![]() One of these Trumps is not like the other Hence there are different Twains – as well as different Trumps – to consider.įinally, imagining how Twain would view Trump is timely because when some have tried to look to history for an equivalent political moment, they’ll sometimes point to two decades – the 1880s and the 1900s – that happened to also be important in Twain’s life and career. It’s tricky because Twain’s views on many issues, including race, changed during his lifetime. ![]() It’s apt because one of Twain’s novels, “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” features a man who travels through time. In America’s press, he admired its tendency to be “irreverent toward pretty much everything.” Even if this led to the newspapers laughing “one good king to death,” it was a small price to pay if they also “laugh a thousand cruel and infamous shams and superstitions into the grave.”īut pondering what, beyond this, Twain would make of Trump is an apt, tricky and timely exercise. “Irreverence,” he wrote, “is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense.” ![]() Twain felt that no one was too grand to be satirized. I have no doubt about two things that Twain would find objectionable: the way that Trump has lashed out at TV sketches that mock him and his use of the phrase “enemy of the American people” to describe news organizations that criticize him. ![]()
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