By Ole Braatelien October 26, 2024 at 2:05pm
Former President Donald Trump shared many insights during his 3-hour viral interview with podcaster Joe Rogan on Friday.
But when Rogan asked about Trump’s first day in the White House in 2017, he quickly brought up his experience seeing the “Lincoln Bedroom” the first time, and the sadness surrounding it.
“I said to the guys, ‘I want to see the Lincoln Bedroom,’ I had never seen the Lincoln bedroom,” Trump said.
“And I was standing with my wife and I said, ‘Do you believe it? This is the Lincoln bedroom.’ I mean, it was coo– it was amazing.”
“That room was so beautiful to me, much more beautiful than it actually is,” Trump continued.
Trump then segued into talking about Lincoln’s son, Tad, whose picture is in the White House room.
“He lost his son, and they suffered — the two of them — suffered from melancholia,” Trump said about Abraham and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. “They didn’t call it depression. They called it ‘melancholia.’”
Trump was likely not talking about Tad’s death, as he died years after his father’s assassination. Trump was possibly speaking about William Wallace Lincoln, who died in the White House in 1862.
Did you watch Trump’s appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast?
“He was a very depressed guy and she was a very depressed woman — more so than him, and on top of that, they lost their son, whose name was Tad.”
“Just seeing it … a little tiny picture of Tad, who he lost, and it was devastating.”
Not even 10 minutes in and Trump is giving Joe Rogan a history lesson on Lincoln…
This is incredible. Pure Americana. pic.twitter.com/w1lfmhCl2w
— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) October 26, 2024
Abraham and Mary Todd had four children: Robert, Edward, William and Thomas, according to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.
Thomas “Tad” Lincoln was 18 years old when he died on July 15, 1871.
Lincoln had already lost her husband and two of her sons: Eddy and Willie.
She lived in declining mental and physical health for the next 11 years before passing on July 16, 1882. She was 63 years old.
It is unclear how Tad died, though tuberculosis is the most likely reason, according to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.
Pneumonia and congestive heart failure are two other possibilities.
For weeks, Tad’s strength diminished, as he gradually grew more miserable.
Eventually, he had to sleep sitting up just to breathe through the night.
Then one evening, at the Clifton House in Chicago, Illinois, he passed away.
“The world is complete darkness,” his mother wrote in a letter to a friend.
Ole Braatelien has written for The Western Journal since 2022. He earned his bachelor’s from ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
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