Trump's 'ugly and unhinged rants' make him the 'world's most dangerous troll': analysis

President Donald Trump's "drumbeat deafening, ceaseless" ranting about himself put him in a class of his own, incomparable to any other president in United States history, making him the "world's most dangerous troll," says The New Yorker's Jill Lepore.

"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?" Lepore snickers.

Historians, she writes, are in completely new territory with Trump.

"Compared to x, Trump is y. But why? On the upcoming fifth anniversary of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, might it not be best, at this point, simply to stop? Very little in human history is altogether without precedent if you look at it long enough. And what of it? If U.S. history is a map, we are off the grid, over a cliff, lost at sea without a compass," she says.

"Can anyone honestly maintain that the caning of Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate, in 1856, or the shots fired by four Puerto Rican nationalists from the balcony of the Capitol, in 1954, offer meaningful points of comparison to the assassination of Charlie Kirk or the events of January 6th?" she asks?

Lepore says that while things seem bad right now, it's not the worst, but that analogies fail to convey what's going on.

"Nor do I mean to suggest that this is the worst moment in the history of the United States. It is not. I mean only to warn that the false analogy offers false comfort. Analogies are tempting because they can be helpful, a flashlight on a moonless night," she says.

Lepore points to Trump's reposting of an AI video pushing conspiracy theories like so-called Med Beds, has no precedent in history.

"Medbeds, which can cure all ailments and reverse aging, appear regularly in science fiction. (Think of the “biobeds” in the “Star Trek” sick bay.)," she sarcastically notes. "

"They began featuring in online conspiracy theories in the early twenty-twenties; QAnoners claim that medbeds exist, and have existed for years, and that the rich and powerful use them (and that J.F.K. himself is on one, still alive), and that soon Trump will liberate them for use by the rest of us, as if Trump were Jesus opening the gates of Heaven and medbeds eternal life," she says.

That's what makes Trump a dangerous troll, Lepore says.

"Is there any precedent for a President of the United States doing such a thing? Is American history any guide to understanding why Trump, or someone on his staff, posted (and soon afterward deleted) a fake video about a nonexistent news report concerning a fictional miracle cure, an episode whose political significance strikes me as asymptotically approaching zero?" she asks.

No other president in American history, Lepore says, spoke as much as Trump does. While some didn't want to, others found it difficult for various reasons, from logistics, to lack of technology to, as in George Washington's case, uncomfortable fake teeth.

Newspapers became the Truth Social of the nineteenth century, Lepore explains.

"The nineteenth-century press was partisan through and through, and so a paper as a Presidential mouthpiece—not unlike the role played by Fox News for Trump—made perfect sense," she says.

And while Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the "radio president," and Ronald Reagan was the "prime time president," " Bill Clinton, sensing American indifference, used the media in a way that no earlier President could or would have, favoring entertainment outlets, like 'Larry King Live' and ESPN, over network news," she says.

President Obama, however, "inaugurated what the scholars Joshua M. Scacco and Kevin Coe have called the 'ubiquitous Presidency,'" Lepore says.

"He tweeted about Michelle and the girls, and about the Cubs. He did not, however, tweet about miracle cures," she notes.

Trump, she notes, is both "ubiquitous" and "rarely presidential."

"Historians will need to account for Trump when, as Gerald Ford said when he succeeded Nixon, 'our long national nightmare is over.' Analogies won’t help them. Because nothing in American history anticipates or explains the way Trump speaks to his supporters at his rallies," she says.

His posting and ranting, she says, is not only incessant, but unhinged.

"He posts day and night, about everything from taco bowls to possible ceasefires. He is getting worse. In his second term, he has posted three times as often as he did during his first. Tonally, nearly everything he posts is unhinged," she writes.

Most posts are "pure nonsense," "outright lies," and "false and unsubstantiated accusations," and instead of being presidential, she notes, it's "pestilential."

His pushing of medbeds speaks volumes of his entire incomparable presidency.

It's "a very public and not remotely secret plot to deprive middle- and lower-income Americans of decent health care, one that’s led by congressional Republicans and contested, unsuccessfully, by congressional Democrats to the point of shutting down the entire federal government, at a cost of still more suffering," she says.