President Donald Trump complained during his interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that while former President Abraham Lincoln was “treated supposedly very badly,” he is still treated worse.
A reminder from the historians at TPM: Lincoln was shot. In the head. To death.
“Although they do say Abraham Lincoln was treated really badly. I must say that’s the one,” Trump said. “If you can believe it, Abraham Lincoln was treated supposedly very badly. But nobody’s been treated badly like me. And this way I can fight the dishonest media, the corrupt media, the fake news.”
Now in all fairness, Trump may have just been comparing their media coverage, though it’s unclear why he thinks the news landscape in which his administration is situated is at all comparable to that of 1860s America.
Interestingly enough, per a Civil War archival project hosted at Penn State University, the Civil War and antebellum period saw an explosion of newspaper circulation, actually subsidized by the federal government. Though, per Atlantic Magazine, Lincoln did receive his fair share of flak in his time, not least because half of the country was pretty pissed at him.
