With his implausible campaign promises, sordid history of fraud, and penchant for gilded furniture, Donald Trump has earned a reputation as grafter in chief. But that title also applies to Andrew Jackson, a man who even in death has conned a country into venerating him.

Recently, the mainstream press and Trump’s acolytes have evoked Old Hickory as an illustrative antecedent, either likening Trump’s rise to Jackson’s grassroots appeal or trying to preserve Jackson’s legacy by dismissing any similarities between the two.

Former Breitbart News chief Steve Bannon called Trump’s pseudo-populist speeches “Jacksonian.” Other supporters have marshaled the nineteenth-century slave-trader’s reputation to galvanize the Right’s current insurgency.