Another US president — like Trump — also compared himself to Jesus: historian

07 April 2024

Donald Trump's "Messiah complex" perhaps, may have reached its peak last month when the former president announced he was selling $59.99 'God Bless the USA' Bibles.

Laura Brodie noted in a TIME Magazine article the MAGA hopeful's recent antics include telling his supporters "that he’s suffering for their sake, sharing a faux courtroom sketch of Christ at his side, and circulating actor Jon Voight’s bizarre claim that he is being 'destroyed as Jesus.'"

Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson, in a Sunday, April 7 op-ed for Milwaukee Independent, submits, "Trump is not the first president to compare himself to Jesus Christ."

She writes, "In 1866, President Andrew Johnson famously did, too," and, "While there is a financial component to Trump’s comparison that was not there for Johnson, the two presidents had similar political reasons for claiming a link to divine power."

According to the Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America author, "Johnson complained bitterly about the opposition to his reconstruction policies, attacked specific members of Congress as traitors and called for them to be hanged, and described himself as a martyr like Lincoln. And, noting the mercy of his reconstruction policies, he compared himself to Jesus."

In addition to Johnson, Brodie noted:

In the wake of Lincoln’s assassination on Good Friday, 1865, grieving Unionists, from politicians to faith leaders, began comparing the fallen president to Jesus. Within five hours of the shooting, James Garfield — who would become America’s second assassinated president 16 years later — told a Manhattan crowd: "It may be almost impious to say it, but it does seem that Lincoln's death parallels that of the Son of God."

The Washington and Lee University visiting professor added:

Robert E. Lee, however, got the fullest Jesus-treatment. After his death in 1870, Lee’s fans were quick to make the comparison. Joseph B. Kershaw, a Confederate general from South Carolina, wrote a commemoration reprinted in multiple Southern papers in which he praised Lee’s form, face and bearing as 'god-like in beauty, power and grace,' before asking: 'what was his life for the last five years but a constant martyrdom of the spirit—daily dying for us.'

Richardson suggests that Johnson's comparison of himself to Christ did not go over well with voters, then. She writes, "Johnson’s extremism and his supporters’ violence created a backlash. Northerners were not willing to hand the country back to the Democrats who were rioting in the South and to a president who compared himself to Jesus. Rather than turning against the Republicans in the 1866 elections, voters repudiated Johnson. They gave Republicans a two-thirds majority of Congress, enabling them to override any policy Johnson proposed."

Richardson's full article is available here. Brodie's op-ed is here.

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