Look back at the 60s: Why Boomers still like Trump

We are all caught up in a moment, and while it's correct to oppose authoritarianism, this is not our first glance at it.

May 06, 2026

For all the political ham-handedness the pundit-class and media elites make fun of in the present administration, we would all do well to remember that there’s Americans who, despite whatever President Donald Trump does, like him. They like him not because he’s a nice guy or has policies they agree with—though that expands the “tent” at times. They like him because they remember the past, and how one president, who was not politically ham-handed, dominated the country, resulting in 50,000 dead Americans.

Image: President Lyndon B. Johnson addresses the nation in 1968, announcing a halt to bombing in Vietnam and his intention not to run for a second term. Yoichi Okamoto, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Donald Trump grew up in the backstabbing club of New York real estate developers. He end-ran them by leveraging media instead of using the regular methods of business domination. His media profile and fame allowed him to make “deals” and entice investors and banks that would not otherwise touch the risky ventures he pursued. But Trump managed to get these things done anyway. Sometimes things didn’t go the way Trump wanted, like when talk show host Merv Griffin bested him in court and took over Resorts International in 1988, leaving Trump with the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, a stone that nearly sunk the business.

Lyndon Baines Johnson emerged from the equally backstabbing Texas Democratic Party machine, which was every bit as vicious in the 1930s through the 50s as any gang of mob-connected real estate barons.

If you think Trump’s famous bouts of throwing plates of spaghetti at walls, or seething online is bad, Johnson had him beat, though much of the media coverage was suppressed in those days. Plus, there was no social media.

While it’s likely Trump and the Republicans are going to get trounced in the November midterms (but who knows, I am not willing to commit to that prediction), the president still has a firm hold on grassroots state legislative and executive races. His endorsement and support still count, as Trump has financial control of the RNC and therefore the party. Indiana stands out as an example. Seven legislators who opposed Trump’s redistricting plan, and at least five of them got the boot from Trump-supported primary opponents. From the New York Times:

“Any Republican that votes against this important redistricting, potentially having an impact on America itself, should be PRIMARIED,” Mr. Trump wrote in a November social media post that referred to two senators as Republicans in name only.
He soon followed through on that promise, endorsing challengers to seven of the eight anti-redistricting Republicans who ran for re-election this year. Other Republicans who voted against the bill have two years remaining in their terms or did not run for re-election.

Over the 12 years that Trump has been politically important, scores of House and Senate members have hung up their spurs, so to speak, rather than suffer the wrath and political fire that opposing Trump brings. That’s raw political power, whether you support him or not. And those Boomers who lived through the 60s, or some who didn’t but understand the history, remember this is not the first time we’ve seen it.

In Washington, there was something called “the Johnson treatment” and if you got it, things were very bad for you. Johnson would not leave his targets alone, engaging in humiliation—summoning them to White House meetings and then moving to the bathroom, forcing them to follow him while he sat literally on the throne—or simply getting in their face, physically. He was known to flout his, umm, manhood, in meetings, or simply to create awkward situations for those he wanted to control. Then he would flatter them, or threaten, as necessary to get what he wanted. To the blind observer, these techniques sound an awful lot like Trump (though without the physical part or the uninhibited displays, as Trump is known to be pretty shy about his body).

I think if there was social media in the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson would be posting similar things to Trump about his enemies. And he had a lot of enemies. If you opposed Johnson, he never forgot a slight. He used the government to punish his opponents, and his political power to force them to heel, or simply to force them out once they lose their usefulness.

We forget that Trump is indeed capable of working across the aisle, if it serves his public media image. As Trump is totally transactional, so was Johnson. The main difference is that Johnson was very skilled in the maneuver, and use of political power inside the government, because that was his background. Trump is still an outsider, fundamentally incapable of playing the inside role.

And like Trump, who has turned on Republicans at least as much as he trashes Democrats, Johnson reserved his fiercest attacks for fellow Democrats, especially those who opposed the Vietnam War. He took it personally, and used the FBI, Justice Department, and other arms of the government to track and persecute his enemies.

It was the Vietnam War that did Johnson in. It wasn’t the war itself—anytime we fought the NVA, we won outright. But we were fighting an entrenched unconventional force in the Viet Cong, and it didn’t help that the South Vietnam government was corrupt and brutal in itself. Also, Robert McNamara’s micromanagement from Washington resulted in many failures. It wasn’t the war, it was the body count. The daily roster of dead Americans coming home in caskets ruined Johnson’s term, and resulted in his abandoning his re-election campaign.

Trump certainly remembers the impact of dead Americans on the country. He lived through it, though he didn’t live it (his “personal Vietnam” was avoiding STDs as a playboy). There is a reason our troops are standing off against Iran, and only using air power and sea power to prosecute a war. Trump has now said the war is “terminated,” in order to comply with the 60-day limit before requiring Congressional approval. There are some legal battles Trump doesn’t want to take on, and trying to get around the War Powers Act is one of them right now. So the war is “terminated” until it isn’t and a fresh 60-day window opens. Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to go.

What Trump doesn’t want to do is engage in a war where hundreds, or thousands, of American troops end up dead. That’s how Johnson ruined himself, in spite of his immense political power and almost king-like authority over the government.

But people remember, they remember the Vietnam War, and the civil rights battle that Johnson used to pivot his party from the party of Jim Crow to the party of minority interests. It’s not that civil rights was a bad thing, of course, but people remember the cynicism and political dirty tricks, like turning Senator Barry Goldwater, one of the most stalwart supporters of civil rights and the NAACP, into a racist monster in the media.

People remember what happened in 1968, when the country rebelled against Johnson and put Richard Nixon in the White House. If Johnson was an autocratic, volatile, power-crazed political maniac, Nixon had him beat in paranoia and subterfuge. But the press never liked Nixon, and from day one went after him. The difference between Trump and Nixon on the media is that Trump isn’t afraid to make nice to the media, and personally praise his enemies, and give people like New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman almost unlimited access to him and his staff. And when it results in the inevitable book trashing him, he revels in the attention. Nixon just hated all of it.

The country put Nixon in office to rid itself of Johnson and his Democratic Party. Then Nixon almost destroyed the presidency, and put the nation on a road to decline for nearly a decade until Ronald Reagan brought us back from the brink of despair. The country could do the same this term, pushing so hard against Trump that it results in someone far worse than Nixon in the White House. Of course, that’s a few years in the future, so I can’t speculate on who that will be, but I guarantee it’s not going to be a joyous chorus of Kum Ba Ya by Democrats to decide. It’s going to be every bit as brutal and vicious as it’s always been, and with our primary system, it will likely result in the most two-faced demagogue winning.

It’s a good thing Trump has the instinct not to put the country on a road to a war that will kill thousands of young Americans. He doesn’t want to repeat the sins of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Of all the sins Trump has committed, politically, at least so far he has not brought us that one.

Remember, there are millions of Americans who remember all of this, and even if they are not political pundits or policy wonks, they know what is important for them. And they like Donald Trump because he is an outsider, with the same tenacity and power the Democrats took (and still take) for granted for decades. With that kind of control still at his command, which Indiana shows hasn’t completely faded, we will see how it turns out in Georgia and other states. What I do know is we should not underestimate the value of that power, or count them all as faded, and in the past.

Don’t believe all the “is Trump done?” talk, because those who waft that into the air are doing it for their own purposes as much as wishful thinking. We need to elect better people, for sure, but Trump’s political power is limiting the field on the Republican side, and also influencing who is running on the Democratic side. For the Boomers, it’s just LBJ all over again. I hope it doesn’t produce another Nixon.

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?