The New York Times: Who is the American president who looks like Trump in his behavior?

The New York Times published a lengthy article by Indian-American writer Manisha Sinha, in which she compared the great similarities between US President Donald Trump and 17th President of the United States Andrew Johnson.

She said there was much more connection between the two presidents than the two were subjected to procedures challenging their eligibility to govern, noting that no one had expected that either would enter the White House as president.

Both Johnson and Trump began his presidential term with a whiff of illegitimacy hovering over their personality. Johnson became president after the assassination of his predecessor, Abraham Lincoln, and Trump took the reins by winning the majority of the electorate, although the votes he collected from the popular vote were three million fewer than his Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton, which Sinha considered the biggest margin of loss. Incurred by an election winner.

The difference between what Trump got and Clinton's vote did not bode well for American democracy.

big similarity
In such cases, "historical symmetry" is rarely as simple as that, but it can happen when historians discern patterns and similarities between the present moment and the past.

Although many of the infallible men assumed the presidency of the United States, only a few turned a blind eye to the oath of their oath, making their actions meet the constitutional criteria for isolation.

Sinha, the author of The Slave Case: The History of Abolition, noted that the first president to be removed was John Tyler, who took office after President William Henry Johnson's sudden death, just like Andrew Johnson.

John Tyler, the tenth president of the United States, was a supporter of slavery and was the first president to commit treason against his homeland by voting for Virginia's secession from the US.

Trump's actions
Unlike Tyler, Johnson was the only member of the Senate from the Confederate States who did not resign when he learned of his secession. That is why President Lincoln appointed him then military governor of Tennessee after returning most of its territory to the Union, and then rewarded him with his candidacy for vice president.

After assuming the presidency following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865, Johnson was almost removed from office after his motion to convict him fell one-third of the two-thirds majority needed to oust him in Congress.

If the hearings in the House of Representatives are credible in revealing anything, they have shown that Trump's actions clearly live up to the criteria set out in the constitutional isolation clause of "treason, bribery, crimes and flagrant misdemeanors."

Although Trump's "criminality" is similar to what Richard Nixon did in trying to intervene in a presidential election, he - like Andrew Johnson - has shown a lack of tact and literature.

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Sinha goes on to say that the biographies of Trump and Johnson are not much different from each other, but that their lack of "presidential" ethics was evident from the start.

But both Johnson and Trump have clearly shown their incompetence for the presidency even before they took office. Johnson was over-drinking when he was sworn in as vice-president, and looked awkward and drunk while delivering his speech, embarrassing the audience.

Though Trump does not use intoxicants, he has run his campaign in a manner marked by insults, cynicism, mockery, lies and vulgarity, as Manisha Sinha put it.

Perhaps Trump's "blunt and cruel" remarks he has made since taking office are too countless, in the opinion of the author.

White race
But most importantly, both men - Johnson and Trump - made the idea of ​​the supremacy of the white race "an invisible heroism," and a relentless use of the policy of "apartheid."

Johnson promoted a racist philosophy that whites in the southern states were victims of slave emancipation and American citizenship, and Trump seems to have liked it perfectly, describing statues and monuments glorifying the Confederacy.

This era witnessed the American civil war, which ended with the victory of the supporters of the Union over the southern slave states that declared their separation from the United States.

Sinha concluded by describing Andrew Johnson and Donald Trump as both "ruthless" leaders and threatening "the longest experience in the world's democratic republican system."

At the end of her article, the author advised members of the Democratic Party to convince the American people of the seriousness of the real danger posed by Trump's continuation in office for the United States Republic, and not focus on his crimes only.