President Donald Trump has come under fire for his claims about the Civil War in which he questioned why the U.S. had one in the first place and suggested that former President Andrew Jackson could've prevented it had he been president at the time.
The comments came during an interview with Washington Examiner columnist Salena Zito set to air 2 p.m. Monday on Sirius XM Politics radio.
Trump, who has cited Jackson as a role model, wondered why the war "could not have been worked out."
Here are the full remarks, posted on Twitter by POLITICO’s chief Washington correspondent, Edward-Isaac Dovere:
TRUMP: [Jackson] was a swashbuckler. But when his wife died, did you know he visited her grave every day? I visited her grave actually because I was in Tennessee.
ZITO: That's right. You were in Tennessee.
TRUMP: And it was amazing. The people of Tennessee are amazing people. They love Andrew Jackson. They love Andrew Jackson in Tennessee.
ZITO: He's fascinating.
TRUMP: I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn't have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War. He said, "There's no reason for this." People don't realize, you know, the Civil War — if you think about it, why? People don't ask that question, but why was there a Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?
Journalists and historians were quick to criticize Trump’s claims.
For example, while Jackson did oversee the Nullification Crisis in 1832 and 1833, Jackson couldn't have been "really angry" about the Civil War, because he died 16 years before it even started, the Washington Post reported.
According to CNN, Trump's remarks also disregard that Andrew Jackson, as president, was a slave-owner who led the forced removal of 17,000 Cherokees across the nation.
With slavery as the prime issue fueling fights over states’ rights that eventually led to the Civil War, his comments immediately received backlash, including a tweet from Chelsea Clinton:
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