Don’t Look Now But Trump Wasn’t The Worst President Ever
It may be hard to believe but the trump administration was not the most corrupt in presidential history and that trump, himself, was not the first or the worst, so-called Predator in Chief.
Don’t go paging through the memory files because it is highly unlikely that the history books had much negative information on two presidents, Grover Cleveland and Warren Harding. And don’t bother looking for the real dirt on the webpage of Harding Township, which was named after the scandalous president; you won’t find any.
Cleveland served as the 22nd and 24th president of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897 and his first, first lady was a lesbian. although that scandalous bit of information didn’t come out until years later. As a young legislator, Cleveland raped and impregnated a young woman and tried to have her committed; later Cleveland married a woman 20 years his junior who he had an eye on since she was 11.
The 29th president, Warren Gamaliel Harding, was in office for only two jam-packed, corruption-filled years and after he became the victim of a blackmail by an illicit lover and died. A Republican from Ohio, Harding was president from 1921 to 1923, when he mercifully died at a San Francisco hotel from an apparent heart attack while promoting his policies out west . He was 57.
The most infamous scandal under the Harding administration was the Teapot Dome Scandal or Oil Reserves Scandal, which involved kickbacks through oil leases to private companies without competitive bidding. An investigation revealed that the companies that won leases had transferred $200,000 in Liberty bonds to the family of Interior Secretary Albert Bacon Fall. Harding claimed no part in the scandal.
Harding also had a disreputable habit of appointing his friends, business associates, and industry leaders to positions of power in the government. The Harding appointees were the “Ohio Gang” and they were involved in bribery, extortion, selling government jobs, selling illegal permits for liquor, unlawful appointments, and fraud. Most of them were investigated and indicted, some even imprisoned.
The Veterans Bureau scandal under Harding, involved the misuse of funds not for their intended purposes. One official involved was Albert Fall, the same interior secretary who benefited from the Teapot Dome scandal. Fall was convicted of bribery and sentenced to prison.
Harding also indirectly caused the collapse of the stock market when after World War I, he was involved as the British and U.S. governments arranged for Germany’s payment of reparation that involved a stock market manipulation scheme.
At one time, vicious political rumors spread in Harding’s hometown of Blooming Grove that one of Harding’s great-grandmothers was African American. Harding’s great-great-grandfather Amos Harding disputed the rumor and claimed that a thief, who had been caught in the act by the family, started the rumor about Harding’s heritage in an attempt at extortion or revenge. In 2015, genetic testing of Harding’s descendants determined, with more than a 95 percent chance of accuracy, that Harding had no African forebears within four generations.
Harding had two extramarital affairs, one with Carrie Fulton Phillips of Marion, which lasted about 15 years before ending in 1920. The relationship was kept secret from the public for decades. The affair ended when Phillips blackmailed Harding during the Senator’s run for President.
After the affair came to light, Florence, Warren Harding’s wife, claimed it was not the first time that her husband had entered into an affair with a woman whom she considered a friend. After the affair was exposed, the Phillips family returned to Europe, leaving the Hardings in Marion. While in Germany, Mrs. Phillips became immersed in German culture. As Europe moved closer to war with Germany, the Phillips returned to the United States. Her affair with Harding resumed and Mrs. Phillips reportedly threatened to expose the affair if Harding voted in favor of war with Germany.
In mid-1920, Harding was the Republican Party nominee for president and he disclosed his affair with Mrs. Phillips to Republican Party officials. He also disclosed that Phillips was in possession of hundreds of love letters he had written to her, many on Senate stationery.
Wary of a scandalous affair and Phillips’ support of the German government, the Republican Party urged Mr. and Mrs. Phillips to keep their travels abroad a private matter. In return for Mrs. Phillips’ silence on the matter, the Republican Party offered to pay the way for an extended tour of Asia and the Pacific Islands, as well as an annual stipend to Mrs. Phillips for the remainder of her life.
Harding’s other alleged mistress was Nan Britton, who like Harding, was from Marion, Ohio. The affair began when Harding was a U.S. Senator and continued until his sudden death. Britton later wrote a book claiming that Harding was the father of her child, Elizabeth Ann Blaesing. In 2015, The New York Times reported that genetic testing by Ancestry.com, confirmed that Harding was Blaesing’s biological father. Family lore, however, said Harding could not be the farther as he was infertile, having suffered from mumps in childhood.
Salacious details caused a public gasp, as with Britton’s claim that the two had sex in a closet near the Oval Office, with Secret Service agents posted to ward off intruders. Shades of Bill Clinton.
When Cleveland ran for office, he was nearly 50 years old and a bachelor, not a good quality for a presidential contender, especially after word spread that he had fathered a child out of wedlock. As an unmarried president, protocol allowed for the president to name a female relative to fill the role of first lady. That was Cleveland’s sister, Rose, a well-educated, former teacher at a women’s seminary, the author of serious books and a lesbian and longtime lover of Evangeline Simpson Whipple.
Rose was first lady for 14 months, when Cleveland married Frances Folsom, a 21-year-old woman for whom Harding was the longtime legal guardian. Cleveland was the only chief executive to ever wed in the White House, in June of 1886.
Rose met Evangeline Simpson in the winter of 1889–1890. Rose was 43 and never married and Evangeline was around 33. Evangeline had inherited a fortune from a late husband nearly five decades her senior.
Love letters between the two were preserved by the caretaker at Evangeline’s Minnesota home. They were included in a book published in 2019, titled, “Precious and Adored: The Love Letters of Rose Cleveland and Evangeline Simpson Whipple, 1890–1918.” The letters left no doubt about the relationship.
“You are mine, and I am yours, and we are one, and our lives are one henceforth, please God, who can alone separate us. I am bold to say this, to pray and to live by it.” — Rose Cleveland to Evangeline Simpson, May 6, 1890.
Rose quotes Evangeline as writing, “Oh darling, come to me this night — my Clevy, my Viking, My — Everything, Come! God Bless Thee.”
Rose flirtatiously replied, “Your Viking kisses you!”
In 1896, Evangeline announced she was engaged to Bishop Henry Whipple, a popular Episcopal preacher from Minnesota who was 34 years her senior. Rose continued writing letters to Evangeline, but the intimacy gradually faded. The bishop died in 1901 and Rose and Evangeline resumed their relationship before living together, as true partners, in the Tuscan, Italy, village of Bagni di Lucca.
As for Grover Cleveland, on July 21, 1884, the Buffalo Evening Telegraph reported that 10 years earlier a woman named Maria Halpin had given birth to a son with the surname Cleveland and that after giving birth, the mother was taken to a mental asylum while the child was adopted by another family. At the time Cleveland was mayor of Buffalo and a scandal was brewing that could derail Cleveland’s chances for the presidency.
With pressure growing, Cleveland’s campaign admitted that the candidate and Halpin had been “illicitly acquainted.” The campaign rationalized that Cleveland was a bachelor and that Halpin had had affairs with some of Cleveland’s friends, all prominent Buffalo businessmen. Cleveland claimed he was not certain the child was his but, to spare his friends’, he claimed paternity and helped Halpin name the boy and place him with a caring family.
That was not the story that Halpin reported.
“The circumstances under which my ruin was accomplished are too revolting on the part of Grover Cleveland to be made public,” Halpin who was 38 years old and a widow at the time of the alleged incident in 1874, said in an Oct. 31, 1884, interview with the Chicago Tribune..
The Tribune reported that “Cleveland had pursued (Halpin) relentlessly, and that she finally consented to join him for a meal at the Ocean Dining Hall & Oyster House.”
After dinner, Cleveland escorted Halpin back to her boarding house, where without Halpin’s consent, Cleveland was “forceful and violent.” Halpin claimed that Cleveland later promised to ruin her if she went to the authorities. Halpin said she told Cleveland she would never see him again but around a month later, she found she was pregnant.
The baby was born and was quickly removed from his mother’s custody. Halpin was admitted to a local insane asylum but doctors later said Halpin was not in need of commitment. the attending physician at the asylum said Halpin was not insane and the asylum had no right to hold her. In a few days, she left to find her son.
According to the Tribune, Halpin planned to charge Cleveland with assault and abduction.
“She (Halpin) said she knew that Grover Cleveland had plotted the abduction and hired the men to carry it out, as he had previously tried less violent means to deprive her of the child and get her out of the way,” the paper reported.
Halpin’s lawyer and her brother-in-law came up with an agreement that stipulated that Halpin would be paid $500 and would surrender her son, Oscar Folsom Cleveland, and make no further demands of Cleveland. Oscar was adopted by the doctor at the asylum and the boy was raised in Buffalo separate from his mother.
The scandal filled the major newspapers during mid- and late-1884. Many felt Cleveland had assaulted the woman and that he was a libertine. Others saw Halpin as “a harlot looking to cash in on a distant dalliance with the upstanding lawyer” who was running for president.
Pastor Henry W. Crabbe, of Buffalo’s United Presbyterian Church, condemned Cleveland as a “corrupt, licentious man. He has never been married, and is notoriously bad with women. I most sincerely and earnestly pray that he will not be our next President.”
Many of Cleveland’s supporters said the dalliance was simply “a young man’s folly” even though Cleveland was nearly 40 years old when he became acquainted with Halpin.
Cleveland, a Democrat, won the presidency, carrying New York state with a margin of barely 2,000 votes.
The scandal was soon replaced in the papers by the coverage of Cleveland’s new bride, Frances Folsom, daughter of the president’s best friend. The new Mrs. Cleveland was 21; her new husband was more than twice her age, at 48. Frances Folsom was the son of Cleveland’s friend, Oscar Folsom. After Folsom’s death, Cleveland was the executor and supervised Frances Folsom’s childhood.