Killing Lincoln Producer: John Wilkes Booth Could Be Tea Party's Poster Child

Killing Lincoln Producer: John Wilkes Booth Could Be Tea Party's Poster Child

The producer of NatGeo's drama Killing Lincoln says John Wilkes Booth - the man who assassinated the 16th President of the United States - could be the poster child for the Tea Party. 

Executive producer Erik Jendresen shocked television critics attending the Winter TV Press Tour 2013 this week, suggesting that Lincoln's murderer could have represented the right-wing political group. Speaking on-stage at the event, Jendresen argued that Booth was not mad and that his viewers were pretty common when he assassinated Lincoln - considered to be one of the America's greatest ever Presidents. "This is not the act of somebody who can easily be dismissed as a psychopath, so that it's easy to understand - 'Oh well, he was crazy.' This is a man who believed what still probably 20 percent of this country still believes." Killing Lincoln is a two hour special based on the book of the same name written by Fox News star Bill O'Reilly. 

Jendresen continued to make political comparisons between Lincoln's era and the modern age, musing, "If you look at the politics of the time, and the epithets that were being hurled at Lincoln, there is a feeling in the nation that is not dissimilar [to the Obama years] - the idea today of this imperial presidency.[of] somebody who is essentially going to declare himself king and take over," he continued."

Killing Lincoln will air on National Geographic Channel in February, 2013.

Watch Killing Lincoln Author Bill O'Reilly Leaving The Letterman Show: