My latest book, entitled Trump-a-Lincoln-a-Lago, has just been released. Part historical text, part fictional story – or what I call a faux history – the chronicle begins with an invitation. A previous book of mine became hot news within the Trump family during the last year of his presidency. Initially I was surprised – and it wasn’t for the reason that you might think. You might think that my surprise stemmed from the incredibly remote chance of a writer gaining the interest of a president of the United States. That would be understandable. And, indeed, that surprise did hit me, later. My initial surprise formed around a question. Someone in the Trump family reads??? The multiple question marks are mine. I was that surprised.
After an initial period of shock, entitled “The Six Stages of Trump Acceptance” in Trump-a-Lincoln-a-Lago, I decided to make the journey to the Trump White House. I didn’t follow the straight route. Rather, I pursued a pivotal question of history. Why did President Abraham Lincoln travel to battlefields during the Civil War? The question of history remains unresolved, but the record indicates that he went to Antietam, Gettysburg, Petersburg and Richmond, in order, while those killing fields still smoldered. What was he seeking?
With that question in mind, I made my way to the Trump White House from my Brooklyn home with stops at Civil War sites. I traveled by bicycle. The cycling had a forerunning, or a forecycling. A few years ago, I cycled through Judea, Galilee and old Phoenicia, or modern-day Lebanon. I called that ride “the Tour de Josephus” in my book, Satan’s Synagogue. Here, I am entitling my ride to the Trump White House, “A bicycle tour of Civil War Land Central (and peripheral).
Trump-a-Lincoln-a-Lago is available at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09H957FP2/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1632820590&sr=8-5.
In support of the book, I am writing a series of unique profiles. This is part one. Look for part two, entitled “Lincoln and Trump: A Directory of 5 Differences,” coming soon.
With introductions now out of the way, let’s get to it. For the anti-Trump crowd, linking Lincoln and Trump will have set off some high-pitched alarm bells. They are itching for some content. For the pro-Trump crowd, linking Lincoln and Trump will have confirmed the general belief in Trump’s greatness. They, too, are itching for content. I won’t even bother with the reaction of the pro-Lincoln crowd, and the anti-Lincoln crowd, too. Let’s get to the good stuff. But as the title suggests, here’s a list of 5 similarities.
1) Both men loved meat. The historical record points to Lincoln’s favorite food as chicken casserole. In fact, there was a Lincoln family chicken casserole recipe. I am surprised The New York Times food section has never done a story on the meal, recipe included. Slaves created the recipe. Mary Todd Lincoln grew up a slaver. Her mother died when she was six, and a house slave basically raised the girl. The house slave did the cooking. When MTL reached the marriage years, she had to learn to cook. That simply was the culture of the day. With typical MTL verve, she pushed back.
Mary Todd and Abe Lincoln nearly didn’t marry. The historical record indicates that Lincoln called off the marriage. Here’s a thought. Maybe MTL didn’t want to cook and Abe didn’t want a wife who refused kitchen duties? In those days, that was a deal breaker. Maybe MTL then learned to cook, specifically the chicken casserole recipe, and Lincoln jumped back into wedding plans? The historical record remains thoroughly perplexed.
Here’s what we know. When the Lincolns moved into the White House in March of 1861, MTL didn’t have to worry about the cooking life. She had servants again! She could spend her time redecorating the White House, and running her famed MTL salon out of the Red Room, and, most importantly, quietly becoming one of the most influential abolitionists on the scene. The general view of MTL misses her role in the Emancipation. Trump-a-Lincoln-a-Lago puts a focus there.
Donald Trump, as I personally witnessed, loves his red meat. On the Trump dinner plate, during my one time with the Trump family, the president served meatloaf sandwiches and steak, and French fries. The fries were undercooked. The meat was hockey puck hard.
2) Notice what wasn’t on the Trump plate. Vegetables of any kind. In fact, when servers presented the plate in a moment of wonderful theater – a team of nine waiters for nine guests entered the Dining Room, each waiter carrying one golden plate with one golden covering, each waiter setting down a golden plate in front of a seated guest, in unison, each waiter lifting the golden covering, in unison – I happened to look at the youngest member of the Trump family. Barron T. could barely contain himself. The pleasure! Let’s be real. The contents on the plate formed a kid’s dream landscape. Nothing green on the plate. No fancy sauces. No complex spices. Just meat and fried potatoes. Maybe the Trump White House followed the cooking tastes of Barron the teenager?
A relatively recent predecessor of Trump’s didn’t dive much into vegetables, either. The historical record shows Ronald Reagan’s true dislike for all things green and leafy. In fact, the Reagan White House, to assuage their man, promoted Ketchup as a vegetable. Grade school kids, myself included, downed Heinz Ketchup in cafeterias across this great nation.
Ketchup is essentially made of tomatoes and vinegar and sugar. Lots of sugar. But let’s leave the dangers of sugar exorbitance behind to concentrate on Reagan obtuseness. Tomatoes are a fruit. And yet, Ketchup got classified as a vegetable! The Reagans were simply duncification personified.
The Reagans were also corruption personified. The Reagans made Ketchup an official vegetable – even though it was a fruit – because RR and Nancy held a significant amount of stock in Heinz.
Like his eventual successors, Abe Lincoln didn’t dive too much into vegetables, either. In fact, he favored fruit. He probably would have loved Ketchup. There was a good reason for his fruit preference. His personal doctor, Robert King Stone, promoted fruit as a curative for constipation. The historical record recognizes the grave restrictions of Lincoln’s bowels.
3) Let’s not go into the ins and outs of Lincoln’s bowels on this page, but let’s recognize that the Stone curative for constipation didn’t end with fruit. He prescribed a “medicine” named Laudanum.
Here’s why I put the word in quotations. To create Laudanum, chemists combined opium and water, or sometimes alcohol. Laudanum served as the most addictive pharmaceutical ever sold in the United States. Well, until OxyContin came along.
Let’s be real. Stone got Lincoln stoned. But it didn’t end there. Mary Todd Lincoln suffered from severe migraines. The medical record indicates both prodrome and aura symptomology, characterized by irritability, problems in concentration, insomnia, and temporary loss of sight. Robert King Stone prescribed Laudanum. Stone got MTL stoned.
Here’s some medical history. A German chemist saw the effects of Laudanum and went about manufacturing a new curative. He mixed a solution of extracted coca leaves and water, or sometimes alcohol. Both cocaine lozenges and cocaine water became remedies for colds, indigestion, melancholia, and pain management. Perhaps we should add cocaine to the list of most addictive pharmaceuticals ever sold in the United States?
Cocaine water became a 19th century elixir of sorts. Ulysses S. Grant took it for throat cancer at the end of his life. General Robert E. Lee’s wife, Mary Anna Custis Lee, took it for rheumatoid arthritis. Let’s use rheumatoid arthritis to segue to some of Trump’s medical history. In May of 2020, with the Coronavirus raging and medical science frantically searching for answers, I visited with President Trump alone. Truth is, Trump had a job for me. He sent me on a mission. I then reported back. For that story, please do see Trump-a-Lincoln-a-Lago, but here’s what I witnessed. Trump popped an oblong-shaped pill into his mouth. The pill had initials on it: HCO. I instantly recognized the pill.
Here’s a personal admission. I take one HCO everyday for rheumatoid arthritis.
With the tablet in his mouth, Trump tilted his head back. He concentrated, hard. What was he concentrating on? I can’t be certain but I think he was arranging as much saliva in his mouth as possible. Let’s not go into the ins and outs of Trump saliva on this page, but he had to swallow that pill. I always take mine with water.
“Hydroxychloroquine,” I said.
Trump finished his business. He looked at me. “You know it?” he said. “Are you sick?”
He did as expected. He took a giant step backward, away from me. We had been standing a foot or so removed. Suddenly we were standing four or five feet apart. Nearing proper social distancing in the Corona age, according to public health regulations. I was wearing a mask. Trump, of course, was not. “No,” I answered, “I take it for arthritis.”
Trump being Trump, he ignored my statement. He already had his mind on his next thought. “Yeah,” he said, “I’m on a course of Hydroxy. I don’t want to catch the bug.” The bug: meaning the Coronavirus. Hydroxy: meaning Hydroxychloroquine. Nobody in the Hydroxychloroquine community uses such a shortened version.
“Do you think HCO will protect you from catching the virus?” I asked.
Trump answered, sort of. “It’s a wonderful drug,” he said.
“A wonderful drug?” I repeated. “How’s the diarrhea going?”
Trump did the strangest thing then. He smirked. He then followed his smirk with an admission. “You know about that?” he said.
“Know about that?” I responded. “I live it everyday. How’s the itching?”
“Crazy,” Trump admitted. He then, of course, scratched his wrist. “Worse than the most blood-sucking mosquito. Worse than Crazy Nancy.”
I ignored the reference to Nancy Pelosi. I have to admit, though. I do agree – and I voted for her a couple of times in the 1990s. “Any migraines?” I asked. “Because that wouldn’t be unusual.”
“I’ve had a few,” he admitted.
“You might need to take Imitrex,” I responded. “You just need to take the drug as you feel the migraine coming on. If you take it late, it’s useless.” Maybe Laudanum would be better?
“Do you have any paranoiac episodes?” I continued.
Trump did not answer.
“I do hope you’re getting your eyes checked,” I continued. “HCO can cause blindness. Your doctors briefed you, right?”
I couldn’t have known what details Trump’s medical advisors shared with him. I couldn’t have known what he remembered from those briefings. I do know that Trump’s advisors used color and flow charts, with easels and pointers. Trump never read a briefing book during his presidency, or a book of any kind during his lifetime. That fact includes his own. Ironic that he should invite a writer to the White House.
4) Soon after our meeting, Trump took a helicopter to his plane. His plane landed in Bedminster, New Jersey. President Trump, like a slew of his 19th century predecessors, sought out New Jersey as a retreat from the Washington heat. The historical record indicates that most every president from U.S. Grant to Woodrow Wilson vacationed in the Jersey beach town of Elberon. James Garfield, 20th president of the United States, even died there. To be sure, Trump never heard of James Garfield. But here’s one president from the 19th century that Trump does know. Grover Cleveland. As Trump’s aides repeatedly briefed him following the presidential election of 2020 – with color and flow charts, and easels and pointers – Grover Cleveland was the only president in this nation’s history to serve two nonconsecutive terms. Today, Trump holds up Cleveland as his guiding light. Maybe that suggests his intentions for the presidential election of 2024?
By the way, when I heard Trump’s championing of Cleveland, I whispered another name to him. Teddy Roosevelt. I’m not sure Trump ever heard of Roosevelt, but TR tried for two nonconsecutive terms, too. He lost his second attempt to Woodrow Wilson. Bad mistake, America! WW was the worst president in this nation’s history. We’re very much feeling the Wilson effects today.
In Bedminster, Trump played golf at his eponymously named golf course. Here’s a question for the Trump record. How many Trump golf courses are there?
Following the golf, Trump got in his plane and headed down south to Mar-a-Lago. It’s natural, then, to view Trump as a much-traveled president. In fact, he basically only traveled to two places: New Jersey and southern Florida. Occasionally, he went to Europe, and Japan. I’m not sure he even recognized the existence of South America or Africa. It’s like he was a European in the Dark Ages.
Here’s some important history. TR became the first sitting president to make a foreign trip. He flew to Panama to check on a major technological invention, then coming into existence. We know that invention as the Panama Canal. To be honest, I am surprised Donald Trump didn’t pattern his presidency after TR. TR’s reputation suggests a man who projected physicality, strength, adventure, a survivalist, battle-tested, battle-hardened. The Rough Rider. Again, maybe Trump never heard of TR?
Roosevelt, by the way, moved a famous piece of furniture into the master bedroom of the White House for sleeping purposes. The world today knows that furnishing as the Lincoln bed. Today, that bed fills a good part of the Lincoln Bedroom, which served as Lincoln’s office during his tenure.
Lincoln never used the bed as his own. The bed first belonged to Lincoln’s son. Willie died in that bed in February of 1862, and Lincoln only slept in that bed when accompanying his son. Technically then, the bed remains the Lincoln bed. But maybe we should add the first name?
Lincoln, too, has the reputation as a much-traveled president. Like Trump, though, his circumference was small. The historical record indicates that Lincoln rode his horse, Old Abe, to a manor house with the nickname of Corn Riggs, about 5 miles north of the White House. Today, we know that house as the Lincoln Cottage at the Old Soldiers’ Home. Lincoln traveled to the home regularly, and his family lived there for seasons at a time.
But Lincoln took his travels even further afield. The historical record indicates that the Lincoln Express traveled to places like Antietam, a week after the battle, and Petersburg, hours after the battle, and Richmond, as the evacuation fires still burned. He also, of course, rode the rails to Gettysburg, some four months after the battle, to consecrate the land. Here’s what the historical record misses. Lincoln traveled to Manassas after the second battle. He wanted, in the military words of his time, to “reconnoiter the rims.” What did he mean?
5) While the term spoke to a reconnaissance effort, Lincoln had something else in mind. Abe Lincoln needed to see death. There was something about the intimacy and ugliness of war dead that conciliated his psyche. Great historians and biographers over the many decades have noted the culture of death that surrounded Abe Lincoln personally. As a young man, he lost his first love, Ann Rutledge. As a prairie lawyer, he lost his second son, Edward, before the boy turned four. As president, he lost his third son, Willie, before the boy turned 12. The historical rendering then positions Abe Lincoln as the face of grief.
That rendering really misses the nub. Abe Lincoln had a psychache. What’s a psychache? A seminal event occurred sometime in a person’s past, or a formative relationship, or a seismic experience, that caused everything to come crashing down. Psychache sufferers experienced something so damaging, a collision so abrupt, that the trauma caused a glottal stop in development. Psychache sufferers then build a cavern within which only they can access and dwell. Once inside, there is no reaching the sufferer.
What seminal event occurred in Lincoln’s boyhood that sparked the psychache? Lincoln’s biological mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, came down with what the historical record recognizes as milk poisoning. NHL took to bed. She never recovered. Meanwhile, her two children watched her suffer. We don’t know the effects of that witness on Lincoln’s elder sister, Sarah. She died 10 years later during childbirth. She was 20 years of age.
We do know the effects of that witness on Abe Lincoln. The death of NHL caused a glottal stop. Abe Lincoln formed a cavern within which only he could access and dwell. Once inside, there was no reaching him.
A good therapist would suggest the way to heal that psychache: through the father. Thomas Lincoln, in fact, shared the same psychache. Thomas Lincoln witnessed the death of his own father, the first Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln line. The first Abraham Lincoln moved his family to a Kentucky homestead. That land became a war zone, as the fledgling United States and a confederation of Chickasaw and Choctaw fought for territory. During a raid, a contingent of Chickasaw murdered the first Abraham Lincoln on his homestead. There were witnesses: Lincoln’s children, including the 8-year-old boy named Thomas.
Spin the story to 1818, and the death of Nancy Hanks Lincoln. Ostensibly, Abe Lincoln had someone he could grieve with, and repair the newly formed psychache. Neither took place. Estrangement characterized the relationship between father and son. Abuse. Thomas Lincoln took to the bottle. He took to late-night wanderings. He isolated and absented himself.
The effects of Thomas Lincoln on the developing Abe Lincoln are unmistakable. Thomas Lincoln was an alcoholic, and we see Lincoln’s abstinence born in his father’s drinking. Thomas Lincoln was an autocrat. He was abusive. Or, he was absent. There was no middle ground. He had little to do with the upbringing of his children. We then see Lincoln’s care and kindness with his two young sons born from his father’s abuse and absence. Notably, we see Lincoln’s absence during his eldest son’s upbringing. Robert Todd Lincoln’s greatest memory of his father, formed during his childhood, revolved around the packing of his father’s luggage for the next trip. The historical record recognizes Lincoln as a lawyer, traveling the circuit. Certainly, the prairie lawyer lifestyle accounted for the travel. But Abraham Lincoln, whether he realized it or not, was emulating his father. The absent Lincoln.
Abe Lincoln knew his father by smell: the smell of Jim Beam. It’s crazy how history recycles. The 16thpresident becomes the 45th president, and Donald Trump grew up around a similar father. Fred Trump was an autocrat. Fred Trump was an abusive, or absent, father. Fred Trump was an alcoholic. He passed that disease to his eldest son, who died from alcohol poisoning at the age of 42. Notably, like Lincoln, Trump’s abstinence can be traced to his father’s drinking. Just as notably, Donald Trump knew his father by smell: the smell of schnapps.
But Donald Trump also had a fawning mother. Mary Anne Trump gave her rapturous attention, harmfully, to her eldest son. MAT was in a terrible marriage and she craved attention, affection. She turned to Freddy, Jr. In no way could the young Donald measure up to Freddy, in his mother’s eyes. In fact, MAT viewed Donald as a failure. He failed the SAT for college admission. He consorted with all sorts of lewd women. As a businessman, he accrued massive debt. Only his father’s pockets, and the efforts of fixers, bailed him out.
Psychologically, the young Donald Trump had nowhere to turn. An abusive, or absent, father. A distant, disapproving mother. Trump tunneled inside. He found his cavern. The cavern altered development. This is what happens, psychologically speaking. For some psychache sufferers, the cavern creates the perpetual child – spoiled, irresponsible, self-centered, petulant. Donald Trump is the ultimate example.
For other psychache sufferers, the cavern creates the ancient man. Grandfatherly even before reaching adolescence. That’s our rendering of Abe Lincoln. The premature old man.
Here’s a rendering done for Trump-a-Lincoln-a-Lago by the great artist, Anya Kotler.
“Linked and Trumped,” I’ve entitled the artwork, “a Bilateral Human Gynandromorphy.” Though I particularly like Lincoln’s curly whiskers, I remain bewitched by the smooth transition between faces. Somehow, Kotler caught the shared psychache. The ancient man. The petulant child. Kotler’s art also caught the remarkable differences. But that’s a story for another time…
The American Slaveocracy Revealed 