Trump is only the modern version of Hamlet’s infamous antagonist, King Claudius. Let me tell you how Shakespeare predicted the Trump era far before The Simpsons even tried. While we can keep praying that both of these characters are fictional, one has so far graced us with his presence at the White House, pridefully embodying villainous, Claudius-like traits as a liar, a politician, a man incapable of humanity, and a murderer!
- Liars
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It’s no secret that President Trump is a liar. Journalists write articles about his “white” lies everyday, and it’s exhausting. For example, in the weeks preceding the election, he’s been focused on making his opponent former Vice President Joe Biden look unpresidential. However, instead of using rhetoric to argue why Biden’s ideals are wrongly founded, he lies by saying, for instance, that Biden supports “defunding the police,” which he does not; he’s a moderate, not a “Trojan horse for socialism,” as Trump called him.
While lying about an opponent’s policies may already seem dishonest, Trump has made much bigger Claudius-scaled lies. As Claudius led the people of Denmark to believe that a venomous snake killed King Hamlet, this was only a metaphor for himself. Similarly, Trump lied about his rise to power and victory in the election, which was not democratic, but the product of Russian collusion in the 2016 presidential elections. While Robert Mueller’s investigation did not come to the objective conclusion that Trump was guilty, it was acknowledged by numerous politicians including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that there is proof of the “alarming lengths to which Donald Trump and his campaign welcomed and relied on a hostile foreign power’s interference in the 2016 election.” According to Time, Russia “probe[d] state voter databases,” hacked the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, spread propaganda on social media, and staged events in America.
In addition, Trump has lied about not being able to release his tax returns while they were under audit. The New York Times has released some information about his tax returns in the past decade. He only paid $750 in taxes in 2016, and again in 2017, and did not pay any taxes in ten out of the past 15 years! Willingly keeping information from the people when one is in a position of power in order to conceal hypocrisy and selfishness is shameful, and something that both Claudius and Trump are culpable.
- Politicians
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As a king and a president, it is obvious that Claudius and Trump are both politicians, but I would like to expand that definition from someone who holds a position of power to a self-interested actor who holds a position of power. In fact, is it obvious that Claudius is power-hungry because he killed his own brother to take the throne. However, this was concealed by a very real incestuous marriage to his brother’s wife, Gertrude, demonstrating how essentially tainted Claudius’ rise to power is. Similarly, but minus the incest and the murder, Trump has also manipulated the American political landscape to be composed of what suits him best: his buddies, not rivals or traitors (aka the true American heroes).
First and foremost, the Ukraine scandal. In an attempt to make Joe Biden seem uncredible, Trump secretly contacted the President of Ukraine in order to find dirt on his principal opponent, seeking aid from a foreign country to win an election, violating the Constitution.
In addition, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic which would obviously increase the number of mail-in voters for the November 3 election, Trump appointed a new postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, explicitly exhibiting a conflict of interest as DeJoy was invested in competitors of the USPS.
On top of this, Trump keeps repeating that mail-in voting causes increased voter fraud — which has been disproven time and time again — so he will be able to say that the election was rigged if he loses; he has simultaneously admitted that the recent reductions in USPS budget will have a detrimental effect on mail in voting. This is corruption exemplified. How has he gotten away with so much worse than Claudius, and still be a “living” politician in the sense that he is still credible and dignified according to half of the American people?
- Inhumane
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Neither Trump nor Claudius seem to have any respect for the lives of others. In Hamlet, Claudius kills his brother and only feels guilty momentarily. Otherwise, his murderous mind’s only goal is to eliminate the suspicious Prince Hamlet, so he plans three different ways to murder him. Not one, but three! The first was to trick Hamlet’s “loyal” friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern into taking Hamlet to England, and delivering a letter to the king which would ask him to have his nephew beheaded. The second was to have Laertes (angry at Hamlet for killing his father Polonius) kill Hamlet in a sword fight. The third was to poison his drink. Family loyalty, huh?
On his own scale and context, Trump has also shown disregard for the value of human life in the past months of 2020. He lied repeatedly about his knowledge of the dangers of COVID-19, and the inefficacy of his policies have now cost 200,000+ lives. For this reason, I called them both murderous.
- Guilty!
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While I have just argued that both Claudius and Trump are guilty of destroying human lives, they are also both guilty of complex fratricide. Most obviously, when Claudius committed regicide, he killed his brother. However, on a grander scale, the event of that single murder pushed all the other intertwined dominos of the play. The murder caused the marriage of Claudius and Gertrude, causing Hamlet to hate his mother which he projected onto Ophelia, as well as his attempt to kill Claudius (in which he murdered Polonius instead). This caused Ophelia to kill herself, causing Laertes to kill Hamlet (and vise versa). In the end, Gertude drank the poison, and most of the characters died. Effectively, Claudius is to blame for all the deaths in Hamlet, which I shall call fratricide because he destroys the brotherhood in the court of Denmark.
Similarly, but more subtly, Trump’s victory in 2016 has divided America more than ever between parties. He has killed the definition of an American and brotherhood among citizens.
Therefore, while Trump and Claudius diverge in fiction, time, and political regime, many dark similarities can be drawn between Hamlet’s antagonist’s rise to power and our current presidential administration in the American post-truth era.