Trump will go down in history as on par with the likes of Churchill, a great peacemaker in our time.
This comment did make me laugh, but I suspect that satire was not your intention. It occurs to me that one thing that Churchill and Trump do have in common is that Churchill’s mother was American and Trump’s mother was British. However, I think that that is where the similarities end.
In 1963, Churchill became the first person ever to be awarded honorary citizenship of the United States. Indeed, only one other person, St Teresa of Calcutta, has been awarded honorary citizenship while still living (six people have received it posthumously: William and Hannah Penn, the Marquis de Lafayette, Kazimierz Pułaski, Bernardo de Gálvez, and Raoul Wallenberg). Do you really believe that Trump is a person of that stature?
In Britain, Churchill is regarded as not only our greatest prime minister, but as the greatest British person of all time. Although he refused on both occasions, he was, uniquely, offered two dukedoms, including the unprecedented offer of being created the duke of London. After lying in state in Westminster Hall for three days and three nights, Churchill was given a state funeral at St Paul’s Cathedral which has been surpassed in scale only by the funerals of Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia and Pope John Paul II. He also became the first person other than a reigning monarch to appear on a British coin.
Churchill is remembered for his leadership during the greatest conflict in human history and against an enemy unparalleled in its capacity for evil. Indeed, Churchill had been one of the first politicians to identify the need to confront Hitler in the 1930s. During the so-called “darkest hour” of the war, the British Empire and Greece (together with foreign servicemen, notably Poles, fighting under British command) stood alone against the Axis powers and their allies in Europe.
Compared with US presidents, Churchill would be similar in stature to Washington, Lincoln, and FDR, and one could perhaps include Eisenhower, although more as a wartime commander than as a president. Other statesmen of the past century who could at least be said to be in the same ballpark as Churchill would include Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George, Charles de Gaulle, Władysław Sikorski, Josip Broz Tito, William Lyon Mackenzie King, Jan Smuts, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech Wałęsa, Anna Walentynowicz, Václav Havel, and Deng Xiaoping. Clearly Donald Trump is far from being the equal of such men and women.
One feature which Churchill in fact shares with Joe Biden is that virtually his entire adult life was spent in the service of his country. Churchill’s first career was as a soldier. Although he was an MP, a privy counsellor, and a former Cabinet minister, Churchill volunteered for active service on the Western Front during the First World War. He became the Father of the House of Commons and was the longest-serving MP of the 20th century.
