Trump at Gettysburg

Donald Trump gave a speech today at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Apparently after descending into a depressed funk where he seemingly knew he was going to lose and didn't have much fight left in him yesterday, he's back to being Donald Trump today: reiterates that he'll lock up Hillary, attacks the media, says he'll sue the women accusing him of sexual assault for libel after the election (which, in this vision of the future, he has I believe won--imagine that, the President suing people for defamations that failed to derail his campaign!). Y'know, standard "Donald Trump is a disgusting creature" stuff.

But since he gave the speech at Gettysburg, it provides an occasion for a game I like to play. It's called "Imagine if it were Trump." The way it works is you take any memorable moment from the Presidency of any of the forty-three men who've actually been President so far and you picture that moment playing out if Trump had been President instead. It's literally always just laughably absurd; sometimes, as with the Cuban Missile Crisis, it ends with the destruction of the world. (There's a companion game, "Imagine if it weren't Trump," where you picture any major political figure not named Donald J. Trump doing any of the shit he's done. Equally hilarious; almost always ends with the destruction of that person's political career.)

But anyway, so let's play this game with the Gettysburg Address. The setting: some four months earlier, the Union Army had won a great victory at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, a turning-point in the war but one that came at extraordinary cost (the Battle of Gettysburg had the most casualties of any in the Civil War). Now there's to be a dedication for the Soldier's National Cemetery in Gettysburg, and the President has been asked to speak. Imagine what Donald Trump would say. And then read what Lincoln actually said: