Thread by @WestWingReport

I've had the great honor of speaking at seven presidential libraries. In the Q&A, folks often ask how Trump compares to other presidents. That's obviously a very long and multi-faceted (book length) answer, but he gave a very good example of how he is different today /1

/2 The president today, in a tweet, washed his hands of the deaths of 3,000 Americans in Puerto Rico. Leaders cannot just take credit for good things. They must also acknowledge, as Harry Truman did, that the buck stops with them. This is one example of how Trump differs

/3
In the wake of "Operation Zapata" - the bungled Bay of Pigs raid on Cuba in 1961, John F. Kennedy could have blamed his predecessor (the plan was hatched by Eisenhower's team), but JFK gave it the final greenlight and it occurred on his watch

/4
Privately, Kennedy was furious over the Bay of Pigs, and yet he took responsibility. "Victory has a thousand fathers," he said. "But defeat is an orphan." Leaders accept blame. History provides nunerous examples of how Trump differs

/5
Ancillary to Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs fiasco, it led him to 1) trust his military advisors less, and 2) create the modern-day Situation Room in the West Wing, where he could get raw intel faster and unfiltered. The first SitRoom, shown here in 1961, was rather modest

The lessons Kennedy learned from the Bay of Pigs (April 1961) would come in handy during a far more dangerous crisis just a year-and-a-half later: the Cuban Missile Crisis
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