Donald Trump’s war against accountability and criticism continues to escalate as he blocks outlets he dislikes from a private press gaggle and unsurprisingly skips the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, ordinarily a cease-fire between the politicians and the press that reports on them for a night of good-natured ribbing.
I will not be attending the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner this year. Please wish everyone well and have a great evening!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 25, 2017
Given that Donald can neither tell nor take a joke the way his predecessor could; the former evidenced by his steely responses to SNL and the latter by his botched performance at the Al Frank Charity Dinner; this isn’t exactly new.
But him skipping the WHCD brought up an interesting parallel regarding the last two Republican presidents to skip the event and their legacies regarding Donald Trump in the present. The last Republican president to skip the WHCD was Ronald Reagan, who was recovering from a gunshot wound at the time but called in anyway. The last democrat to skip was Jimmy Carter, but his legacy is functionally non-existent, so he doesn’t fit into the little dichotomy I’m setting up here.
So, Reagan is the most influential figure in the history of the Republican Party, ahead of even Lincoln in my estimation, as Lincoln's social progressivism is a firmly democratic quality. Reagan's signature "Reaganomics" lead to a period of prosperity that had a hand in creating the popular culture landscape that we keep calling back to in our own pop culture. At least if you were white and straight, but what other America was there at the time? *Eyeballs the AIDS Crisis meaningfully*
Reagan, as a former B-List Hollywood actor, knew how to use theatrics to sell his policies, which has proved to be more valuable in winning elections than actual policy experience. The end result was a Republican base that grew to regard him as nothing less than a deity in practice. Trump’s campaign succeeded in part by making himself look like the reincarnation of Reagan through appropriating Reagan's "Let's Make America Great Again" slogan, similar low-art media backgrounds, augmented by his own alleged business successes. Branding is Trump’s most vital skill, and not "The Art of The Deal” as he so claimed.
He inherited his wealth, after all.
In his presidency, meanwhile, we, or at least those of us who didn’t disengage immediately after Trump got elected, learned that his actual time in office has adhered more closely to an even more unhinged version of Richard Nixon’s presidency. Where Nixon kept his conspiracy theorist nonsense in the dark, only to be captured on tape and revealed as part of the Watergate investigation, Trump’s conspiracy theorizing is an open selling point for his presidency. Like Nixon, he considers the media to be his enemy, more or less proven true with the Washington Post’s Pulitzer-winning coverage of the Watergate. Of course, Nixon wasn’t steeped in controversy from the second of his inauguration, as Watergate broke after his re-election and not before his first term, which is why I think Trump isn’t going to last four years.
The point where he truly diverges is, of course, Russia. His visible snuggling up to Vladimir Putin, a leader who appears to want to rebuild the Soviet Empire via his annexation of the Ukraine, would have been, in my opinion, anathema to both Reagan and Nixon. Naturally, I can’t prove why he’s so soft on Putin and it may just be a wrong-headed desire to have good relations with enemies or it might be treasonous collusion. It’s just not a good look for the future of our foreign policy for the next four years, if worsening our relationship with Australia for no real reason wasn't already bad enough. In his defense, he was tired.
Logan Graham is a junior studying media arts with a focus in games and animation at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. Do you think Trump more like Reagan or Nixon? Let him know by emailing him at lg261813@ohio.edu.
