Sunday, January 7, 2024 – Former US President Donald Trump on Saturday suggested the American Civil War could have been avoided through “negotiation,” arguing that the fight to end slavery in the US was ultimately unnecessary and that Abraham Lincoln should have done more to avoid bloodshed.
The former president’s comments come a little over a week
before the caucuses in Iowa, where he has a significant lead in the polls over
his closest rivals, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov.
Nikki Haley.
“So many mistakes were made.
See, there was something I think could have been negotiated, to be honest with
you,” Trump said at a campaign event in Newton, Iowa. “I think you could have
negotiated that. All the people died. So many people died.”
It's not the first time Trump has tried to compare himself
to Abraham Lincoln.
In 2020 Trump held a press conference virtually in the lap
of Lincoln’s statute at the Lincoln Memorial to connect to his fellow “wartime
President.” Trump even lobbied for a place next to Lincoln on Mount Rushmore.
Now, the “Party of Lincoln” just finished its convention with the virtual
deification of Trump as the “new Lincoln.”
The American Civil War has emerged as an unlikely talking
point on the GOP primary trail. More than a week before Trump’s comments, Haley
answered a question about the cause of the Civil War without mentioning slavery
– the driving force behind the war. She has since backtracked.
According to American historians, there were a series of
efforts before the Civil War began to cut a deal to save the Union. But the
future of slavery in the South could not be settled through compromise and the
nation went to war with itself. Trump did not say how he would have prevented
the conflict, which he also called “so horrible but so fascinating.”
“It was, I don’t know, it was
just different,” Trump said of the war. “I just find it – I’m so attracted to
seeing it.”
After describing the wounds soldiers sustained on the
battlefield, Trump said, “There’s nothing nice about it,” adding the war was a
“tough one for our country.”
He also suggested that Lincoln would not have the same
historical cachet “if he negotiated it.”
Former Republican lawmaker Rep. Liz Chene, who Trump helped
unseat after she voted to impeach him, slammed Trump’s take on social media,
asking how Republicans who have endorsed the former president can “possibly
defend this?”
“Which part of the Civil War
‘could have been negotiated’? The slavery part? The secession part? Whether
Lincoln should have preserved the Union?” Cheney wrote. “Question for members
of the GOP – the party of Lincoln – who have endorsed Donald Trump: How can you
possibly defend this?”
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