I’m certainly not going to suggest they look anything alike or even that they’d agree about a lot of things, but the more I listen to Donald Trump, the more I find myself thinking about Harry Truman.

Even I would admit it would be a stretch to imagine that if Truman were to be reincarnated, the poor man from Missouri would be likely to come back as a billionaire from Manhattan married to a European super model, although I confess the image does amuse me.

Even though I was just a kid when Truman was in the White House, I still remember people insisting that Truman wasn’t presidential. I recall they would get particularly annoyed when he went after the “do-nothing” Congress, as he referred to it. Other people never forgave him for bringing WWII to a rapid close by dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, although those people, it’s worth mentioning, didn’t happen to be members of the U.S. military preparing to invade Japan at the time.

To his credit, Truman never spent a moment ruing what he had done to the Japanese, because, for one thing, they started it by bombing Pearl Harbor. For another, if we had been forced to invade Japan, the estimates of allied casualties ran to hundreds of thousands.

He explained that his job as president was to make decisions, and then not waste time second-guessing a decision he believed had been the right one to make.

But the thing that set off Truman’s critics the most is the one that most closely mirrors something Trump might do.

President Truman had a daughter, Margaret, who had musical aspirations as a singer. In December 1950, she gave a concert in Washington, DC. She was 26 years old at the time.

The next day, Washington Post music critic Paul Hume wrote the following review: “Miss Truman is a unique American phenomenon with a pleasant voice of little size and fair quality. She cannot sing very well and is flat a good deal of the time. She has not improved in the years we have heard her, and she still cannot sing with anything approaching professional finish.”

The same day, President Truman dashed off the following letter: “Mr. Hume: I’ve just read your lousy review of Margaret’s concert. I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re an eight-ulcer man on four-ulcer pay.

"It seems to me that you’re a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppy-cock as was in the back section of the paper you work for, it shows conclusively that you’re off the beam and at least four of your ulcers are at work.

"Someday, I hope to meet you. When that happens, you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!

"Pegler, a guttersnipe, is a gentleman alongside you. I hope you’ll accept that statement as a worse insult than a reflection on your ancestry.”

By way of clarification, Paul Hume may have been frustrated, as a great many critics are, but he was hardly an old man. He was 34 years old at the time.

The Pegler referred to was Westbrook Pegler, a popular newspaper columnist who had spent the previous 18 years attacking the Roosevelts and Harry Truman.

When he was attacked for having threatened a music critic with bodily harm, Truman explained that he had written the letter as a loving father, not as the president. However, he had used official White House stationery.

For what it’s worth, Paul Hume never got punched in the nose or, so far as anyone knows, required a supporter, but he did manage to get the last laugh. The following year, he sold Truman’s letter for $3,500, which was probably more than his annual salary at the time.

Does anyone believe for even a second that if Ivanka Trump had chosen to pursue a career on the stage, and some critic, particularly one employed by The Washington Post, had panned her performance, President Trump would hesitate to come after him?

What the elitists in 1950 failed to realize is no different from what the elitists, both Democrats and Republicans, fail to grasp in 2017. Namely, after decades of people like Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama coming off sounding presidential, which is to say robotic and insincere, it’s a relief to hear someone in the White House who sounds like a normal human being.

In other words, he sounds angry when people, including his fellow Republicans, lie about him. He also sounds angry when the Never-Trump members of the media spin what he says or edit his remarks in order to make him sound racist or like a buffoon.

I have taken Trump to task for some of his tweets because there are times when the 140-character limit denies him sufficient nuance when something beyond calling out the NY Times or CNN for their fake news is required.

I understand that it is naïve to ask Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and their hand maidens in Congress to stop trying to derail Trump’s agenda when it comes to reforming the tax code and cutting taxes, building up the military, erecting the wall and deporting criminal aliens, etc. Before they would go along with any of those sensible notions, they would have to kiss off their base, stop playing identity politics, kick the likes of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Maxine Waters to the curb, and, well, change their party affiliation to Republican.

But it should not be too much to expect that 52 GOP senators would fully support the president’s agenda, and if, for whatever reason, they didn’t, that Mitch McConnell use his enormous power to discipline them. He could do so by kicking them off major committees; moving them from their lavish offices into broom closets; and threatening to use his influence with the RNC to not only deny them party funds the next time they seek re-election, but vowing to back their primary opponents.

I fully understand that there are some senators who have their own agendas and who like to think of themselves as independent and principled. My response is that they should have probably gotten into a different line of work. So long as the Democrats remain united, whether it means voting to pass ObamaCare or to prevent its being replaced — as the Republicans had promised to do for seven years if only we gave them control of the House, the Senate and the White House — any Republican who breaks ranks should be treated as a traitor.

And that definitely includes the senior senator from Arizona. John McCain may or may not have been a hero in Vietnam, but he has been a complete washout as a senator, whether it was when he tried to burnish his credentials as a maverick by co-authoring lousy legislation with Ted Kennedy and Russ Feingold, or getting off a sick bed and returning to Washington, DC, for no other reason than to prevent the repeal of ObamaCare.

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I understand that some people hate Donald Trump. I understand that some people hate the Republican Party. The part I don’t get is when they report on Trump’s appearance in Phoenix and they take him to task for something he said or failed to say, but refuse to even utter a harsh word about the Never-Trumpers outside the arena who were wearing masks, wielding clubs and hurling bottles of urine and excrement at the cops.

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My friend Art Hershey has shared a few memorable quotes from notable sports figures with me, no doubt with the hope I would share them with you. And so, I shall.

Professional hockey coach Harry Neale: “Last year, we couldn’t win at home and we lost on the road. My failure as a coach was that I couldn’t think of any other place to play.”

Professional golfer Doug Sanders: “I’m working as hard as I can to get my life and my money to run out at the same time. If I can just manage to die after lunch on Tuesday, everything will be perfect.”

Detroit Tigers pitcher Mickey Lolich: “All the fat guys watch me on the mound and say to their wives, ‘See, there’s a fat guy doing okay. Bring me another beer.’”

Kansas City Chiefs linebacker E.J. Holub, speaking about his 12 knee operations: “My knees look like they lost a knife fight with a midget.”

Dallas Cowboys fullback Walt Garrison, when asked if he had ever seen Coach Tom Landry smile: “I don’t know. I only played there for nine years.”

New Orleans coach Bum Phillips, after viewing a lopsided loss to the Atlanta Falcons: “The film looks suspiciously like the game itself.”

Green Bay Packers running back Paul Hornung, explaining why his wedding ceremony took place in the morning: “Because if the marriage didn’t work out, I didn’t want to blow the whole day.”

Legendary Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne, on why his team lost a game on Saturday: “I won’t know until my barber tells me on Monday.”

Portland Trail Blazers center Bill Walton: “I learned a long time ago that ‘minor surgery’ is when they operate on someone else.”

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Speaking of sports, in the wake of the phony outrage over Confederate statuary, ESPN has made itself a laughing stock by pulling an announcer out of the broadcast booth for an upcoming football game involving the University of Virginia. The reason is that his name is Robert Lee. Not even Robert E. Lee. What’s more, he’s an Asian, not one of the Virginia Lees.

No word yet if he’s to be replaced by an announcer named Fidel Castro or Saddam Hussein.