2016 ELECTION/POLITICAL FIGURES/STATUES: “You know, I came to Washington [after winning the 2016 election]… And all of a sudden I’m riding down Pennsylvania Avenue and I’m with a beautiful woman on my right named Melania. Think of this. And I had about 400 motorcycles in front of me. And we’re in a cavalcade of about 128 cars. Most of them having about 15 sub machine guns inside…
And I look outside at those police. I love our police. We’ve got to treat our police better. I had everything. I had police. I had military. I had soldiers. I had everything you could possibly have. You never saw so much how power and strength and beauty. The beauty. And they were so proud. They’re all saluting, they’re so proud. They’re happy to have gotten rid of that crowd that was there before us. They’re proud. They’re great…
But I’m driving down the street. And I look at my wife, I say, “Do you believe it? I’m the president of the United States?…
And I’m standing in the Lincoln bedroom. The history of the whole thing. The bed, the desk, the Gettysburg address, the beautiful four score and seven years ago. This beautiful Gettysburg address. He wrote it there. And also on his carriage ride up to Gettysburg. He delivered the Gettysburg address and they say the only one that got worse press than I did was Abraham Lincoln. Did anyone ever hear that? And I said, ‘No way they got worse. Maybe he got bad. But no way he gets worse.’
Now people are starting to say, ‘It’s probably true. I think you’ve got the worst.’ Now they used to say, ‘No, no.’ Newt Gingrich, great guy. He said, ‘Nope, Abraham Lincoln got the worst press. They were worse to him than anybody. He was a very depressed person. His wife was very depressed.’ It was a depressed kind of a thing. He’s in a war, he’s in a revolution. And he was getting beaten a lot by Robert E. Lee. They want to rip his statue down all over the place. But Robert E. Lee whether you like statues or not, they don’t rip statues down anymore. I signed a law. 10 years in jail if they rip them down.”
-Donald Trump on Fox News, “Trump holds ‘Great American Comeback’ event in Minnesota,” YouTube.com, Sep. 18, 2020