As Distasteful as Rancid Meat, Trump Can’t Compete with The Likes of Jefferson, Adams, Et Al
Trump, the Pied Piper of darkness, the reincarnation of Jim Jones, is not the first candidate for president who has been rude, vulgar, uncouth, crass, vacuous and boorish.
But trump had an advantage none of his predecessors had in bringing the dark art to a new, low level- the social network.
Trump has used menacing words that a victory by the Democrats would be the ruin of the nation and maybe even the planet. Critics have been using the same fear mongering and misinformation for many years.
The latest in a long run of insults have seen Trump call his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, “mentally impaired,” “mentally disabled,” “guilty of CRIMES,” “crazy,” “lyin’” and “cognitively challenged.”
The nation got its first sour taste of how low trump could go during the 2016 presidential campaign. Among a few of the lowlights:
During the GOP debate, he said about interviewer Megyn Kelly, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her — wherever.”
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a prisoner of war in Vietnam, drew trump’s wrath on July 18, 2015, a month after trump announced his campaign for president. In an interview trump was asked about McCain’s naval service, to which trump responded, “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
Khizr Khan, the father of a slain Muslim war hero, was invited to speak at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Afterwards, trump insulted Khan and his wife, “If you look at his wife, she was standing there, she had nothing to say, she probably — maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say, you tell me.”
N.Y. Times reporter Serge Kovaleski reported serious doubts about trump’s 2015 claims that hundreds of Muslims danced on the Jersey City rooftops after the Twin Towers were destroyed by terrorist. Trump smelled blood because Kovaleski suffers from arthrogryposis, a congenital condition that limits the movement of the joints and weakens the muscles around them.
“You ought to see the guy: ‘Uhh I don’t know what I said. I don’t remember.’ He’s going, ‘I don’t remember. Maybe that’s what I said,’” Trump said while gyrating his arms wildly and imitating the unusual angle at which Kovaleski’s hand sometimes rests.
Carly Fiorina was briefly a 2016 Republican candidate for president and that was enough for trump to insult Carly Fiorina’s appearance.
“Look at that face!” he said. “Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?
In 2016, trump picked on his favorite minority group when he insulted undocumented immigrants from Mexico, describing them as that country’s criminal element.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people,” he said.
Also during the 2016 primary campaign, trump compared Ben Carson to a child molester. At the time Carson was a GOP presidential candidate and later trump’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
“It’s in the book that he’s got a pathological temper,” trump said. “That’s a big problem because you don’t cure that … as an example: child molesting. You don’t cure these people. You don’t cure a child molester. There’s no cure for it. Pathological, there’s no cure for that.”
Pretty bad but not unusual in presidential politics. Trump never called an opponent “hermaphroditic.” As far as presidential boorishness, trump’s rhetoric could be seen as rather tepid.
Negative campaigning goes back to the 1800 battle between President John Adams and Vice President Thomas Jefferson. Neither party shined. One of the more colorful charges was leveled at Adams, after Jefferson hired political pamphleteer and journalist James Callendar to write unsavory things about his opponent. Callendar succeeded in creating what may have been the first instance of fake news when he convinced many Americans that Adams desperately wanted to attack France. The claim was a lie but the voters bought it and Jefferson won.
Callender also published an attack on Adams, calling him “a hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, not the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” Hermaphroditic refers to an animal or plant that has both male and female reproductive organs, or to something that is a combination of diverse elements.
Adams’ men called Jefferson “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.” In response, Jefferson’s people called Adams a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant. Not to be outdone, Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward.
Callendar, who later served jail time for slander, got out of prison in 1801 and thought Jefferson owed him. Jefferson ignored Calendar an in retribution, Calendar broke a story in 1802 that had only been a rumor until then — that the President was having an affair with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings.
Personal attacks got very trumpish in the election of 1828, as challenger Andrew Jackson and President John Quincy Adams traded the best insults they could muster, with charges of murder, adultery, and procuring of women.
Adams accused Jackson of murder while serving as a military officer. Before becoming president, Jackson fought in three wars and participated in from five to 100 duels, including one in which he killed a man. Once president, his Indian Removal Act was responsible for 4,000 Cherokee deaths on the Trail of Tears. Jackson didn’t get along with everyone during his presidency.
In response, Jackson accused Adams of having been a pimp while serving as a diplomat in Russia. Jackson won the election of 1828, and Adams refused to attend his inauguration.
Adams’ supporters distributed pamphlets called the “coffin handbills” attacking Jackson, a Tennessee war hero. The handbills depicted six military executions ordered by Jackson in 1815.
Jackson and his wife, Rachel, were called “adulterers,” after the Adams supporters said that Rachel was still married to her first husband when she married Jackson. Jackson’s enemies called his wife a bigamist and his mother a “common prostitute.”
Jackson’s supporters responded by calling Adams a “corrupt bargainer” and an “unscrupulous aristocrat” who had misused tax dollars.
Supporters of James G. Blaine, the Republican candidate in 1884, created a popular tune about an illegitimate child that his Democratic opponent, Grover Cleveland, had fathered. The ditty went, “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?”
Cleveland admitted to an affair that produced a son who was placed for adoption.
Democrats retaliated with their own song, calling “Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, The Continental Liar from the State of Maine!”
Cleveland won the election and his team had the last word with their jingle, “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa? Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!”
Trump prattled on that if he is not reelected, the world will be on the brink of World War III and nuclear destruction. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson used even worse fear tactics with an ad that depicted his rival, Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., as an extremist who supported the use of nuclear bombs during the Vietnam War. The Johnson ad, “Peace Little Girl (Daisy),” showed a little girl in a field plucking the petals off a flower. A voiceover begins a countdown while zooming in on the girl’s face. The countdown ends and the video cuts to a nuclear bomb detonating.
Johnson’s voice is heard, “These are the stakes. To make a world in which all of God’s children can live or to go into the dark. We must either love each other or we must die.”
Trump has time and again displayed his overt racism and xenophobic plans to deport millions of immigrants. But again, he is just the latest national leader to harbor such hateful and divisive qualities.
In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924 which sharply cut immigration from eastern and southern Europe and practically barred it from Asia. Lawmakers calculated how many immigrants from each European country were living in the United States in 1890 and then allowed 2 percent of that number to come to the U.S.
Trump may have been channeling Rep. Albert Johnson, R-Wash., when trump lashed out about immigrants “poisoning” our nation. Johnson, sponsor of the 1924 act, warned that “a stream of alien blood” was poisoning the nation.
Rutherford Hayes ran the nation from 1877–1881 and claimed to be a friend of African Americans. “A true self-government,” Hayes said, must be “a government which guards the interests of both races carefully and equally.” To win the presidency and support of southern lawmakers, he cut a deal and agreed to withdraw federal troops from Southern states where they’d been protecting Blacks from the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist depredations. It was the end of the period of reconstruction and the beginning of decades of Jim Crow laws, lynchings and further disenfranchisement of African Americans.
William McKinley, president from 1897–1901, declared in his inaugural address that, “Lynchings must not be tolerated.” Then he said not a word when white supremacists in Wilmington, N.C., staged an 1898 coup that ousted all Black elected officials and killed at least 60 Blacks.
Theodore Roosevelt, president from 1901–1909, was an unapologetic racist, writing in one letter, “Now as to the Negroes! I entirely agree with you that as a race and in the mass they are altogether inferior to the whites.”
Woodrow Wilson, president from 1913–1921, promised fair treatment for African Americans in his 1912 campaign. After election, he defended his Southern Cabinet members who segregated workers in federal departments that hadn’t been segregated.
“Segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen,” Wilson said.
Trump has railed against the so-called epidemic of crime in the U.S., especially and allegedly from undocumented immigrants. In 1968, Richard Nixon campaigned on “law and order” and his campaign commercials focused on images of a country raging out of control, with rising crime, street violence and the unpopular war raging in Vietnam.
“How can a party that can’t unite itself unite the nation? How can a party that can’t keep order in its own backyard hope to keep order in our 50 states? … How, in the light of all this, can the American people fail to see that the United States urgently needs new leadership? By now it’s clear. The American people do see the need,” Nixon said.
The Nixon campaign blamed the Democratic Party for the nation’s troubles, including the boost in U.S. troops in Vietnam, the mounting anti-war movement and riots triggered by the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Adding to the mayhem was the overly aggressive police response to protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Trump’s rhetorical barbs are totally sophomoric when compared to he cutting wit of past presidents. For example, Abraham Lincoln said that his rival, Stephen Douglas’ policy on slavery was “as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death.” Lincoln lost his first run for the presidency but he gained publicity that eventually helped him to victory.
Theodore Roosevelt said that President William McKinley “had no more backbone than a chocolate eclair.” Despite such culinary insults, Roosevelt was later named McKinley’s vice president. A few months later, the man who Roosevelt compared to a pastry was assassinated.
President Harry S. Truman said that the 1952 GOP candidate for president, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “doesn’t know any more about politics than a pig knows about Sunday.” When Eisenhower’s vice president, Richard Nixon, ran for president, Truman castigated him as “a no-good lying bastard,” and said that anyone who votes for him “ought to go to hell.”
At a 1960 presidential news conference President Eisenhower was ask about Nixon’s contributions as his vice president. “If you give me a week, I might think of one. I don’t remember,” said Eisenhower.
Like trump, President Lyndon B. Johnson was never the politest person in the room. LBJ once said that then Rep. Gerald Ford, R-Mich. was “so dumb that he can’t fart and chew gum at the same time.” The famously crude LBJ once responded when reporters asked him why the United States was still in Vietnam, Johnson pulled out his penis and answered, “This is why!”
Johnson suffered through stalemates in Vietnam and a midterm defeat in 1966 when then-House Minority Leader Ford blocked key legislation for Johnson’s landmark Great Society program.
“He’s a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off,” said Johnson about Ford, a former college football player.
In another parallel with trump, LBJ had to be constantly told that he was superior to his predecessor, President John F. Kennedy.
“When people mentioned Kennedy’s many affairs, Johnson would bang the table and declare that he had more women by accident than Kennedy ever had on purpose,” wrote presidential historian, Robert Dallek.
Trump may think he is the master of insults, but President Woodrow Wilson would have made mincemeat of trump’s words.
After World War I, Wilson supported creation of the League of Nations, but the Senate didn’t and voted it down in 1919. After the vote, Wilson repeatedly said, “The senators of the United States have no use for their heads, except to serve as a knot to keep their bodies from unraveling.”
The most famous quip of all came from the actor turned president, Ronald Reagan, when he met in debate with his Democratic challenger Walter Mondale in 1984. In the debate, Reagan was asked if his age would impair his ability to serve in a time of great national security threats. Reagan, 73, replied, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
Alexander Hamilton, who was born an illegitimate child, was not winning any popularity contest among his political rivals. One antagonist, John Adams, called Hamilton a “bastard brat of a Scotch peddler.”
In a May 20, 1816, letter to his son, John Quincy Adams, John Adams referred to Jefferson, saying, “When Perfidy and Treachery, Imbecility, Ignorance Fanaticism and Fury Surrounded Us; all, Puppets danced upon the Wires of a Bastard Bratt of a Scotch Pedlar.”
In 1868, the Detroit Free Press, called presidential candidate, Ulysses S. Grant, a “drunkard” and “a man of vile habits, and of no ideas.”
“The nation owes it to its self-respect to tolerate imbecility in politics no longer,” wrote the Free Press, “Grant is as brainless as his saddle.”
Lewis Cass lost his Democratic bid for president in 1848 to Zachary Taylor. Horace Greeley owner of The New York Tribune referred to Cass as a man “whose life has been spent in grasping greedily after vast tracts of land, buying up large estates round Detroit, &c. and selling them out in small town lots, huckster fashion, at immense profits to tradesman and immigrants.”
Greely further wrote of the candidate as “that pot-bellied, mutton-headed, cucumber-soled Cass.”
Grover Cleveland served two terms as president, from 1885–1889, and 1893–1897. One memorable dig against Cleveland was the claim that he had fathered an illegitimate child some years earlier. In 1884, William Purcell, editor of the Rochester Union and Advertiser, explained why he did not support Clevland, “It is not on either personal or political grounds. It is because I believe him to be a moral leper.”
Lincoln lost his first run for the presidency, but he gained publicity that eventually helped him to victory.
President Harry S. Truman said that the 1952 GOP candidate for president, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “doesn’t know any more about politics than a pig knows about Sunday.” When Eisenhower’s vice president, Richard Nixon, ran for president, Truman castigated him as “a no-good lying bastard,” and said that anyone who votes for him “ought to go to hell.”
At a 1960 presidential news conference President Eisenhower was ask about Nixon’s contributions as his vice president. “If you give me a week, I might think of one. I don’t remember,” said Eisenhower.
Like trump, President Lyndon B. Johnson was never the most polite lawmaker around. He once said that then Rep. Gerald Ford, R-Mich. was “so dumb that he can’t fart and chew gum at the same time.” The famously crude LBJ once responded when reporters asked him why the United States was still in Vietnam, Johnson pulled out his penis and answered, “This is why!”
Johnson suffered through stalemates in Vietnam and a midterm defeat in 1966 when then-House Minority Leader Ford blocked key legislation for Johnson’s landmark Great Society program.
“He’s a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off,” said Johnson about Ford, a former college football player.
In another parallel with trump, LBJ had to know that the was superior to his predecessor, President John F. Kennedy.
“When people mentioned Kennedy’s many affairs, Johnson would bang the table and declare that he had more women by accident than Kennedy ever had on purpose,” wrote presidential historian, Robert Dallek.
Trump may think he is the master of insults but President Woodrow Wilson would have made mince meat of trump’s words.
After World War I, Wilson supported creation of the League of Nations but the Senate didn’t and voted it down in 1919. After the vote, Wilson repeatedly said, “The senators of the United States have no use for their heads, except to serve as a knot to keep their bodies from unraveling.”
The most famous quip of all came from President Ronald Reagan when he met in debate with his Democratic challenger Walter Mondale in 1984. In the debate, Reagan was questioned about whether his age would allow him to serve in a time of great national security threats. Reagan, 73, replied, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
In 1868, the Detroit Free Press, called presidential candidate, Ulysses S. Grant, a “drunkard” and “a man of vile habits, and of no ideas.”
“The nation owes it to its self-respect to tolerate imbecility in politics no longer,” wrote the Free Press, “Grant is as brainless as his saddle.”
Alexander Hamilton, who was born an illegitimate child, was not winning any popularity contest among his political rivals. One antagonist, John Adams, called Hamilton a “bastard brat of a Scotch pedler.”
In a May 20, 1816, letter to his son, John Quincy Adams, John Adams referred to Jefferson, saying, “When Perfidy and Treachery, Imbecility, Ignorance Fanaticism and Fury Surrounded Us; all, Puppets danced upon the Wires of a Bastard Bratt of a Scotch Pedlar.” Alexander Hamilton, who was born an illegitimate child, was not winning any popularity contest among his political rivals. One antagonist, John Adams, called Hamilton a “bastard brat of a Scotch peddler.”
In a May 20, 1816, letter to his son, John Quincy Adams, John Adams referred to Jefferson, saying, “When Perfidy and Treachery, Imbecility, Ignorance Fanaticism and Fury Surrounded Us; all, Puppets danced upon the Wires of a Bastard Bratt of a Scotch Pedlar.”
Lewis Cass lost his Democratic bid for president in 1848 to Zachary Taylor. Horace Greeley owner of The New York Tribune referred to Cass as a man “whose life has been spent in grasping greedily after vast tracts of land, buying up large estates round Detroit, &c. and selling them out in small town lots, huckster fashion, at immense profits to tradesman and immigrants.”
Greely further wrote of the candidate as “that pot-bellied, mutton-headed, cucumber-soled Cass.”
Grover Cleveland served two terms as president, from 1885–1889, and 1893–1897. One memorable dig against Cleveland was the claim that he had fathered an illegitimate child some years earlier.
In 1884, William Purcell, editor of the Rochester Union and Advertiser, explained why he did not support Clevland, “It is not on either personal or political grounds. It is because I believe him to be a moral leper.”
In addition to his rhetoric, trump claims to be the perfect man. The overweight, outsized ego trump showed his deficits when he shook his large butt and shimmied to his hand-picked music for a full 30 minutes after he ended a recent town hall after two trumpers fell sick. The blowhard, would-be dictator would have the world believe that he is the most talented president ever.
Not true.
A number of Commanders in Chief have been hugely more musical than trump, including John Quincy Adams, president from 1825–1829 who played the flute; banjo-picking Chester A. Arthur, president from 1881–1885; John Tyler, president from 1841–1845 and Abraham Lincoln, president from 1861–1865, both played the violin; and Calvin Coolidge, leader from 1923–1929 and Ronald Reagan, president from 1981–1989 could both play a mean harp or harmonica. And there was Barack Obama, president from 2009–2017, who showed off his ability to hold a tune many times at the White House. Bill Clinton, president from 1993–2001, blew his saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show, helping to sway young voters and electoral victory.
Even Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s third President, practiced violin for three hours every day as a child, and owned several of them.