Does Trump know what Civil War was about?
President again shows loose grasp of history in radio interview
NEW YORK — The U.S. president had a historical question: Why did America’s Civil War happen? “Why could that one not have been worked out?”
Remarks by Donald Trump, aired Monday, showed presidential uncertainty about the origin and necessity of the Civil War, a defining event in U.S. history with slavery at its core. Trump also declared that President Andrew Jackson was angry about “what was happening” with regard to the war, which started 16 years after his death, and could have stopped it if still in office.
Trump, who has at times shown a shaky grasp of U.S. history, questioned why issues couldn’t have been settled to prevent the war that followed the secession of 11 Southern states from the Union and brought death to more than 600,000 Americans, North and South.
“People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why?” Trump said in an interview on Sirius XM radio. “People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”
Trump’s comments about the war came after he lauded Jackson, the populist president whom he and his staff have cited as a role model. He suggested that if Jackson had been president “a little later, you wouldn’t have had the Civil War.”
“He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War. He said, ‘There’s no reason for this,’ ” Trump continued. Jackson died in 1845. The Civil War began in 1861.