Trump “beating” Lincoln? Well, he wasn’t ever going to take Illinois vote

How over-bloated is the ego of President Donald J. Trump? He’s the guy going around saying he’s the most popular Republican ever – even topping one of the Republican Party’s founders, Abraham Lincoln.

Besmirching the rep of Honest Abe?

Of course, the fact that Trump would say he’s bigger than Honest Abe, so to speak, is predictable. If he really wanted to engage in overbearing egomaniacal rhetoric, he’d claim he’s bigger than Reagan.

EXCEPT THAT THEN, former President Ronald W. Reagan has surviving family members who would immediately rush out to “clean his clock,” so to speak. The Lincoln family line of descendants came to an end several generations ago.

So who’s about to challenge Trump’s nonsensical claim?

For the record, Trump was basing his claim off a poll showing that amongst people inclined to vote Republican, some 90 percent think favorably of The Donald. Which could be true – a recent Gallup Organization poll of Trump’s popularity shows 88 percent of Republicans favor him.

Compared to 37 percent of people who call themselves political independents, and only 9 percent of those who are Democrats. None of this is surprising.

NOT EVEN THE fact that Trump feels compelled to bloat his political significance with this trivial tidbit. Does it really mean much that the people who voted for Trump in the first place support their action of 2016 – or that the people who didn’t want him back then still can’t stand him!

TRUMP: The Man of the Over-bloated Ego

Or that Trump is the kind of guy inclined to believe that only certain people in our society matter. Those who didn’t like Trump in the first place, the hell with them, is probably his honest attitude.

I noticed that CNN felt compelled to do a story about Trump’s claims, saying that just about every Republican who has been president in recent years has had overwhelming favorable approval ratings amongst Republican voters.

And that there is no credible polling data remaining from the 1860 and 1864 election cycles to show us just how popular Lincoln really was amongst the American people.

'Bigger than Reagan' would be a real fight

OF COURSE, CONSIDERING that the election and inauguration of Lincoln as president was so unpopular that it caused officials in 11 southern states to talk of trying to break away and create their own nation (the whole Civil War was about whether such an action was legitimate), it wouldn’t surprise me to learn the noble image of Honest Abe held in Illinois isn’t universal.

Even if Lincoln did ultimately get his image on the penny – and the five-dollar bill. What will Trump ever get; other than his name on a batch of tacky buildings that society as a whole will celebrate when the day comes that they are reduced to rubble!

Considering that many of the kinds of people who now support Trump are the ones who also are determined to look back upon the Civil War as the “War for Southern Independence,” it may well be that amongst Trump supporters, they look more favorably upon him than that of Abraham Lincoln.

Trump may be truthful, but his ridiculous claim goes a long way towards explaining just what is wrong with this Age of Trump our society is now in.

I’VE ALSO NOTICED that some people are bringing to mind that moment from 1966 when John Lennon of the Beatles said he and his co-horts were “more popular than Jesus Christ.”

Is John Lennon more popular than Trump?

Which had an element of truth if you consider many of that era were shallow enough to be more concerned with pop music than religion. Lennon’s statement wasn’t really anything to be taken as a compliment.

So the idea that Trump is more popular than Honest Abe? I suppose it’s not like he said HE’S bigger than Jesus? Although I wonder if the kind of people inclined to support Trump would forgive him for such a blasphemous thought because they’d like how the very notion would offend people of sense.

Such as those of us of Illinois, where Lincoln remains our biggest political name in U.S. history. Ah well, it’s not like Trump was ever going to get Electoral College votes out of Illinois or would be a political asset to any Republican running for office in the Land of Lincoln.

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