Fox News host Jesse Watters on Saturday said President Trump once compared his Twitter account to former President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
Watters spoke at Turning Point USA’s annual AmericaFest conference in Phoenix when he recalled a visit to the White House during Trump’s first term. Trump went with Watters to the Lincoln Bedroom, where they saw “the Gettysburg Address, and it’s encased in glass.”
“And he’s standing next to it and he says, ‘You know, Jesse, some people say my Twitter account is the modern-day equivalent of the Gettysburg Address,” Watters said, in remarks met with laughter by the crowd. “I said, ‘Some people’ meaning you?”
The White House copy of the Gettysburg Address is the last known draft written by Lincoln, according to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Lincoln delivered the address following the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, amidst the Civil War.
In September 2018, Trump made a similar comparison to his supporters. The president held a rally in Billings, Mont., when he said that “50 years after [Lincoln’s] death, they said it may have been the greatest speech ever made in America. I have a feeling that’s going to happen with us. In different ways, that’s going to happen with us.”
He claimed that the newspapers in Lincoln’s time “excoriated” him over the address, which was a dedication to the soldiers killed on the battlefield while also a commitment to ensure the Union survived.
“And he was excoriated by the fake news,” Trump said. “They had fake news then. They said it was a terrible, terrible speech.”
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