Trump has always wanted to be a wartime president -- but Lincoln, not FDR

Bear with the typos as I write this while watching the original cast of Hamilton perform at the Tonys, something they haven't done since July 9th, 2016. Obama was President the last time they performed. Roe v. Wade was still the law the last time they performed. There was no travel ban the last time they performed, unlike the one that goes into effect on Monday, blocking 12 countries from entering the U.S. There was no threat of martial law, not in Minneapolis, not in Los Angeles, and not in every other state and city in the Union prepared to protest by the millions against dictatorship.

But now people are rising up, standing in front of "agents," men dressed in t-shirts and jeans, wrapped in homemade tactical gear, wearing masks and sans any kind of identification or authority that says they can legally rip a mother and child off the street and disappear them (which wasn't a transitive verb in 2016) to somewhere far away without legal representation or a phone call. And when we rise up, friends, when we stand in the way of danger to help the poor, the homeless, the shaken, those who struggle with the language, we cannot forget that Dear Leader is sitting by the phone, waiting to make the call he's wanted to his entire political life.

Centre for Eastern Studies

We often hear our friends and neighbors on both sides of the aisle talk about threats of World War III. We hear it in reference to tariffs. We hear it in reference to oil. We hear it in reference to Putin, Trump's best frenemy and most efficient electoral puppet-master.

But he doesn't want a world war. I mean, he does, but he's not big into world history, or really academia at all. But American history is learned in soundbites and ultra-right-wing memes. It's the Confederate flag we flew for only four years, but has somehow become fodder for Speedo fashion and NASCAR cronyism. And thus Donald Trump isn't interested in becoming the next FDR; he wants to be Abraham Lincoln. Because he doesn't want a world war; he wants a civil war.

“Lincoln was probably a great president, although I’ve always said why wasn’t that settled?” said Trump, who has repeatedly claimed that had he remained at the helm, the wars in Ukraine and Israel would never have happened. “You know, I’m a guy that — it doesn’t make sense. We had a Civil War.” - The Associated Press

So as we settle into what happens next--the real possibility of an invocation of the Insurrection Act and declaration of martial law--we'll begin see Donald Trump cosplay who he thinks is Abraham Lincoln, though history obviously tells another story. Nothing delights him more than tear-gassing his own people, arresting them, crushing their proverbial necks under his proverbial knee. And if kidnapping women and children off the streets is how he gets there, if that's what incites then next great Civil War of the United States of America, then that's what he'll do.

Newsweek

Quick question, Mr. President: what happened to Abraham Lincoln?

Ellie is an author, editor, and owner of Red Pencil Transcripts, and works with filmmakers, podcasts, and journalists all over the world. She lives with her family just outside of New York City.