"The list of figures in American history with whom Donald J. Trump has been compared since he announced his bid for the Presidency a decade ago is longer than his trademark necktie, as red as a gash. It's taller than Trump Tower, gleaming like a blade. It has a higher turnover than his beleaguered first Cabinet. It includes even more goons, toadies, and peacocks than his current Administration. And yet the comparisons keep coming, in the daily papers, in the nightly podcasts, online, online, online."
"Trump plays this game, too. He loves it, and why not? It only ever helps him, inflates, magnifies, and amplifies him, the drumbeat deafening, ceaseless, Trump, Trump, Trump. He's Andrew Jackson (or is he more like Andrew Johnson?); he's Ronald Reagan. He thinks only Abraham Lincoln has been treated as unfairly as he has-or, no, "I believe I am treated worse." Shall we compare him to a summer's day?"
"Everything that has happened in the furor, disarray, and murderous violence of American politics over the past decade has led the commentariat to scramble for antecedents. That includes me. Is this unprecedented? This is the question journalists have been asking historians for a decade now. It arrives by text and voice mail. It arrives by post and e-mail. It knocks on the door and all but raps on the windowpane, tap, tap, tapping."
Donald J. Trump has been likened to an extensive range of American historical figures, from demagogues and isolationists to entertainers and presidents. The comparisons emphasize parallels in lying, showmanship, cruelty, fraud, isolationism, and political cunning while provoking debates about degree and precedent. Trump actively courts and amplifies these analogies, using media attention to magnify his influence. The media ecosystem and public conversation have become saturated with repeated comparisons, and journalists and historians receive persistent queries about whether recent political turmoil is unprecedented amid furor, disarray, and violence in American politics.
Read at The New Yorker
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