[poconopundit]

Hope you enjoy reading about the parallels in the lives of two great businessman patriots.

[Salvation]

Very interesting article. Thank you for posting it.

[miss marmelstein]

And for people who haven’t voted in a primary yet, just remember, it is not over! Who knows what the Republicans are plotting? We need to get him to 1237! New Jerseyeans, I mean you!!!

[Vision Thing]

Both Franklin and Trump are quintessential Americans. However, Trump will pass up Franklin once he becomes president. And if Trump restores the nation, he will end up on the $1,000 bill while Franklin remains on those Benjamin $100 bills.

[HarleyLady27]

Fabulous article!!!

They are almost alike in so many ways...

Thank you!!!

People don't forget to vote:

California; Oregon; Washington; Montana; South Dakota; New Mexico; New Jersey; West Virginia...

We need Trump to be way over the 1237 delegate count so they can't take this away from him our us...

[ghosthost]

"[T]he Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably [sic] very small… . I could wish their Numbers were increased…. But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind. [W]hy increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America?" - Benjamin Franklin

[hawaiianninja]

Good read. Well done! :)

[Roos_Girl]

Thanks, I needed the laugh.

[V K Lee]

Thanks for the ping PP. True, at first glance the two have a good many similarities. And if Ben rather than George Washington had been elected first president what would now be different in the way our country is seen (if anything).

Looks like another storm coming thru. Signing off for now.

[bigbob]

The Virtue of Frugality is worth mentioning, since the anti-Trump crowd loved to call him a “cheapskate” when it came to buying TV ads, etc but in fact we now see Trump has reinvented how the “ground game” is played, relying on social media and free news coverage by being the thought-leader who dominated every news cycle. To borrow Linda Grahams horrible example, if they shot Ted Cruz on the Senate floor...the news channels would be talking about Trump calling some poor protestor a naughty name.

[Fai Mao]

Some one here, I forgot who, compared Trump to the Biblical judge Sampson.

They both have notable hair
Neither drink alcohol
Both chased foreign women
Neither respond well to insults
Both are patriots who put their nation first
Both are men of direct action
Both are somewhat crude
Both wanted to get rid of Philistine invaders

[be-baw]

Terrific job. A tad sycophantic perhaps, but otherwise near perfect. Thanks for sharing.

[SamAdams76]

Good article. I learned a new word today. Venery. Thanks Ben Franklin!

Trump's 5th "Art of the Deal" Principle explains a lot.

[Navy Patriot]

Very interesting comparison of rough and tumble patriots.

Two California Republican primary votes for Trump in June, pedal to the metal until he's got the nomination.

[tinyowl]

Poco thanks for putting this together. I'm going out on a limb here because I'm not a Franklin historian but another thing that's similar (and wouldn't necessarily be appreciated here) is that neither of them are/were particularly loyal to a philosophy other than 'do whatever works.'

They basically cobble together solutions based on the legos available at the time to solve a problem at the time - whether it's stitching together a deal or inventing something ... relatively free of dogma - basically, pure do-ers ... even though Franklin often had a lot to say (most of it was about doing - how to live, not really philosphy of this or that.)

A good example is probably Franklin's Postal Service ... which at the time was an excellent thing for the country ... yet really the government, at least philisophically, had no place doing it.

So there is a danger with these guys (both of whom I totally support) ... but right now, we have intense, white hot debate and anger between the left and the right -> all it is ... is a distraction ... while in Ben and Trump's world - the real world - the country is slipping away.

So I think there has never been a better time to say 'hey, conservatism is great, correct, right, sound' ... but dogmatic adherence to it is getting us no where.

Franklin I'm sure would have agreed that 'the perfect is the enemy of the good.' And I'd argue that at the moment, in terms of actually getting anything done which mostly amounts to stopping the assault on our nation from within and without, it's hard to say any of the pure conservatives are even 'good' -> what has dogmatic intellectual Capital C Conservatism won?

So ... these guys are total do-ers ... and in doing so ... I think you accept when you hire them ... it's on their terms, and they will probably horrify in a few places, but they will leave 100 blessings and 3 horrifications ... which is much better than 0 horrifications, 2 blessings ... and a dead country.

Alan Watts - thumbs up ... every few months I'll pull up some of his stuff on youtube ... Happy Week! Thanks again for putting it together for us!

[Lazamataz]

I HAD THIS EXACT THOUGHT some time back.

You beat me to the editorial.

Well done.

[kanawa]

Well done.
Shared with a link back to here.

[Albion Wilde]

I love this post. I just read perhaps my sixth biography of Franklin, whom I revere. I have dog-eared many pages in the book, Stealing God's Thunder, for the parallels with today's political situation and the person of Trump.

[NTHockey]

Donald Trump looks like Tom Berenger.

[EveningStar]

Benjamin Franklin has been added to the list.

---

This is an ongoing list of historical, popular, and Biblical people, as well as fictional characters, animals, and other things that Donald Trump has been compared favorably to on FR:

• Alexander the Great
• Rocky Balboa (Rocky, Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV, Rocky V, Rocky Balboa, Creed)
• Batman
• Battlefield surgeon
• The Blues Brothers ("We're on a mission from God!")
• Asa Buchanan (One Life To Live)
• Julius Caesar
• Captain America
• Churchill
• Bill Clinton
• Rooster Cogburn (True Grit)
• Cyrus the Great
• Daniel
• King David
• Eisenhower
• J.R. Ewing (Dallas)
• Ford F-350 truck with turbo diesel
• The Founding Fathers
• Benjamin Franklin
• John Galt (Atlas Shrugged)
• Gideon
• Rick Grimes (The Walking Dead)
• Max Herschel (Just Tell Me What You Want)
• Andrew Jackson
• Jesus
• John Paul Jones
• John F. Kennedy
• Obi-Wan Kenobi (Star Wars)
• James T. Kirk (Star Trek)
• Leonidas I
• Lincoln
• Louis XIV of France (The Sun King)
• MacArthur
• Jim Malone (The Untouchables, portrayed by Sean Connery)
• Charles Martel
• Moses
• Nebuchadnezzar
• Nehemiah
• Saint Patrick
• Patton
• Reagan
• Richard I (Richard the Lionheart, Richard Coeur de Lion)
• Franklin D. Roosevelt
• Teddy Roosevelt
• Babe Ruth
• Samson
• Secretariat
• Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
• Solomon
• Truman
• Ulysses
• Darth Vader (Star Wars)
• Sir William Wallace (real life subject of Braveheart)
• Washington