Donald Trump at an Iowa rally on Saturday suggested that the existence of slavery, instead of culminating in the Civil War, should have been "negotiated."
Trump recently hit Nikki Haley with a new insult, saying that he thought “slavery is sort of the obvious answer" to the question about the purpose of the Civil War that tripped Haley up at an event. Now, at a rally, Trump had his own controversial take on the Civil War and how it could've been stopped.
He started off by saying he found the Civil War "fascinating," and added that he's "so attracted to seeing it."
"So many mistakes were made. See there is something that I think could have been negotiated, to be honest with you," Trump said, suggesting that slavery, the issue he previously acknowledged was the start of the bloody internal U.S. fight, could have been solved without any bloodshed.
"I think you could've negotiated that," he added. "But I think it's, you know Abraham Lincoln of course, if he'd negotiated it, we probably wouldn't even know who Abraham Lincoln was."
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The comments immediately set the internet on fire, with Columnist Bill Kristol, who founded The Bulwark, posting on social media, "Trump on the Civil War. Worth watching because it’s revealing."
"Trump rambles on about how the situation could have been negotiated," the conservative commentator wrote Saturday. "But the one word Trump never utters is slavery. It never occurs to Trump that the fact the war ended slavery is…important."
"OMG!! As a historian, his utter ignorance of history and off the charts stupidity drives me extra crazy," an account called Spiro's Ghost posted in response to Trump's comments. "So we could have *negotiated slavery*, eh? Everything within his damaged brain is transactional."
Mark Maxwell, political editor at KSDK News, made an important note for context.
"Slavery was negotiated in the Missouri Compromise, which gave way to the Kansas-Nebraska Act," he wrote. "That’s what Lincoln was talking about when he said, 'this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free,' and the Union 'will become all one thing, or all the other.'"
An account called Scott the Lawyer had some questions for the ex-president.
"Okay, Trump. What would your 'negotiated settlement' to slavery have been? Would only certain states have remained slave states? Would you have limited the number of human beings a slaveholder could own?" the attorney asked. "Sure, such an easy 'negotiation.' What a tool."
