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Donald Trump Thinks He’s a Modern Teddy Roosevelt. I Hope He’s Right in 2024
If he runs for president again, the future of the US will depend on it.
Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial didn’t yield the results some of us wanted, but this story might still have a happy ending. Even if he doesn’t end up in an orange jumpsuit or spend years tied up in criminal and/or civil courts, too mired in litigation to run for president again, he could follow in the footsteps of the former commander-in-chief he admires most.
When Trump looks in the mirror, he sees a modern-day Andrew Jackson and a 21st century Teddy Roosevelt, images many of his fans see as well. For Trump, apparently, either would do — but the latter carries more contemporary weight. He’s even dreamed of carving out a new niche alongside the 26th US president on Mount Rushmore. Both comparisons, especially the TR one, reveal how little Trump and many of his disciples know about US history.
A famously progressive Republican (back when the party more closely resembled the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln), Roosevelt would have despised pretty much everything Trump and the modern Republican Party stand for. Frail and sickly as a child, TR, who, like Trump, benefitted from inherited wealth, willed himself into the masculine ideal so…
