I love history and historians, but historians can sometimes be too objective, especially with regards to Donald Trump and his failed presidency. Yes, I generally agree that it takes time assess a presidency. But how do you evaluate a narcissistic psychopath who has and still is fomenting an insurrection against the government of the United States and our democracy and be objective? This article from The Atlantic of a meeting between a group of historians and Trump proves that standard historical analysis fails when it comes to Trump. And Trump is letting his inner bullshitter fly with the historians.
This is going to be hard to keep within Fair Use policy because of the insanity.
About the author: Julian E. Zelizer is a history and public-affairs professor at Princeton University. He is the editor of the forthcoming book The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment.
Trump caught wind of Zelizer’s group of historians writing about his presidency, and Trump had a videoconference with TZelizer last summer. First up, Zelizer was more than surprised that Trump wanted to sit down and talk about his presidency with Zelizer’s group of historians. According to Zelizer, he hasn’t had an interview with either George W. Bush or Barack Obama. Translation: most former presidents don’t sit down for free and spend time with historians. The fact that Zelizer was surprised by Trump’s actions made me think, “Where the hell have you been the last 7 years Dude? Trump man is always trying to lie and spin about himself!”
And here is goes:
He spoke calmly. “We’ve had some great people; we’ve had some people that weren’t so great. That’s understandable,” he told us. “That’s true with, I guess, every administration. But overall, we had tremendous, tremendous success.”…
The former president sat at a wooden desk in his Bedminster Golf Club with an American flag beside him. Over the first 30 minutes, with a single sheet of white paper in front of him, Trump reminisced about his underappreciated negotiating talent in handling the economy, the coronavirus pandemic, and the leaders of China, North Korea, and Russia. “Nobody was tougher on Russia than me,” he maintained. With regards to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Trump recounted how he had compelled other allied nations to pay higher dues after decades when they had not paid their fair share. Many of Trump’s anecdotes came back to how he had talked—or intimidated—powerful actors into doing things that no other president would have been able to. The former president claimed that he had reached a tentative deal with the South Korean government to contribute more to its own defense. (In telling the story, he imitated the accent of South Korean President Moon Jae-In.) The historic deal, Trump alleged, was scuttled once Joe Biden became president, after the 2020 election was “rigged and lost.”…
Right as I was about to open the virtual floor for discussion, Trump took a surprising detour, spending several minutes telling a convoluted story about how price overruns and poor design plans had marred the Navy’s $13 billion supercarrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford. Calling the project the “stupidest thing that I’ve ever seen,” Trump explained how during a presidential visit, he warned that the technologically advanced vessel was a mistake. He recounted how the hardworking crew members who had been servicing ships for years (“out of central casting”) thought key features of the Navy’s design, including aspects of the catapult system that assists in launching planes, made no sense to anyone who had experience in aerial military operations. On the USS Gerald R. Ford, you would have to be an “Albert Einstein,” one crew member had complained, to fix things that once would have been extremely easy to repair.
I glanced at the puzzled faces of my colleagues in their Zoom boxes as Trump’s story unfolded. But his point soon became clear. He was taking a jab at the experts. For the historians who were writing a first draft of his presidency, Trump had a message: The best and brightest didn’t always know what they were talking about—unlike hardworking people who lived by common sense, as he did.
Emphasis is mine.
This should NOT have surprised or puzzled the historians. If they had paid close attention to Trump, he went on this tangent years ago. Once again, where the hell where these historians for the last several years?
It gets better though:
When the Yale historian Beverly Gage brought up the president’s relationship with the FBI and the intelligence community—the subject of her chapter in our book—he eventually turned to the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021. According to his memory, the expert opinion was off. The “real story,” Trump argued, “has yet to be written.” When Congress met to certify the Electoral College results, Trump told us, there had been a “peaceful rally,” more than a “million people” who were full of “tremendous love” and believed the election was “rigged” and “robbed” and “stolen.” He made a “very modest” and “very peaceful” speech, a “presidential speech.” The throng at the Capitol was a “massive” and “tremendous” group of people. The day was marred by a small group of left-wing antifa and Black Lives Matter activists who “infiltrated” them and who were not stopped, because of poor decisions by the U.S. Capitol Police when some “bad things happened.”
More than a “million people” were at the Jan 6th rally! It was “peaceful”! The elections was “stolen”! And a “small group” of antifa and Black Matters were responsible for the violence on Jan 6th!
Zelizer and his group realized that Trump was just trying to shape the narrative. I know. A real shock!
I will just end with this last evaulation by Zelizer:
After answering our questions for half an hour, Trump ended the conversation by thanking us: “I hope it’s going to be a No. 1 best seller!” It was certainly an upbeat way to sign off, though I wasn’t quite convinced he meant it. A few days after our meeting, Trump announced that he would stop doing interviews with authors, because they had been a “total waste of time.” He added: “These writers are often bad people who write whatever comes to their mind or fits their agenda. It has nothing to do with facts or reality.”
LOL. Trump didn’t “mean” something he said? Oh go on!
I have a lot of respect for historians, but this is an example of people in the establishment who are too objective and fair to Trump.