WASHINGTON—Criticizing the 19th-century writer as a “death-obsessed weirdo with very little literary talent,” President Trump doubled down on his attacks against the city of Baltimore Monday by tearing into Edgar Allan Poe during a rambling, three-hour press conference on the White House lawn. “This guy was a pathetic loser and boozehound who was too busy crying about his lost love to write any half-decent stories,” said Trump during an oftentimes discursive and meandering speech that mocked the “disgusting, cousin-marrying hack” for his “boring” short stories and poems. “Everyone says The Raven, okay? But a raven? Not very scary. Not scary at all. It’s just a dumb bird. Maybe if he had spent less time concerned about internal rhyme schemes and more time fixing the broken and crime-ridden city that he lived in, we wouldn’t have these problems in Baltimore right now—he’s a disgrace to the Whig Party. Not original. Not smart. And I know a lot of people who love detective fiction, and they all tell me Poe’s Dupin character was a disaster, just a complete disaster for the genre.” Media analysts noted that Trump’s attacks stand in stark contrast to his habit of routinely heaping praise on Romanticists associated with New York like Washington Irving and Herman Melville.

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