President Donald Trump has often been compared to Andrew Jackson, the first populist president who upended the elites and placed national interest at the center of foreign policy. But one historian says that Trump, at least in his second term, bears a closer resemblance to William McKinley.
In his first term, Trump elevated Jackson — ironically, considered a pioneer within the Democratic Party, placing his portrait in the Oval Office (where it now hangs again).
But historian Jason Steinhauer says McKinley — whose name Trump restored atop the continent’s highest mountain — is the true role model:
Like McKinley, Trump and his advisors seem to view the world through the lens of American dominance, with a particular focus on hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. They are not afraid to manipulate the map in order to expand American influence, including an annexation of Greenland, an assertion of rights to the Panama Canal, and a seizure of Gaza. The goal is to expand the markets for American industry, whether that be in the Arctic Circle, the Western Hemisphere, the Middle East or even in Outer Space, a new frontier for resource exploitation and commercial enterprise (asteroid mining, space tourism, etc.). The expansion of American hegemony will boost profits for American corporations and, in theory, create trickle down prosperity for American workers, just as McKinley believed.
Like McKinley, Trump also sees tariffs as a means of shifting the burden of revenue collection from taxation of Americans via an Internal Revenue Service to taxation of foreigners via an External Revenue Service. Trump parrots long-held beliefs inside Libertarian and corporate circles about the evils of domestic taxation. If the federal government slashes its budget and spends trillions of dollars less each year through the elimination of agencies such as USAID and Education—coupled with raising more revenue via tariffs—this would, in theory, substantially curtail or eliminate the taxes paid by American corporations and the American people. It could also realize a long-held dream among Libertarians to eliminate the IRS, which has a very McKinley ring to it. After all, McKinley wrote more than 100 years ago that “direct taxation” would be something the American people “would not stand that long.”
Finally, Trump is a man of grievances, and one of his continual grievances has been that America is taken advantage of by the rest of the world. Trump points to our trade deficits, foreign aid, and spending on the U.N. and NATO as proof points. This also bears a resemblance to McKinley, who sought to use tariffs as a means to balance trade and gain favorable economic advantage for the U.S., as well as ensure that American largesse would not be taken advantage of in the global arena. McKinley was not opposed to cooperating with rival nations on international challenges, for example, sending American troops to China in collaboration with European powers to suppress the Boxer Rebellion. But the pretense was always to act in America’s best economic interest, very narrowly defined through a set of hard power criteria.
One point of controversy: Steinhauer says that McKinley believed in the “white man’s burden” and in a form of white supremacy that motivated his pursuit of American empire. Trump has attracted more minority votes than any other Republican in recent times, and in skeptical of war abroad, despite territorial ambitions.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
