Open History Society: Donald Trump a Jacksonian?

 Early during the first Trump administration, Donald Trump paid a visit to the Hermitage which is the former estate of our 7th POTUS Andrew Jackson. Jackson is well known for his treatment of our Indigenous Americans forcing then onto the "Trail of Tears" not allowing them to remain on their original territories and send them to what is now Oklahoma.

Pres. Trump saw a kindred spirit in Andrew Jackson as in 1828 President Jackson was a change in the character of most other presidents up to that point. Jackson probably could be described as America's first populist president. Trump in 2016 and again in 2024 could be seen as a populist president in our time.

This article from Open History Society explores in what ways that President Trump is Jacksonian. And then you have to get past biased statements as.

Meacham (2009) contends that Jackson was a principled idealist and there seems no doubt that his patriotic, arch-nationalist love of country was sincere. That notwithstanding, the highest virtue for Jackson was loyalty to himself. He judged that those who opposed him, such as John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, were not just wrong but enemies of the people, a term employed by Trump against numerous political foes and the media (Smith, 2019). Jackson was a short-tempered man who held a grudge tenaciously, and whose moral code was centred upon an inflexible concept of honour which often led him into personal violence in his early life and propelled him sometimes into ill-advised dogmatism (Wyatt-Brown, 1997). Yet he had many friends and inspired a loyalty which was based on admiration of his sense of justice.

Trump’s character is far more dysfunctional, he is a serial liar, and his increasingly bombastic nationalism is essentially a projection of his own narcissism. He too demands loyalty, but unlike Jackson he rarely returns it. Allies pander to him for advancement or fear of falling out of favour. He is the archetypal bully. Jackson was an acerbic and aggressive character, but he could control his temper, unlike the thin-skinned Trump who is gratuitously abusive even to allies and colleagues. Jackson could be devious and less than truthful, but he was not a pathological liar. Innumerable accounts have catalogued Trump’s casual and unreflective telling of falsehoods. The Washington Post (2020) kept a record of these and revealed that in the first three years of his presidency he made 16,241 false or misleading statements, or 15 per day.

I have to keep reading this, but it's as good as an explanation as any about whether or not Trump or Jackson are similar. I also recognize that both men seemed to either engender great support or great dislike. As I stated Jackson even now has his detractors and even his supporters who cite that he paid off the national debt during his presidency among other accomplishments.

When you read this article what's your hottake?