Trump: “I Believe I Am Treated Worse” Than Abraham Lincoln

President Donald Trump suggested the press treats him worse than Abraham Lincoln, the United States’ 16th president, who was assassinated shortly after the end of the American Civil War in 1865.

“I am greeted with a hostile press, the likes of which no president has ever seen. The closest would be that gentleman right up there,” Trump said during Fox News’s virtual town hall. Pointing to the Lincoln Memorial just behind him, he added: “They always said, ‘Lincoln, nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.”

You can watch footage of Trump’s remarks below:

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Trump’s comments came as deaths from the coronavirus pandemic topped 65,000; they now stand at nearly 69,000. Earlier, he issued messages on Twitter claiming he had been “correct” in claiming that the intelligence community had not warned him about the potential for a pandemic in January. (This is incorrect.) The president also touted his decision to ban travel to and from China, which is now under scrutiny amid its refusal to cooperate with an investigation conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) about the origin of the first official outbreak.

Even as Trump invokes Lincoln, the progressive group Indivisible endorsed presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, saying Biden is “Abraham Lincoln compared to Donald Trump.” About 95 percent of Indivisible’s members backed the group’s endorsement of Biden.

Alan Herrera

Alan is a writer, editor, and news junkie based in New York.