Remember that hilarious novel turned movie Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter?
Well imagine if you will the roles were reversed and Lincoln himself were an undead vampire and also so is George Washington—or maybe they're zombies—and they decided to run for President and Vice President together.
Well, former Republican President Donald Trump is so enormously popular he'd beat that undead ticket. At least that's what he claims pollster John McLaughlin told him.
Like, seriously almost verbatim.
Speaking Wednesday at the Hispanic Leadership Conference in Miami, Trump claimed McLaughlin told him he'd not only beat undead Lincoln and Washington but he'd do so by a 40% landslide.
McLaughlin—described as the GOP's worst pollster—was hired by Trump in 2016 and remained on the Trump train through Trump’s 2020 loss to Democratic President Joe Biden.
You can see Trump’s comments here:
He told the crowd in Miami:
“I remember a very famous pollster, very well known, John McLaughlin, came to my office just prior to the plague coming and he said, ‘Sir, if George Washington and Abraham Lincoln came alive from the dead and they formed a President-Vice President team, you would beat them by 40 percent.’"
"That’s how good our numbers were.”
Honestly who knows, that may have been something a Trump employee told him.
Trump was frequently criticized by former members of his administration for only wanting sycophants and acolytes around him. Anyone not praising him constantly soon found themselves pushed out.
But it certainly wasn't true after "the plague" came, when the American electorate decided they were so traumatized by watching Trump do basically nothing about "the plague" they decided to show up in record numbers to vote him out of office.
Funny how that happens.
Anyway, Trump's is a pretty bold claim given a recent poll of presidential historians conducted by C-SPAN rated Lincoln and Washington first and second place, respectively, while Trump placed third from last above only true disasters Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan.
Regardless, he's made the claim before—albeit without roping John McLaughlin into it.
Last year he told Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig:
“I think it would be hard if George Washington came back from the dead and he chose Abraham Lincoln as his Vice-President, I think it would have been very hard for them to beat me."
Okay then.
On Twitter, this quote got people's attention.
Ludicrous as his claims are, among those who identify as Republicans, he may just be on to something.
In a 2019 poll, Trump beat a hypothetical undead Lincoln by three points.
Unfortunately, the GOP hasn't figured out a way to keep everyone else from voting yet.
