When Donald Trump cites history, you have to be careful

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When Donald Trump cites history, you have to be careful

Once again, Donald Trump recalled the irony of his slogan “Make America Great Again” – aside from the fact that America East great.

Whenever the ahistorical former president approvingly cites an event in American history, it’s usually a chapter that we learned in civics class was more infamous than famous, something that constituted a lesson of what not TO DO.

The detention camps, the tariff sanctions, the discrediting of “America First” slogans, the appeasement of dictators and, in one bizarre scenario, even the suggestion of compromising on slavery. His former White House chief of staff, retired Gen. John F. Kelly, is now on record confirming that Trump, as president, expressed admiration for Hitler.

Opinion columnist

Jackie Calmes

Jackie Calmes brings a critical perspective to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.

One of the most recent examples of Trump’s distorted views is his promise that if elected, he will use the rarely used Foreign Enemies Act of 1798, intended as a war measure, “to target and dismantle all migrant criminal networks operating on American soil. like he said In Coachella last week. Monday in Greenville, North Carolina, Trump sounded so happy to quote a 226 year old law, as if he were a student of history rather than a revisionist show-off: “Think about that, 1798. That’s when we had real politicians saying we Let’s not play games.

The law is the sole survivor of the Alien and Sedition Acts. I remember learning that these laws were a grave error perpetrated by a fledgling republic, improperly giving the president the power to undermine civil liberties. This sure seems like a good thing for Trump, but the backlash two centuries ago helped Thomas Jefferson defeat President John Adams in 1800.

Presidents Madison, Franklin Roosevelt, and Truman invoked the Alien Enemies Act during wartime. Using separate but related powers, Roosevelt ordered the detention of Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals in concentration camps during World War II – a popular decision at the time but a shame so enduring that Congress and President Reagan in 1988. allowed reparations and apologized on behalf of the nation.

However, these days, candidate Trump does not hesitate to talk about roundups and refugee camps in peacetime. around 11 million undocumented residents, including those with U.S. citizen children, on the first day of a second presidency.

Then there are his repeated words about “the enemy within”, by which Trump explicitly means his Democratic enemies, the “crazy radical left.” To counter these alleged threats, which he describes as more dangerous than Russia, China or Iran, Trump suggests he would entrust them with the National Guard or the army. (“We should take these comments seriously,” said his former Defense Secretary, Mark Esper. told CNN.)

Historically, the notion of enemies within is closely associated with Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, the disgraced demagogue of the early Cold War. “Enemies from within” was the title of his speech Seventy years ago in Wheeling, West Virginia, where he held up a newspaper claiming he had the names of “card-carrying” communists in the State Department. With that, McCarthy launched years of reputation-destroying lies and red-baiting. His sidekick on the oilseed staff at Senate hearings? Roy Cohn, future Trump mentor. Trump learned from one of the worst.

Not since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which historians and economists say exacerbated the Great Depression, has a presidential candidate proposed such high tariffs on imports as Trump.

Against all historical evidence, he denies that the result would be tariff retaliation by foreign nations, higher costs for Americans and lost jobs. He poops warnings of the Wall Street Journal editorial board and quoted President McKinley’s 19th century tariffs, which in fact disowned such protectionism at the end of his mandate. No one seeking to lead the nation in an integrated world of the 21st century should model themselves on the policies of the industrial age.

When Trump often boasts that as president he will resolve Russia’s war against Ukraine in one day (even Russia’s ambassador to the UN refutes him), he recalls the “peace for our times” strategy of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain: his appeasement of Hitler by allowing Germany to seize part of Czechoslovakia. (Trump’s “America First” declarations are a throwback to the discredited American isolationist movement of the time.)

All of Trump’s comments suggest that he too would pander to an expansionist-minded dictator, Russia’s Vladimir Putin. He praised Putin as “brilliant” after the 2022 invasion, opposed most U.S. aid to Ukraine, and recently blame Ukraine for starting the war (huh?). His idea of ​​a quick peace? It will probably be a deal on Putin’s termsallowing Russia to retain captured Ukrainian territory.

Perhaps nothing, however, speaks to historical ignorance as much as Trump’s recent comment on Fox News: This is not his first remark of this kind – that Abraham Lincoln should have made a deal with the South to prevent civil war. “Why hasn’t this been fixed?” he said on Fox & Friends, prompting rare pushback from one host, who noted that the Southern states had seceded before Lincoln took office.

There had been futile compromises in 1820 and 1850. Southerners had started the war, and they had done it to preserve slavery. Like Lincoln said before his election: “What will convince them? This, and this only: Stop calling slavery wrong and join them in calling it right. »Is this what Trump would have tolerated? He did it, after all, attack opponents of Confederate statues for attempting to “defame our heroes.”

Unlike many of his predecessors, Trump does not read histories or biographies; he said it. Having failed to learn the lessons of history, he prepares to repeat its saddest sagas, in the service of his ignorant and ill-informed prejudices. Make America great again? No, keep America great.

@jackiekcalmes

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