Abraham Lincoln, the favored dictator of corporate-backed presidential historians
President Donald Trump wishes he could govern with absolute power the way that Abraham Lincoln did
A favorite tactic of the political and media establishment for the past four to five years has been to declare that President Trump is “un-presidential” or that he’s been destroying “norms” in his single term in office, and yet, as Glenn Greenwald repeatedly points out, it is these critics who have done at least as much harm to democratic norms as Trump has in their attempts to subvert him. Moreover, their examples are often at odds with reality. The latest example of this comes from Michael Beschloss, a Presidential Historian for NBC News, who compares Trump’s treatment of the corporate press with that of Abraham Lincoln.
What Beschloss is trying to do here is to slyly imply that Trump has a particular disdain for journalism and his critics that was not shared by Abraham Lincoln, who is widely believed to have been the greatest President in U.S. history by most historians and the general public. He can’t make this claim explicitly for the simple reason that no professional historian could credibly make such a claim, but he relies on the ignorance of the general population to take that as his meaning to further his agenda of painting Trump as a unique threat to the freedom of the press despite the fact that Lincoln got away with assaults against the liberty of his critics that Trump could never even dream of.
Clement Vallandigham was a Democratic Congressman from Ohio during the Civil War, and a prominent “Copperhead,” a critic of the war and Lincoln’s regime. After a speech where he denounced “King Lincoln,” he was arrested for violating General Order Number 38 which stated, “The habit of declaring sympathies for the enemy will no longer be tolerated in the department. Persons committing such offences will be at once arrested, with a view to being tried as above stated, or sent beyond our lines into the lines of their friends.” Vallandigham was given a military trial and deported to the Confederacy, from which he made his way to Canada and ran unsuccessfully for Governor of Ohio.
And as far as the press and reporters are concerned, Abraham Lincoln’s regime shut down over 300 northern newspapers during the Civil War. On May 18, 1864, Lincoln ordered Major-General John A. Dix to arrest the publishers and editors of the New York World and the New York Journal of Commerce after they published a false proclamation from the president and secretary of state, stating:
Whereas there has been wickedly and traitorously printed and published this morning in the New York World and New York Journal of Commerce, newspapers printed and published in the city of New York, a false and spurious proclamation purporting to be signed by the President and to be countersigned by the Secretary of State, which publication is of a treasonable nature, designed to give aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States and to the rebels now at war against the Government and their aiders and abettors, you are therefore hereby commanded forthwith to arrest and imprison in any fort or military prison in your command, the editors, proprietors, and publishers of the aforesaid newspapers, and all such persons as, after public notice has been given of the falsehood of said publication, print and publish the same with intent to give aid and comfort to the enemy; and you will hold the persons so arrested in close custody until they can be brought to trial before a military commission for their offense. You will also take possession by military force of the printing establishments of the New York World and Journal of Commerce, and hold the same until further orders, and prohibit any further publication therefrom.
Beschloss’s tweet was meant to give a bad impression of President Trump by comparing him unfavorably to Abraham Lincoln, but imagine the outrage that would take place if President Trump actually governed like Lincoln and ordered, say, the New York Times to be shut down for their irresponsible coverage of the false-Russiagate conspiracy, let alone every media outlet who reported unfavorably about him, or if he ordered the arrest and deportation of Congressman Adam Schiff for the same? The Michael Beschloss’s of the world would be calling for Trump to be brought up on charges of treason and, at least, to be imprisoned for the rest of his life if not tarred and feathered immediately.
So no, we have no record of Abraham Lincoln berating a reporter, being rude to a reporter, or referring to them as “fake news.” What we do have is a record of Lincoln forcibly shutting down hundreds of newspapers in the northern states for publishing criticisms of his regime and arresting and imprisoning hundreds, perhaps into the thousands, of editors and publishers of newspapers, political opponents, and average citizens with no charge or trial. Trump, by comparison, actually comes out looking pretty good, despite the agendas of Michael Beschloss and the rest of the corporate press.