“The press has never been this cruel to our presidents! Look at this unprecedented level of media bias! What is happening to America?” wails the collective internet, fanning itself like a Victorian debutante confronted with jazz music. But let’s set the record straight: savage press coverage isn’t some modern glitch whipped up by cable news algorithms and rage-click marketing interns. It’s been baked into the American experiment since the ink was still drying on the Constitution. From the tricorner-hat theatrics of George Washington’s day to Eisenhower’s mid-century stoicism, the American press has always known how to throw elbows—and then toss in a few more, just for punctuation.

We’re not saying that we approve of the practice, but we do feel compelled to point out that the most recent occupants of the Oval Office are by no means the first to feel the jabs of the poisoned pointed pens of the press.

Not convinced? Join us as we go back to the earliest days of the republic and sample for ourselves the fake news, media bias, bad press, and overall negative presidential media coverage that is as much a part of American politics as smoke-filled rooms and broken promises.

George Washington: The Original Target for Hot Takes

Today, George Washington is the marble-jawed, mythologized founder who couldn’t tell a lie, chopped down a cherry tree, and probably flossed with eagle feathers. But during his actual presidency, he was less “father of the country” and more “dad who’s ruining everything” according to the opposition press.

The Aurora—edited by Benjamin Franklin’s exceptionally spicy grandson, Benjamin Bache—went full scorched-earth, calling Washington “the source of all the misfortunes of our country.” Bache accused him of being a monarchist, a closet Brit-lover, and possibly a founding member of the Illuminati (okay, maybe not that last one, but the vibe was there). When Washington left office, one editorial suggested he should be “consigned to the tomb of infamy.” That’s not exactly a gold watch and a cake in the breakroom.

During the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794, Washington actually mounted a horse and led troops to suppress tax protesters in western Pennsylvania. Although that seems heroic and quintessentially George Washington to us, newspapers of the day erupted. Critics claimed he was channeling his inner George III. One called him “His Majesty George I,” accusing him of treating peaceful farmers like enemy combatants in the war against alcohol—a particularly bold accusation in a country founded by men who drank hard cider for breakfast.

His support for Jay’s Treaty in 1795—an attempt to smooth things over with Britain—was viewed by some as a betrayal of the Revolution. Newspapers labeled him a sellout. In cities like Boston and Philadelphia, angry mobs burned Washington in effigy. Yes, they had cancel culture in colonial America.

Even his integrity wasn’t safe. Opposition writers accused him of hoarding power, favoring aristocracy, and becoming the puppet of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. One critic sneered that Washington had “no more claim to patriotism than to probity,” and described him as “a hypocrite in public life and a tyrant in private life.” It was the 1790s version of being publicly dissected on The View.

All this, despite the fact that Washington had literally walked away from power—twice. The first time after the Revolution, and again after two terms in office. For that, we now build statues. Back then, some papers just built more columns of rage.

John Adams: Short, Cranky, and Absolutely Roasted

John Adams was a brilliant thinker, a key architect of American independence, and—according to the press of his time—a pompous, monarchist gremlin with the charm of a cranky librarian and the leadership instincts of a bulldozer with no reverse gear. The newspapers went hard on Adams. As for Adams, he was notoriously thin-skinned, so you can only imagine how he reacted. If only he had a Twitter account.

Let’s start with the insults that could’ve qualified as early American hate speech. One pro-Jeffersonian writer in The Aurora called Adams “a repulsive pedant” and “a hideous hermaphroditical character”—which somehow managed to be both biologically confused and impressively hostile. The idea was to paint Adams as a man who was too indecisive to be fully male or female—essentially calling him politically impotent, with a side of 18th-century gender panic.

The Federalist and Republican press didn’t just disagree—they used the printing press like it was a trebuchet. The pro-Jefferson crowd depicted Adams as a wannabe king who would crown himself monarch the minute someone handed him a gold-plated comb-over. The Richmond Examiner warned that if Adams were reelected, he’d “invade every home and dictate every prayer,” because apparently supporting a strong federal government = evil emperor vibes.

One editorial accused Adams of sending American diplomacy “to the guillotine,” claiming he was so eager to suck up to Britain that he would have handed the country back to King George if someone had asked nicely. Adams’ love for formality and pomp didn’t help. He thought the president should be addressed as “His Highness, the President of the United States of America and Protector of Their Liberties,” but even Congress laughed that one down), which gave the press endless material for mocking his perceived ego—and waistline—by calling him “His Rotundity.”

Things got so spicy during his presidency that Adams approved the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which basically made it a crime to criticize the government. One of the first people thrown in jail? A guy who said Adams had “a continual grasp for power” and “an unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp.” To be fair, he wasn’t wrong—but Adams still tossed him in prison like a Founding Father who’d just discovered the “block” button.

When Adams left office, he was so bitter about the press (and about Jefferson winning) that he skipped his successor’s inauguration. And honestly, after the public bruising he got from America’s early opinion pages, who could blame him?

Jefferson: Revolutionary? Sure. Satanic? Maybe?

Thomas Jefferson, a man so enamored with freedom that he could claim a copyright to the Declaration of Independence (if you are curious, you can see his version compared to the final edition here), was accused of wanting to turn America into Revolutionary France: guillotines, blood, orgies, and all. The Gazette of the United States warned voters that if Jefferson were elected, “murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest” would become national pastimes. Subtle, it was not.

Andrew Jackson vs. Everyone

Old Hickory took heat from every direction. His dueling past made for juicy copy: “murderer” was a common refrain in anti-Jackson papers. The attacks also dragged in his wife, Rachel, whom they accused of bigamy. One headline basically read, “Jackson: War Hero or Wife Thief?” And the National Journal savagely observed he “could not write a sentence of grammar and hardly could spell his own name.” Which, to be fair, is a pretty elitist way of calling someone illiterate while also giving them a spelling quiz.

Abraham Lincoln: Four Score and Seven Insults Ago

Today, Abraham Lincoln is considered the platinum standard of presidential greatness—monument-worthy, currency-qualified, and the only man who could make a neckbeard look noble. But in his own time, he wasn’t revered so much as relentlessly roasted. The press of the 1860s didn’t just criticize Lincoln; they launched a full-blown editorial siege.

Let’s start with the physical insults, which came early and often. Lincoln’s lanky, rough-hewn appearance made him an easy target. The Chicago Times suggested that explorer Paul Du Chaillu had wasted his time looking for gorillas in Africa when the real specimen could be found in the White House. Another paper likened his face to a “wrinkled pumpkin,” while yet another said he looked like “a man who had been split and then roughly glued back together.”

Lincoln had to endure a steady stream of abuse not only from the South, but from those on his own side. George Templeton Strong, a prominent New York lawyer editorialized that Lincoln was “a barbarian, Scythian, yahoo, or gorilla.” Henry Ward Beecher, the Connecticut-born preacher and abolitionist, often ridiculed Lincoln in his newspaper, The Independent, for his lack of refinement and calling him “an unshapely man.” Other Northern newspapers openly called for his assassination long before John Wilkes Booth actually carried it out. He was called a coward, “an idiot,” and “the original gorilla” by none other than the commanding general of his armies, George McClellan.

The southern press wasn’t holding back either—shocking, we know. The Richmond Dispatch referred to him as “a horrid looking wretch…with a face like a funeral,” which, while poetic, seems a bit aggressive coming from the side actively trying to secede. Some described him as a tyrant, others as a fool, but all agreed he was a walking affront to leadership, facial symmetry, and the Union.

And let’s not forget the northern press, which could be equally brutal—especially when Lincoln wasn’t moving fast enough for their tastes. Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune initially criticized him for being too slow to act on slavery, too conciliatory toward the South, and too fond of compromise.

When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, things didn’t get better. Critics said it was either too much or not enough. Pro-slavery papers called it “a monstrous usurpation,” while abolitionists muttered that it was too cautious. The Chicago Times declared that it turned the war into “a crusade for the sudden and complete liberation of three millions of negroes,” which, in their opinion, was apparently a bad thing. Lincoln himself once said, “If I were to read…what the enemy says of me, I might well give up.”

And then there were the accusations of dictatorship. Papers accused Lincoln of shredding the Constitution, establishing martial law, and ruling like a despot. The Albany Atlas and Argus called his government “an odious and revolting despotism,” and claimed he was transforming the republic into a military monarchy. Civil liberties? Habeas corpus? According to his critics, Lincoln treated those like speed bumps on the road to executive power.

Even after his assassination, some critics couldn’t let it go. Copperhead newspapers—Northern Democrats opposed to the war—grumbled that Lincoln’s legacy was overhyped and that he had endangered the Union as much as he saved it. That’s right—while everyone else was mourning, these folks were still rage-editing their obituaries.

So yes, while we now chisel Lincoln’s face into mountains and recite his speeches like scripture, the man himself endured a press environment so hostile it made Twitter look like a scented bath bomb. If Lincoln had taken it personally, he’d have shut down the White House and moved to Canada. Instead, he read the criticism, folded it into an envelope, and used it to sharpen his resolve.

Andrew Johnson: Impeached and Eviscerated

If Andrew Johnson were alive today, he’d probably have a Google Alert for his own name just so he could angrily tweet back at every insult. Sworn in after Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson managed to unite a divided nation—not through healing, but by being equally loathed by nearly everyone.

Andrew Johnson’s mouth was “a gutter from which flow the fetid exhalations of a mind diseased.”

Northern Radical Republicans saw him as a traitor to the Union cause, while Southern papers branded him a turncoat for not doing more to oppose Reconstruction. Impressively, he was insulted from both sides, often in the same paragraph. It’s as if one side of media bias gave up and joined the other side’s tug-of-war team.

The New York Tribune called his speeches “drunken orgies of vituperation.” The Chicago Tribune accused him of having “the moral and intellectual qualities of a cornered rat.” One editorial said his mouth was “a gutter from which flow the fetid exhalations of a mind diseased.” Yes, that is unquestionably rude, but there is a certain poeticism to such insults that makes us long for the good old days.

By the time he became the first president to be impeached, some newspapers were practically throwing ticker-tape parties. After the Senate acquitted him by a single vote, headlines ranged from “Justice Denied” to “A Shameful Day in American History.”

Ulysses S. Grant: General Disappointment?

The man who was heralded as the general who won the Civil War spent his presidency being dragged for his drinking habits. The Cincinnati Enquirer branded him “never more than a butcher,” implying that his battlefield tactics involved less strategy and more “point and shoot until something surrenders.” Cartoonist Thomas Nast joined the pile-on, depicting Grant as a belligerent, cigar-chomping dullard whose idea of governance involved alcohol and nepotism, not necessarily in that order.

Grover Cleveland’s Baby Scandal

During the 1884 election, Grover Cleveland faced what might be the first presidential paternity scandal. Newspapers ran with claims that he fathered an illegitimate child, prompting the timeless chant, “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?”

The press coverage was relentless, although to Cleveland’s credit, he admitted it rather than denying it or blaming a vast anti-bachelor conspiracy. The newspapers? They just leaned in harder.

Theodore Roosevelt: Teddy the Tyrant?

The Bull Moose himself got trampled by editorial cartoonists and newspaper barons who saw his trust-busting ways as a threat to their yachts. The New York World accused him of having “the mind of a caveman and the heart of a child”—which sounds like a Pixar pitch that got very dark, very fast. Others mocked his bombastic speeches and equated his foreign policy (“Speak softly and carry a big stick”) with imperialism in pith helmet cosplay.

Woodrow Wilson: League of Nasty Headlines

After World War I, Wilson became the face of the League of Nations. Unfortunately, that face also got slapped by the press. The Chicago Tribune suggested Wilson was a budding autocrat, while The Boston American straight-up called him “Kaiser Wilson.” When you’re being compared to the enemy you just defeated in a world war, you know the media’s not sending edible arrangements.

FDR: Fireside Flayed

Franklin Delano Roosevelt had three things: a radio voice, a New Deal, and a media field full of landmines. Conservative newspapers like the Chicago Tribune labeled him a communist, a class traitor, and a tyrant. During WWII, they accused him of conspiring to drag the U.S. into war and ran sensational maps alleging he was redrawing the globe to his liking—possibly while petting a cat and laughing maniacally.

Harry Truman: From Haberdasher to Hitler?

Harry Truman, once described as “a failed Missouri haberdasher,” faced some next-level hate after firing General Douglas MacArthur. The Atlanta Constitution ran letters to the editor calling for his impeachment—or his execution. One columnist practically suggested he be tried for war crimes just for telling a general to follow orders. The Washington Times-Herald constantly portrayed Truman as a pint-sized puppet of political bosses. It was less “Give ‘em Hell, Harry” and more “Give Harry hell.”

Eisenhower: Dull or Dangerous?

Dwight D. Eisenhower got the kind of press you’d expect for a man whose idea of a wild night was reading budget reports. The Nation famously sneered that he was “the smiling mask of the military-industrial complex.” Other critics labeled him passive, dull, and disconnected. Which might seem mild until you realize they were basically saying, “This guy’s so boring he could bore us into nuclear war.”

Conclusion: The More Things Change…

So the next time someone tells you politics have never been nastier, feel free to remind them that George Washington was accused of plotting a dictatorship, Lincoln was called a gorilla, and Harry Truman was nearly invited to his own firing squad. The American press has never been shy about sharpening its quills and aiming for the jugular. If anything, today’s mudslinging might be slightly less poetic.

In the grand tradition of democracy, the pen remains mightier than the sword—mainly because the sword doesn’t have a column on page two and a weekly podcast.

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