Hi im Steve Clements and i have a question about americas elections what would lincoln do lets get to the bottom line. U. S. President donald trump set off alarm bells in america last week when he talked about delaying the upcoming election after the corona virus Pandemic Public Health officials recommended that people avoid long lines at polling stations and mail their ballots and instead the trumpeters juggernaut media machine have been relentless in discounting the credibility of mail then ballots climaxing in a tweet last week where he floated the idea of actually delaying elections day which is set for november 3rd that idea was quickly killed by the white house but the fears remain especially after he said that hell wait and see if he accepts the Election Results today were joined by someone whos been involved in american politics for decades Sidney Blumenthal is a veteran journalist whos worked with leading publications like the New York Times the new republic and the guardian and hes an author whos writing a landmark series of books on the life and times of americas 16th president president Abraham Lincoln said its great to be with you and i as you know have been reading your books but i want to start the show with a sound clip from president drop. The republicans are the party of liberty equality and justice for all we are the party of Abraham Lincoln and we are hard. Have. So sydney President Trump often mentions president lincoln compares himself to president lincoln says that he is doing better in the polls than president lincoln and i just want to get your dashboard of the comparison between lincoln in his time and President Trumps d. Picture of Abraham Lincoln. Donald trump. As far as i know has never read a single biography of any president he has no idea who. Was and what is and i guess he is because donald trump is somebody who him as systematically stepped all over and destroyed lincolns legacy lately hes been stepping all over trumps like you see a rather lincolns like you see involving questioning holding an election itself lincoln in 1964 faced his reelection as he said to a friend im going to be beaten and beaten badly general grants offensive had ground down into a standstill in the trenches outside of richmond there were enormous cancel teas unheard of casualties and lincoln was deeply unpopular there seemed to be nothing that could rescue him all those advisors suggested that he would lose. And lincoln said that not to hold an election would be to be the greatest defeat of all and lead to the entire ruin of the idea for which we are fighting the idea of democracy. But for trump everything is about donald trump for lincoln in his humility his sense of greater cause in his patriotism. The union itself was what he was willing and did in fact lay down his life so you know when youve written about about lincoln and those times you can feel the tension that if there was a moment in American History when democracy was truly threatened when institutions might not have worked it was then today given what youve looked at in that period of history do you feel that were going through that process again and do you worry about democracy in this country and the and the inability of our institutions in the United States to check the power of a president who has taken in a mass so much power well. Obviously the reason for the civil war which was the greatest crisis in our countrys history was slavery. And what happened was that the slave south had become a political minority in controlling the federal government and what triggered secession and the civil war was lincolns unlike sion in 860. 00 for the 1st time an antislavery president elected who would hold federal power and use that office to put slavery as lincoln said on the course of all to extinction and so South Carolina let the south in seceding they were a minority. And we face the same problem today the flouting of majority rule of majority will democracy. If donald trump thinks that as a receiving a minority of the votes he can swart the popular will in some way by discrediting mail and ballots or this that or the other thing and render the very process of democracy illegitimate then he is in some way on a continuum with what the confederacy did in breaking up the union and. Precipitating the civil war or greatest crisis. Your one of the wonderful vignettes that i got from your book was a letter that Abraham Lincoln wrote to his friend id like to read this vignette because just as you talked about those circumstances then there are eerie similarities to today and lincoln wrote i am not a know nothing that a certain how could i be how can anyone who are poor as the oppression of negroes be in favor of d. Creating classes of white people our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid as a nation we begin that by the clearing that all men are created equal we now practically read it all men are created equal except negroes and when the know nothings get control it will read all men are created equal except negroes and foreigners and catholics when it comes to this i should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty to russia for instance where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy ive read this and got goosebumps because i sort of thought wow this could have been written yesterday. Well the know Nothing Party was a nativist any immigrant party that had come into being and was a very powerful 3rd party after the break up of the whig party. Lincoln had been a stalwart whig his home life but his party disintegrated beneath his feet the know nothings grew up there was not yet a Republican Party when he wrote that letter lincoln created the annoyed Republican Party just to unpack that little letter. The declaration of independence with its key phrase all men are created equal is the very Basis Foundation of his politics he also believed that the declaration of independence all men are created equal was very much part of the constitution in his view. He loathed the know nothings and their nativism and that this party grew up in the aftermath of the what 848 waves of immigration of irish and germans to the United States so. There was not a or even a racial element to it it was just pure and i immigrant. Eventually lincoln defeated the knowNothing Party through the creation of a Republican Party and assimilated parts of it until the Republican Party in a different cause against preserving the union and then against slavery but he faced many of these same forces that are still out there today and trump has taken up the banner of the know nothings that lincoln fought against well i know that this is an unfair question but you and i have been in this town in washington for a long time you know i have met President Trump before he was president you know it you no doubt have been a room with him in this crowd and i guess my question is what conditions did he experience that made him the leader of such a populist movement in this time. Well. Trump took advantage of. A vacuum in the Republican Party after. It had after the bush presidency and the iraq war and the financial and the financial crisis of 20082009 jeb bush who was the lead get t. The eric to that party. Trump pushed aside that party had sort of ceased to exist and trump appealed. To base instincts that had always been there in the country. Without the dog whistle without the codewords he was and what appealed to those people was precisely the harshness and roughness of it against what they perceived as cosmopolitan ainley its who they hated all of this goes back to the transformation radicalization of the Republican Party a process of decades that went back to its cooptation the king of the constituency and campaign george. Wallace in the 18th in the 1960 s. And ninetys early 1970 s. When he ran a racist campaigns and the southern strategy to coopt that movement in the Republican Party led to its being in effect taken over by it and now ironically in a way this new york real estate. Failure bankrupt who is nothing but a veneer. Of city of photo success him as. Has taken over essentially what is and base a modernized Dixiecrat Party and there we are in the continuity of American History all the way back to lincoln thats a big flip flop from where lincoln launched the party and where it is today what was it where do you think that this is going youre watch president drop and you wrote a powerful op ed about this moment in the Washington Post about elections and about what lincoln would really do and and you know i how dire a situation do you see this moment. It could be a very dire situation were going to find out were on the brink of a possible. Catastrophe or a rescue. You know trump has made it clear that he will do anything to disrupt the election. Trump can never win a popular vote he can never he is the only president since polling modern polling has existed has never reached 50 percent hes the most unpopular president in recent American History and he can never win the popular vote so he has to win on an inside straight freakish distribution of votes in swing states like he didnt last time last time through you know the pressure of certain external events many of which dont exist now so he has to challenge the idea very idea of fair election. And has created the idea that it will necessarily be rigged if he loses and create that idea in his followers mines so that even if he doesnt lose he may throw the idea the election into uncertainty and play it out from there we never really been in this dire situation to actually weve had contested elections before but they always worked out everyone except. Result we may not be there this time. Since we have 3 what ive been calling 2 nominees hitting america at the same time a pandemic thats horrific that killed more than 150000 americans and is growing by the day infections rate infection rates that are among the worst in the world now an economic crisis with 54000000 people officially unemployed and of course we have you know a racial crisis a racial divide on inequality and proust Police Brutality in this country and so this is a very toxic environment and donald trump has felt that he has the right to deploy federal forces out to to pick people off the street and perhaps this is an unfair question but if if if trump is is seeing america in total crisis and taking extraordinary powers to intervene is there any similar similarity to lincoln and the time the crisis and the dark side were that was there a dark side of lincoln in responding to some of that that might be similar to president from well. William barr who was Donald Trumps attorney general may well be the mastermind behind the creation of a a novel federal kind of police force or military operation that we saw in Lafayette Square and them deployed in portland. Is this a run up to an election in which there is a disruption by trump he doesnt accept the result and there is violence and somehow an insurrection act is invoked and bar deploys forces and all of this to prevent some sort of. Resolution against trump. You know lets hope we dont get there lincoln faced a very explicit open political you know break in secession. And the 1st shot of course had been fired by the confederates at fort sumpter so that they were at the dresser in what people thought would be a short war and turned into the bloodiest in a very prolonged conflict. And very different from what we face today. And when lincoln. Lifted. His corpus he did so under legal strictures when the congress was in recess and couldnt uphold it and he waited until they came back and then they approved it and so on there and what you were dealing with was in fact an insurrection and what was the insurrection against it was against democracy against accepting democracy and gans the very heart and constitution of United States of america and the question is. Whether trump will engage in that sort of activity a kind of counter revolution against constitutional democracy as we go forward. Part of that pathway will be his relationship with the media which. To be kind i would say is a bit stressed and i think id love to hear about lincolns relationship with the media well lincoln had. Deep and close relations with the media of his time and even before lincoln in effect was the kind of editor of. The newspaper in springfield illinois which was the leading newspaper in the state it was the Illinois State journal and he wrote hundreds of editorials an anonymous we dont know all of those who he wrote and there are historians to this day trying to figure out which ones he wrote he had a deep cause personal relations with many journalists. They were complicated during the war a secretary of war i when stanton shut down 2 newspapers at one point and lincoln overrode him and those were newspapers that were and tying lincoln very harsh and lincoln allowed. Nastiest kind of opposition most racist invective to be published. It was not he didnt feel it was his privilege or right to to stop that sort of thing donald trump has declared the press the enemy of the people and hes acting on it and well see how that plays out as we move closer to the election and how he attempts to restrict the press as part of his desperate strategy to retain power. I mean given all that you have been around in american politics whats what how do you bet this is going to turn out sidney i mean when you watch what donald trump is doing and how hes approaching this election you look at how biden is building his campaign and you youve witnessed so many democratic campaigns just how whats your bet about how its going to unfold. I hate it be a predictor but my view is that biden will certainly win the popular vote by a lot and win the Electoral College vote and trump will attempt to disrupt it but lets lets take those 3 crises that you raised before the pandemic the economic crisis and the racial crisis or is trump calls it a crisis of law and order and lets think about those in history his terms. We had a pandemic the spanish flu in 1801900 what did that lead to it led to a new president warren g. Harding the country demanding his slogan when a return to normalcy sense of stability and steadiness after world war one and going through the trauma that pandemic at the same time the economic crisis we went through the depression the economic depression the amount of unemployment that we will enter this election with is comparable to the unemployment numbers of the earth the 1st few years of the Great Depression of early thirtys and the republicans who would help the congress for a long period of time were overthrown. In 1930 in a wipeout in of people a landslide and that presale Franklin Delano roosevelts great victory in 1932 and then the 3rd crisis the racial crisis we had a racial crisis and a crisis of one order in the night late 1960 s. Lyndon johnson was the incumbent president democrat and he and he was the one who paid the price and so that did the Democratic Party for. The up people and now trump is the incumbent and hes attempting to escape his responsibility famously saying about the penn the pandemic i dont take any responsibility at all but. With that in the law in order in the portland incident its reminiscent is in the especially the Lafayette Square incident its reminiscent to me of nothing so much is what Herbert Hoover did in 1932 when unemployed veterans came to washington and tamp down along in a costly and Potomac River as intense and hoover sent the u. S. Army to disperse them it was a deeply unpopular submit a military instrument and thats what trump has done so he has compounded all of these crisis and and he bears the burden of all of these his in the historical examples all run against him so i believe he will lose overwhelmingly and that will be the judge of people and he is attempting to fight it through desperate gambits right i have learned from you that Abraham Lincoln was americas 1st professional politician and that is one of the fascinating things about the set of books that youve written about his life and i just like to take a lincoln as president away for a moment and look at president lincoln the campaign or if he were running in the unlikely historical match up against President Trump what would lincoln be doing right now. He would be a master politician in dealing with trump in all of his crises but he was something more he was the most eloquent president we have ever had and he wrote his own speeches. And he would be able to describe the crisis that we are going through today as he described the fiery trial as he called it that americans went through in the civil war well we will end it there Sidney Blumenthal writer author chronicler of the lifetime and i had times and ideas of Abraham Lincoln thank you so much for joining us today and sharing with us what lincoln would do today fascinating thank you so much steve so whats the bottom line trumps opponents paint his rants about mail in ballots as another dose of Voter Suppression and a personal insecurity that he doesnt believe he can actually win a popular vote as our guest said today my Political Science professor taught me that you dont really know the true values of a society unless you see it under stress and right now america is really under a lot of stress there is a constitution and the election is supposed to take place on november 3rd and probably will but Abraham Lincoln whom trump compares himself to constantly would have made absolutely sure that the election was held and the fact that we are struggling over this today shows us just how much has changed and thats the bottom line. Setting the discussions we are they big times when were going to have to defend our democracy examining the headlines this is not the way to treat a Migrant Workers ludwick. Human explore an abundance of world class programming designed to inform motivate and inspire. The world is watching on aljazeera. An image can change the way we see the womb if we had not seen this we would be talking about it it can spark mass action or serve the interests of the powerful he created this moment for a photo opportunity that can obscure the truth this is a legitimate news story like this and it. Will pretty i dont think it can forge narratives or rewrite. The listening post gives you the full picture. Stories of life. And spiration. A series of short documentaries from around the world. That celebrate the human spirit. Against the arts. Aljazeera selects hunted. What was described as the worlds longest long down course the largest exodus since the creation of independent and deer and monkey 47. 00. Experts believe india is still at an early stage of infection but the long down has already created a should matter to reach crisis and driven the Unemployment Rate for 6 to 23 percent its also highlighted inequality religious tensions and a Health Care System that isnt equipped to deal with a pandemic before the weeks one town of the peace and Mass Movement of people will also accelerate the spread of the corona virus from indian cities to its rule hot. Room. Hello again peter theyll be here in doha with your top stories on aljazeera the lebanese government has declared a 2 week state of emergency in the capital beirut giving the military full powers the day after a massive explosion devastated large areas of the city at least 135. 00 people are dead more than 5000. 00 are injured and about 300000 have been left without homes the authorities are blaming vast stores of highly explosive Ammonium Nitrate which they say were kept in unsafe conditions for years at the port several officials are now under house arrest. Lebanons main grain silo
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