Note to President Trump: Andrew Jackson wasn't alive for the Civil War
In audio posted on Monday, President Trump said Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, was "really angry" about what was happening with the Civil War.
There's one major problem with that statement: Jackson died in 1845, nearly 16 years before the Civil War began.
Let's dissect the full quote, sentence by sentence.
"I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little bit later, you wouldn't have had the Civil War."[Maybe Trump believes this because his friend Frederick Douglass told him...]
This is in the vein of imagining various alternate histories of the United States.
"He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart."
Jackson was known for his temper and his loyalty to his friends, so this is OK.
"He was really angry that-- he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War."
Jackson did not, because Jackson was dead.
"He said, 'There's no reason for this.'"
See above.
(Jackson in 1832 and 1833 oversaw the Nullification Crisis, in which Jackson used the threat of military force to make South Carolina pay tariffs. The situation was eventually resolved but is viewed as a precursor to the Civil War.)
Trump's quote came during an interview with the Washington Examiner's Salena Zito. The two discussed Trump's visit to Tennessee in March, during which he toured the Hermitage, laid a wreath at Jackson's tomb and called him the "people's president."
I think I'd probably give him a pass on this one. While I am certain that he truly believed Douglass to be still doing an amazing job, I am less convinced that he thinks that Jackson was hard at work preventing the civil war. In this context I'd put his very confused statement down to inarticulateness rather that its cousin stupidity.
The two discussed Trump's visit to Tennessee in March, during which he toured the Hermitage, laid a wreath at Jackson's tomb and called him the "people's president."
The greatest irony is that Trump seems to be completely unaware that Jackson is the father of the Democratic Party. Yet he has found a soulmate in a man whose legacy consists of ethnic cleansing, military threats, the "spoils system" of entrenching graft and corruption, and using the tools government to pursue personal vendettas.
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?"
The (so-called) President of the United States thinks that nobody in the last 150 years ever asked why there was a Civil War.
Apparently he remains unaware of this invention called a "book"—it's sort of like a tweet but with thousands of them strung together and then several hard copies printed out—let alone the fact that there are thousands of these "books" devoted to just that question.
Who knew presidentin' could be this hard?
People who are wrong are just as sure they're right as people who are right. The only difference is, they're wrong.
— God@The Tweet of God
If I remember correctly Jackson sent troops to South Carolina and threatened to hang John C Calhoun.
But I think that it was good thing that Jackson was not the president during the War Between The States. The north would have still won, but without stabilizing voices like R.E.L. the insurgency after the war would have been much worse.
Zito defended Trump, saying the quotes were taken out of context and that they made sense in relation to the conversation the two were having before the tape began rolling.
As for Trump's statement that the issue made Jackson angry, The Hill's Joe Concha wrote that "as historians will tell you, there had been perpetual tension between the North and South over slavery since the nation was founded in 1776. The Civil War just didn't happen overnight."
Soon, I’ll post my farewell message. The end is starting to get close. There are many misconceptions about me, and before I go, to live with my ancestors on the steppes, I want to set the record straight.
"People don't ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?"
Please, be generous. Our president is people. I know it is hard to remember, but even Donald Trump is human. I am sure, just as a logical generality, there are other people in addition to our President (who knows more than the Generals) who have not asked that question. Perhaps they reside on the steppes of Asia, or are huddled in a basement in Syria, busy with other things and have never pondered the history of the USofA.
President Jackson was President Harry Truman's favorite president. He pressured the taxpayers of Jackson County Missouri to place a life size statue of Old Hickory on the Courthouse square in Independence, Missouri.
" In this context I'd put his very confused statement down to inarticulateness rather that its cousin stupidity." Is is not inarticulateness or stupidity. It is a basic rhetorical tactic. And it works.
The reason that the CW happened was money; the south had an enormous amount money tide up in slaves. The economic loss as the south saw it would have bee too great. Canada abolished slavery without war but they compromised and did not have nearly as big a problem to deal with as the south.
But after John Brown the Missouri border war the die was cast; the south knew then the north was more interested in killing southerner than ending slavery.
Soon, I’ll post my farewell message. The end is starting to get close. There are many misconceptions about me, and before I go, to live with my ancestors on the steppes, I want to set the record straight.
Thompson also notes that “Trump’s appeal as a presidential candidate depends significantly on the belief that he is a truth-teller who will have nothing to do with the conventional language of politics,” warning that:
“We shouldn’t confuse anti-rhetorical ‘truth telling’ with actually telling the truth. One of the advantages of this positioning is that once listeners are convinced that you’re not trying to deceive them in the manner of a regular politician, they may switch off the critical faculties they usually apply to political speech and forgive you any amount of exaggeration, contradiction, or offensiveness. And if establishment rivals or the media criticize you, your supporters may dismiss that as spin.”
Here is the great danger: Many people expect a political lie to sound slick, to be delivered by intellectual elites spouting $5 words. A clumsy, folksy lie delivered by a shyster using broken English reads as truth.
It is an upside-down world in which easy lies sound more true than hard facts.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—A class of fourth-grade students touring the White House on Monday had a chance encounter with Donald Trump and were able to answer several of his questions about the Civil War.
The students, on a field trip organized by their Bethesda, Maryland, elementary school, happened upon Trump outside the Oval Office and “cleared a lot of things up for him,” their teacher said.
After Trump invited the children into his office, the ten-year-olds briefed him on the causes of the Civil War, including slavery, states’ rights, and regional economic differences.
“It was really cool,” Tracy Klugian, who had done a diorama about the Civil War while in third grade, said. “Someday I’ll be able to tell my kids that I met the President and taught him about history.”
But another student in the class, Zach Dorrinson, said that his attempt to explain the abolitionist movement to Trump was not successful.
“He needs to learn how to sit still for longer without fidgeting,” the fourth-grader said.
I think by now it should be obvious to everyone that:
when Trump says "nobody knew" something, he means that *HE* didn't know that thing;
when he says "nobody ever thinks" (or "nobody has ever thought") about something he means that
*HE* never thinks (or has never thought) about that thing;
when he says "nobody has ever done" something it means that *HE* has never done that thing;
when he says "everybody knows" something he means that *HE* believes that thing.
People who are wrong are just as sure they're right as people who are right. The only difference is, they're wrong.
— God@The Tweet of God
