It’s like ‘Deja Vu’ all over again! – Yogi Berra
Trump’s Not Richard Nixon. He’s Andrew Johnson.
Betrayal. Paranoia. Cowardice. We’ve been here before.
Andrew Johnson was a sort of anti-Lincoln—a stumpy, vengeful, subliterate tailor who rose through the ranks of the Democratic Party in East Tennessee by railing against elites. In 1861, he was the only Southern senator to stay loyal to the Union, leaving him not only without a state but largely without a party. Lincoln appointed him military governor of Tennessee, and later, hoping to shore up his support ahead of his reelection campaign, added Johnson to the ticket. Johnson showed up drunk to his own swearing-in, then hid out at a friend’s house in Maryland, ashamed to show his face. A few weeks later, Lincoln was murdered and Johnson was president. As the historian Brenda Wineapple explains in her lively 2019 book, The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation, the road to impeachment began in the violence and political turmoil that followed the assassination, as Johnson wrestled with Republicans in Congress about what postwar Reconstruction should look like. The impeachment process was rife with bumbling and paranoia, but nonetheless centered on a profound question: whether the nation would continue on its path toward a pluralistic democracy or revert to the white supremacist state that had existed before Fort Sumter.
Alarm bells began to sound early on. Johnson was erratic. He was wavering. Frederick Douglass met with him at the White House and came away disturbed. In the meeting, the president had suggested deporting millions of freedmen and appeared not to know that Douglass had been enslaved. Johnson granted mass amnesties to Confederate soldiers and appointed ex-Confederates to key posts. In the spring and summer of 1866, a wave of racial pogroms broke out in the cities of the former Confederacy, targeting African Americans—34 killed in New Orleans; 46 killed in Memphis. Why hadn’t Johnson done anything to stop it? Why was he suddenly blocking every effort by Congress to bring white supremacist violence in the South under control? People who had once seemed enthusiastic about the project ahead were beginning to talk about the I-word.
In point of fact, Trump is like Andrew Johnson (Democrat president before the Southern Democrats/Dixiecrats became Republicans in the late 1960’s). Trump IS like Nixon too, because like Nixon – Trump is a CROOK!
Trump is NOT much like Clinton, not very much, because even though Trump has a SEX problem, Trump’s sex problem is that he can’t get any sex without PAYING FOR IT. Clinton got sex for free (much of the time, and even in the Oval orafice.)
In any case, all three, and Nixon too, deserved to be IMPEACHED! But Trump is more like Johnson than anyone else, because Trump is a RACIST SON OF A BITCH!
Andrew Johnson’s failed presidency echoes in Trump’s White House
Who’s the most vulgar, racist, thin-skinned, vituperative U.S. president?
As a historian of Reconstruction, I’ve always believed that it was Andrew Johnson. However, considering his astonishing first year in office, I’d contend President Donald Trump may soon own this dubious distinction.
The two have much in common. Like Trump, Johnson followed an unconventional path to the presidency.
Andrew Johnson’s failed presidency echoes in Trump’s White House
No question about it, Donald Trump is even worse than Andrew Johnson. (And even porn star Stormy Daniels says Trump has a teeny tiny mushroom shaped ‘johnson’ to boot.)
p.s. If Abraham Lincoln were alive today, besides being very very old, he would be a Democrat. Fact is, Lincoln would praise Pelosi and denounce Trump.
FIRE 
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