as unlike any president in American history. Something makes him alien.
Donald Trump combines elements of almost all of his predecessors since FDR
He is certainly unusual. But is he unique? If one digs a bit deeper into Trump’s life, one finds historical parallels and echoes of past presidents abound. In fact, far from being a complete original, Donald Trump combines elements of almost all of his predecessors since FDR, and even some from before that. He is an all-American cocktail — equal parts apple pie, bourbon, and Everclear.
Dominic Sandbrook has already written about the way Trump’s style is like that of George Wallace and how Trump, maladroit and awkward, mocked for his lack of graces, deeply wanting to be accepted by the WASP establishment, has more than a trace of Richard Nixon. Trump shares Nixon’s fear of enemies and people wanting to bring him down. Long before Donald Trump started labelling CNN as “fake news”, in a conversation with Henry Kissinger, Nixon said “Never forget that the press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy. The professors are the enemy. Professors are the enemy. Write that on a blackboard 100 times and never forget it.” This is a sentiment with which Donald Trump would wholeheartedly agree.
It was a previous president, Ronald Reagan, who first campaigned on the slogan “Make America Great Again”. Like Trump, Regan was a great sloganeer. “Government is the problem not the solution” and “It’s Morning in America” were the “Build that wall” and “Drain the Swamp” of their era. It is perhaps not a coincidence that both Reagan and Trump began their start in entertainment.
Trump’s use of right-wing podcasters and Youtubers to mobilise young right wing first-time voters has been credited as key to Trump’s victory in November. What television was for Kennedy and Facebook was to Obama, Joe Rogan et al were to Trump. However, Trump’s use of Youtube to circumvent established media and its supposed biases has a much more direct historical parallel.
The so-called “Fireside Chats” of Franklin Delano Roosevelt were a series of radio addresses made as a means of bypassing hostile newspapers in order that FDR might broadcast his message, unadulterated by the spin of his enemies, directly into the homes of Americans through the new medium of radio. Via their wireless sets, the President spoke to them directly. In these addresses, Roosvelt was able to update the American public on the New Deal as well as the progress of the Second World War. It is estimated that some sixty-two million people heard his speech following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. These are numbers of which any president, let alone Donald Trump, can only dream.
While Donald Trump has attempted to dodge the question of his physical fitness several times, FDR outright lied about it for years. It is now known that FDR suffered and eventually died from complications relating to polio. What is less known is that he contracted the disease in 1921, before even becoming Governor of New York. Paralysed from the waist down, he went to great lengths to hide the severity of his illness even from close aides. He trained himself to walk with steel braces or crutches but used a wheelchair in private. His aides would carefully orchestrate public speeches to conceal the fact that he needed assistance in getting into automobiles. His public speeches would be made from a reinforced lectern on which FRD could lean, or else he would be discreetly propped up by one of his sons giving the appearance of an able-bodied man. All these steps were taken lest he be seen as weak and disabled by the American public. Like a future US president, few people, in and out of America knew how truly ill FDR was.
JFK, too, was a very ill man — not that one would know it. A spinal collapse in youth and several risky surgeries forced him to wear a concealed back brace. These surgeries were so risky that at several points his priest administered the last rites to him. He would suffer from bouts of malaria well after he contracted it in the Pacific during the Second World War. Addison’s disease, diagnosed in 1947, further weakened his immune system. He spent much of his presidency a virtual cripple taking quantities of drugs that would shock Hunter S. Thompson. His back problems might have made it more difficult for him to duck the fatal bullet.
Kennedy, like Trump, was known for his sexual adventurism
Like the martyred saint of Democratic America Donald also had an overbearing swindler for a father, disdained by the WASP upper crust. Despite buying his way into FDR’s circle, Joseph Kennedy Sr., was always an outsider and groomed his son Joe Jr. for the presidency. Following Joe Jr.’s death, Joseph transferred his efforts to his second son, John “Jack” Fitgerald Kennedy. Some years later, Fred Trump of Queen’s New York, a real estate mogul of German immigrant stock, transferred his ambitions to his son Donald, after Fred’s designated heir, Fred Jr. decided to become an airline pilot. While JFK could play the part of the WASP well with his Ivy League style and sailing trips, he was a Catholic Irish outsider. Trump, by contrast, has always been disdainful of that old elite. Perhaps this is why he wrecked that bastion of WASP rule, the Republican party and bent it to his will.
Kennedy, like Trump, was known for his sexual adventurism. Still, their perversity might have been outmatched by Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, who bragged about having had “more women by accident than Kennedy ever had on purpose”. Trump’s supposed vulgarity withers at the memory of Johnson’s. The appropriately named Johnson was very proud of his membrum virile, nicknaming it Jumbo. Jumbo would be used to intimidate other politicians. Johnson would frequently hold meetings with his presidential aids “at stool”. When asked by a journalist why the US was in Vietnam, Johnson is purported to have dropped his trousers, brandished “Jumbo” and replied “This is why!”. In the words of one contemporary, “I wouldn’t say Lyndon was vulgar, he was barnyard”. He would belch, pass wind, scratch himself in intimate places, grope secretaries and female aides alike. Recordings from the Oval office show that his speech was peppered with expletives, vulgar idioms, and period racial slurs. Say whatever one wants about Donald Trump, but he has never tried to accuse a political rival of having relations with a pig just to hear “the sonofabitch deny it”.
The parallels keep coming, like Donald Trump’s promise to deport illegal immigrants, similar to that of Eisenhower, another president noted for his lack of previous political experience. Like Clinton, he has been plausibly accused of multiple counts of sexual assault.
But one thing still appears to separate Donald Trump from all his predecessors. Surely no American president has tried to overthrow the government before? Well …
John Tyler, 9th president of the United States was instrumental in helping Virginia secede from the Union and sat in the legislature of the Confederate States. This is without mentioning that the first US President only became so after fighting a war against George III, his lawful king. Had the US lost the war of independence, Washington and all the other so-called founding fathers would have been, rightly, hanged and tried as traitors. The US presidency is a monument to treason and sedition from the Crown.
None of this is a defence of Donald Trump but rather an examination of his life and how his quirks compare to those of other US presidents. As it turns out, he was never all that different.
