President Trump compared himself to Abraham Lincoln while sitting feet from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., during a virtual town hall with Fox News, setting off a slew of alarmed, confused, or amused reactions on social media.
“I am greeted with a hostile press, the likes of which nobody has ever seen,” Trump said Sunday evening.
Trump turned and pointed at the Lincoln Memorial, saying, “The closest would be that gentleman right up there. They always said Lincoln — nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse. You’re there, you see those press conferences. They come at me with questions that are disgraceful.”
Several prominent journalists and political pundits were set off by the comparison. Many criticized Trump for even holding the virtual town hall at the steps of one of America’s most historic landmarks.
Video of President Trump, sitting at the feet of the Lincoln Memorial, saying is he being treated worse than President Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated after freeing enslaved people across America. https://t.co/PHBVFHpCox
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) May 4, 2020
If Lincoln were alive today, he would want nothing to do with Donald Trump’s Republican Party.
— David Cicilline (@davidcicilline) May 4, 2020
An elementary school teacher who tells him that she really supports him and prays for him asks him to stop being a bully and stop rambling and to let go of his negative behaviors.
Trump replies by saying he’s been treated worse than Abraham Lincoln.
I am not making this up.
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) May 4, 2020
Trump: “They always said Lincoln. Nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.”
Lincoln was assassinated, but that’s nothing compared to Trump having to answer questions from reporters.
– #TrumpTownHall at the Lincoln Memorial
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) May 4, 2020
Political commentator Ben Rhodes tweeted that “he has debased the office that Lincoln once held.”
Trump at the Lincoln Memorial is just a reminder of how tragically and completely he has debased the office that Lincoln once held.
— Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) May 4, 2020
Harold Holzer, historian and author of Lincoln and the Power of the Press, documented how Lincoln had a more combative relationship with the White House Press Corps than his predecessors in the Oval Office, but noted in 2017 he “also had an existential crisis facing the United States and its future. That’s the fundamental difference.”
Trump often spars with reporters during White House press briefings and criticizes stories that cast him in a negative light as “fake news.” He has gone so far to say as the news media is the “enemy” of the people.
“And I feel that if I was kind to them, I’d be walked off the stage,” Trump said during the town hall. “I mean, they come at you with the most horrible, horrendous, biased questions. And you see it, 94% and 95% of the press is hostile … the media is, they might as well be in the Democrat party.”
