It seems that all I’ve been doing lately is fielding pieces apologizing for Donald Trump’s personality. You know, the “mean tweets,” the aggressive remarks, the unwillingness to back down before a hostile establishment.

I’m sure that these writers mean well. (As opposed to those “conservative” writers who think that this is the right time to openly attack Trump for perceived personal and political failings, most of which exist only in the dark recesses of the writer’s brain.) All the same, it’s still a blunder in that it plays directly into the media’s narrative of Trump as a brutal, incorrigible thug.

The truth is, Trump isn’t that bad. Compare him to a few others in the pantheon of the American presidency. Andrew Jackson was frequently involved in pistol duels, in 1806 killing one opponent, Charles Dickinson, who had insulted Jackson’s wife. Even worse, Jackson cheated, recocking his pistol after it misfired. Jackson himself was badly wounded and carried the pistol ball in his chest for the rest of his life. (Some historians contend that lead poisoning from this ball affected his behavior in later years.)

Then we have Harry Truman, who in 1950 physically threatened the Washington Post’s music critic Paul Hume for a dismissive review of his daughter Margaret Truman’s singing performance. “…you'll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!” wrote Harry. Talk about mean tweets.

Moving on, we get to probably the most vicious bully to ever sit in the Oval Office, Lyndon B. Johnson. One famous photo of Johnson taken while he was Senate majority leader showed him physically menacing a Rhode Island senator, Theodore Green, over an upcoming vote. Johnson’s supporters -- who remain legion -- try to present this as cute and endearing, but the actual impression is anything but.

It goes without saying that these people are all Democrats. We could go on to mention various Klansmen and machine bosses, but that will do. If Trump resembles any of these, it would be Harry Truman, whose action can be excused as the result of his natural intensity and energy boiling over. Not so Jackson and Johnson, where there was unquestionably something more sinister going on (recall Jackson’s inexcusable persecution of the Cherokee, and Johnson’s disastrous tenure, the cost of which the country is still paying to this day.)

The public Donald Trump radiates ebullience, good cheer, and confidence. If there was anything brutal or vicious in Trump’s nature, we’d have seen it during his first term. The “Trump as bully” meme is simply another sleazy media effort to slime an opposition leader, of the kind we have seen repeated endlessly. To apologize for it is to dignify it. That needs to cease.  

Image: White House