Doris Goodwin Reacts to Trump Claiming He’s ‘Treated Worse’ Than Lincoln: Honest Abe Would ‘Hardly Complain’ About Press Coverage

Presidential historian Doris Goodwin had a disapproving reaction to how President Donald Trump compared himself to Abraham Lincoln during his Fox News town hall.

As Trump took questions on Sunday night about his rhetoric against the media, he railed against the “hostile press” he gets, “the likes of which no president has ever seen.” Since the town hall took place at the Lincoln Memorial, Trump gestured toward Lincoln’s statue and complained that the media is “worse” to him than they were for the 16th president.

“The closest will be that gentleman up there,” Trump said. “They always say nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.”

Taking away the fact that Lincoln was the first U.S. president to ever be assassinated, it seems Trump was essentially claiming that the public scrutiny Lincoln got for his Civil War decisions pales in comparison to the tough questions the current president faces on his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

When CNN’s John Berman asked Goodwin to respond to all of this on Monday, she shook her head as she called it “an incredible statement when you think about it. You can’t compare the time either.”

“Yes, it’s true the country is split now in a partisan way. Yes its true we have a divided media so that facts on one side are not even agreed on on the other. But we are talking about a Civil War with Abraham Lincoln, 600,000 people dying, a North and a South that had entirely different interpretations of what was going on. Let us never think we’re going back to such a period of time.”

Goodwin went on to say “all presidents are upset with the way the press treats them,” but that comes with the job, and Lincoln dealt with it during his time.

“He was used to that kind of bifurcated media, but he would hardly complain,” Goodwin said. “How much better if you can just use the understanding of free press as part of what we are? There will be times when you’re gonna get mad and resentful. But rather, compare yourself to other presidents who have led us through crises and done things as you can learn from. That would be so much better use of his time.”

The segment continued with a discussion on how Trump attacked George W. Bush after his Republican predecessor called for American unity in a video message. When the conversation came back to Trump’s pattern of picking fights with political foes, Goodwin urged him to consider Lincoln’s approach and “you’ve got to put past resentments aside.”

Watch above, via CNN.

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