Episode #230 - Why President McKinley? (Part I)

June 17, 2025·1 hr 22 min·5 clips

Why is Donald Trump suddenly praising the obscure 25th president William McKinley as 'great but highly underrated'?

Politics makes the host careful. He opens by saying Our Fake History has never been a current events show, though history can still throw light on the present. Some uses of history still get his attention. When politicians or public figures reach for old moments, or praise and condemn past figures for modern purposes, Sebastian leans in. McKinley is the test case. The excerpt puts him inside a 19th-century party map that does not match the easy shortcuts people use now. Republicans were the Northern party, especially rooted in the Northeast, with progressive racial politics sitting beside the interests of industrial and financial centers. That mix matters. McKinley fits it almost too well: a lifelong abolitionist, a progressive Methodist, and the son of a man who owned iron foundries. Tidy categories do not help much here. He could support voting rights for Black Americans and argue early for women's suffrage while staying deeply tied to capital. Democrats are just as hard to flatten. Sebastian places them in the South, including factions that supported peace with the Confederacy or slavery, resisted Reconstruction, and helped build Jim Crow segregation laws. Then the picture moves west. Nationally, Democrats also became the party pushing back against concentrated political and economic power in industrial hands. Farmers come into view, along with small farmers, tradespeople, artisans, and the agrarian American West. The old map does not behave. By the end, Sebastian returns to the warm sign-off, asks for listener questions, and credits Dirty Church for the theme.

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