Washington Post national columnist Philip Bump composed an analysis piece for the paper debunking former President Donald Trump’s recent claim that he could beat former presidents Abraham Lincoln and George Washington in an election.
He featured legitimate polling to conclude that Trump, even during the most highly approved stretch of his presidency – before the pandemic – could not beat the two greatest presidents in U.S. history.
Bump flat out denied it could happen, writing, “Nope. Even then, before the pandemic and before the aftermath of his election loss, Trump would have lost. Badly.”
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The columnist embarked on the research for the piece in response to an anecdote from the former president’s recent speech in Florida this week. During the speech, Trump claimed that before the worldwide outbreak of COVID-19, an aide spoke to him about his high chances of re-election.
Trump stated, “He said, ‘Sir, if George Washington and Abraham Lincoln came alive from the dead and they formed a president-vice president team, you would beat them by 40 percent.’ That’s how good our numbers were!”
Bump did not seem amused by the boastful claim. Instead, he asked and answered several questions pertaining to whether Trump could really beat the two greatest U.S. presidents. The first two questions were, as he claimed, “abstract.”
The first asked, “1. Can a dead person run for president?” and Bump answered it by providing historical examples of dead people actually running for and winning office. For example, he stated, “There have been times that voters have elected dead people to office. In 2000, Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan (D) died in a plane crash less than a month before the election. Missouri law stipulated that he remain on the ballot; he went on to win.”
Though he admitted that situation “is quite different than getting an already dead person on the ballot” and mentioned how Washington and Lincoln could not get on a Democratic ticket and run against Trump because “a) they were not Democrats and b) they are dead.”
The next purely “abstract question” was “Can these particular dead people run for president?” Though Bump debunked that, citing the 22nd amendment which limits presidents to only running for two terms total.
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Bump finally got to the real question, “Can these dead people beat Trump?” and provided actual polling from YouGov comparing the 45th president’s popularity to the respective popularity of the 1st and 16th presidents.
He wrote, “Thanks to YouGov, we can actually address Trump’s theoretical more directly. In 2021 — admittedly not before the pandemic — the pollsters asked Americans how they viewed past presidents. Both Washington and Lincoln received high marks, landing in the third and first all-time favorability slots, respectively. Trump landed at 20, just under Gerald Ford.”
He added, “Among all Americans, Trump trailed Washington on favorability by 31 points. Among Democrats, it was 59 points. Even among Republicans, Washington fared better.”
Bump wrote that the poll showed how Trump would trail “Washington by 11 points and Lincoln by 8 points” just among GOP voters.
The columnist entertained the idea that in a theoretical race Washington would “be encumbered by his personal history,” adding, “Forcing enslaved people to work on his plantation was less politically risky in 1788 than it is today.”
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Though Bump maintained he was arguing against Trump’s claim that he’d beat Washington “by 40 points. By a margin of victory that hasn’t been seen in the United States since the emergence of the Republican Party.”
He ultimately concluded that Washington and Lincoln could beat Trump today. “To answer Question 3 in short: Yes,” he wrote.
Bump did admit he was “aware that Trump was simply telling a story for effect,” but justified writing the column as a way to humble Trump. “For however popular Trump thinks he is and for however popular he wants others to think he is, he remains not-terribly-popular. If he ran against actually popular former presidents, he would lose.”
