The Great Fabricator

In Cool Runnings, the movie about the Jamaican bobsled team, one character says to another, “whatever is wrong with you is no little thing.” Whatever is wrong with Donald Trump may be a mystery, but it’s definitely not a small problem.

Despite being president of the United States of America, Trump is extremely insecure. Someone didn’t love him enough as a child. What started as a whirlwind publicity tour to convince people with mediocre cognitive skills that simplicity was greatness, turned into a presidential administration. The publicity tour to promote himself continues. Trump tells us on a daily basis how great he is. But, to sell the idea that Trump is great, you gotta make up a lot of stuff.

Trump lies. That’s a well-known fact. He tells huge, preposterous whoppers that can be easily fact checked, like biggest electoral win ever, the largest crowd size, and poll numbers. Last week, he didn’t just lie about a poll, he even created one out of the figment of his tiny imagination.

Trump told the British tabloid, The Sun, “You know, a poll just came out that I am the most popular person in the history of the Republican Party, beating Lincoln. I beat our Honest Abe.”

Trump is popular with Republicans, who are also really fond of putting babies in jail. A recent poll has him at 90% with Republicans. Trump has to create a poll to claim he’s more popular than Lincoln, as the only polling back then were election results, which Lincoln won two of (and the popular vote both times). But, Trump is probably right. Today, Republicans are not the party of Lincoln, and they would probably prefer a wannabe authoritarian presiding over a kakistocracy over a great emancipator rebuilding a democratic republic.

If you want to compare Trump’s popularity today to Lincoln’s during his time in office, you have to remember the nation was divided then too. While today, we talk about a virtual civil war between blue and red states, Lincoln’s America was in a literal civil war. Half the nation hated Lincoln if you only count white people.

It’s not surprising that Trump would compare himself to someone he doesn’t even deserve to share a sentence with. Lincoln was known as Honest Abe, where honesty, truth, and facts are never associated with Donald Trump.

The other dissonance between the two is that one was trying to save the union while the other builds himself up by tearing it apart. Trump isn’t just a divisive figure; he seeks to be divisive to throw red meat to his racist base of support. He creates problems where they don’t exist and later gives himself credit for solving them, which he doesn’t.

Trump also told The Sun that the British people love him. That claim, despite a recent poll putting his disapproval in the UK at 72%, and over 250,000 people and a giant Trump Baby blimp protesting his racist orange ass in London over the weekend. England hates Trump so much, that Green Day’s 14-year-old song American Idiot was pushed to the top of streaming charts in the UK to send Trump a message. England hates Trump so much, they’ll play Green Day.

In the future, I expect we’ll hear more comparisons between Lincoln and Trump. Lincoln was our first Republican president, and Trump may be our last.

Watch me draw.

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