Don't look now, but not only is Trump trying to rehabilitate his political hero Andrew Jackson, he's actually trying to say that Jackson could have stopped the US Civil War if he had been around.
President Trump during an interview that airs Monday questioned why the country had a Civil War and suggested former President Andrew Jackson could have prevented it had he served later.
"I mean had Andrew Jackson been a little bit later you wouldn't have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart," Trump said during an interview with the Washington Examiner's Salena Zito.
"He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said, 'There's no reason for this.'"
Jackson, the nation's seventh president, died in 1845. The Civil War began in 1861.
The president further questioned why the country could not have solved the Civil War.
"People don't realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why?" Trump said during the edition of "Main Street Meets the Beltway" scheduled to air on SiriusXM.
"People don't ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?"
During the interview, the president also compared his win to that of Jackson.
"My campaign and win was most like Andrew Jackson, with his campaign. And I said, when was Andrew Jackson? It was 1828. That's a long time ago," Trump said.
"That's Andrew Jackson. And he had a very, very mean and nasty campaign. Because they said this was the meanest and the nastiest. And unfortunately, it continues."
The fact that Jackson died 16 years before the Civil War and served as president more than 30 years before aside, Jackson was one of America's biggest proponents of slavery. Jackson's estate, The Hermitage, was a slave plantation, pure an simple, and Jackson himself signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, leading directly to the Trail of Tears. This is a man who thought both blacks and Native Americans were savages who could not be reasoned with because he didn't view either group as human.
“My original convictions upon this subject have been confirmed by the course of events for several years, and experience is every day adding to their strength,” he said during his Fifth Annual Address to Congress in 1833. “That those tribes can not exist surrounded by our settlements and in continual contact with our citizens is certain.
“They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition. Established in the midst of another and a superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority or seeking to control them, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear.”
Jackson’s steadfast belief in racial inferiority fueled his early career as a slave trader, which in turn funded his purchase of the Hermitage plantation in 1804. More than 150 slaves worked the land at one point and throughout his life, Jackson is believed to have owned upwards of 300 slaves.
And this is who Trump not only admires, but is someone who Trump believes could have prevented the US Civil War. I'll leave the theories on how a man who directly profited from slavery and ran tens of thousands of Native Americans off their lands would have "worked it out" to you, dear reader.
But I do know that Trump has long been Old Hickory's biggest fan, and has often pointed out the parallels between his campaign and Jackson's in 1828. That shouldn't aurprise anyone at this point, because of course we elected both of them.
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