
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has compared former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to Donald Trump.
A loaded proposition if ever there was one - and people online were not happy.
Here’s his tweet:
Churchill was hated by his own party, opposition party, and press. Feared by King as reckless, and despised for hi… https://t.co/51q6KBeQnP— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@Gov. Mike Huckabee) 1514316893
People were baffled by his historical ‘knowledge’
The comparison with Neville Chamberlain is also problematic, given that Churchill’s predecessor coined the policy of ‘appeasement’: in trying to appease the Nazis by giving Hitler Czechoslovakia’s Sudentenland in the 1938 Munich Agreement, the term, and in many circles Chamberlain himself, became synonymous with cowardice.
Surely not what Huckabee was going for?
@GovMikeHuckabee @realDonaldTrump There are a thousand reasons to hold you in contempt, but this analogy was the crown jewel— Rick Wilson (@Rick Wilson) 1514390386
Norway politician Kristian Tonning Riise laid it out clearly:
Professor of British history at Columbia University, Dr Susan Pedersen told the New York Times that a broad comparison – such as the one being made by Huckabee – between Churchill and Trump is “ridiculous”.
She said that Churchill, perhaps like Trump was...
less inclined to compromise than most successful British politicians
...and that he...
had a hard-right view of British national and imperial interest.
However aside from those specific characteristics, the two ought not to be compared.
After all, Churchill was involved in two World Wars and was active in politics for decades.
Trump has been US president less than a year, and, well, less talk of World Wars please.
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