Donald Trump, polemical: he targeted Abraham Lincoln and said he could have avoided the civil war

Abraham Lincoln is a hero to all Republicans. But former President Donald Trump dared to question it in a controversial way.

At the party’s final campaign rally in Iowa, Trump suggested that the Civil War could have been avoided through “negotiation,” argued that the fight to end slavery in the United States was ultimately unnecessary, and that Lincoln, a head of the presidency at that time, they should have done more to avoid bloodshed.

“Many mistakes were made. Look, there was something that I think could have been negotiated, to be honest with you,” Trump said during a campaign event in Newton, Iowa, as reported by the cnn. “I think it could have been negotiated. All the people died. Many people died.”

The former president’s comments come a week before the first-in-the-nation 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.

At the same time, they occur as the Republican leader took advantage of the third anniversary of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 describe the arrival of migrants at the southern border as the “authentic” insurrection.

The idea of ​​insurrection alludes to the figure used by several courts in the country, based on a ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court, which invalidated him as a candidate in the Republican elections and, therefore, in the national elections in November.

They rely on the fact that an amendment to the Constitution after the Civil War bars a citizen who has declared himself rebellious or insubordinate to the Magna Carta from being elected. Judges and lawyers argue that Trump is affected by the ban on this amendment having instigated their parties’ assault on Congress to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

“When you talk about insurrection, this is what they are doing, this is the real thing (…) Not in a peaceful and patriotic, peaceful and patriotic way,” Trump said, citing the speech he gave on January 6 earlier. a violent mob of his followers stormed the Capitol in a desperate bid to keep him in power following his 2020 election defeat.

Trump’s remarks in Newton, central Iowa, came a day after President Biden gave a speech near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, in which described Trump as a serious threat to democracy and said January 6 was “a day we almost lost America, (almost) lost everything.”

The Civil War has emerged as an unlikely topic of conversation among GOP primary candidates. More than a week before Trump’s comments, former United Nations ambassador Nicky Haley responded to a question about the cause of the Civil War without mentioning slavery, the driving force behind the war.

He has since backtracked, repeatedly saying he thought the fact was self-evident.

Trump’s comments were not made in response to or in reference to Haley’s. In fact, before the Civil War began, numerous efforts were made to reach an agreement to save the Union. But the future of slavery in the South could not be resolved through compromise, and the nation fell into internal warfare. Trump did not say how he would avoid conflict, which he also described as “so horrible but so charming”.

“It was, I don’t know, it was just different,” Trump said of the war. “I’m just very attracted to seeing him,” he said, according to the report. CNN.

After describing the wounds suffered by soldiers on the battlefield, Trump said, “There’s nothing good about this,” adding that the war has been “tough on our country.”

He also suggested that Lincoln would not have had the same historical prestige “if he had negotiated” an end to the war.

These statements by Trump have raised the temperature and a new controversy in the country. Former Republican Representative Liz Cheney criticized the tycoon’s position on social networks.

“What part of the civil war ‘could have been negotiated’? The slavery part? The secessionist side? “Should Lincoln have preserved the Union?” Cheney wrote. “Question for members of the Republican Party – the party of Lincoln – who supported Donald Trump: how can you defend him?”

Traditionally modern republicans They point to Lincoln as a hero – a Republican hero – for his role in preserving the Union when the South sought to abandon national unity rather than end slavery.

Trump and Biden will likely face each other again in the next election, and the two candidates have often mentioned January 6 in their campaign events. Trump, embroiled in a lawsuit over his efforts to make up for his 2020 loss to Biden. Trump has never acknowledged the Democrat’s victory and continues to claim, without any evidence, that there was electoral fraud.

Source: AP, EFE, CNN and Clarín