A New York Times editorial published on Independence Day ripped into Donald Trump by drawing a stark comparison between the president and the first man to hold his current office, George Washington.
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Maureen Down spoke with the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Ron Chernow, whose biography of Alexander Hamilton inspired the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical, about his views on Trump as opposed to Washington.
“[Washington] had this natural gravitas and dignity that I think is really essential to the office,” said Chernow. “And now we have a president who, I suspect, has probably never read a history book.”
Dowd was a bit more brutal in her comparison, describing Trump as a “Foundering Toddler” and granting him the title “Cadet Bone Spur,” a snarky reference to the diagnosis he used to avoid fighting in Vietnam.
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“One famously wouldn’t tell a lie,” wrote Dowd. “The other famously can’t stop.”
Chernow did have one piece of praise for the president that he admitted he could not bestow on Washington.
“Trump can make all this money off cryptocurrencies and meme tokens, and there’s nothing in the Constitution specifically preventing that other than the president’s own sense of shame and integrity — and those don’t seem to apply with very great force to our president,” Chernow told Dowd.
“Trump is very good at finding these holes in the system. He seems to have a sixth sense.”
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