Trump Says Andrew Jackson Could Have Avoided The Civil War

In an interview with the Washington Examiner on Monday afternoon, President Donald Trump made a bizarre claim about Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, and said the Civil War wouldn’t have happened at all if Jackson had still been around at the time it began.

While speaking to Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito, Trump said the whole Civil War could have been avoided if only the U.S. had a better negotiator at the time and not someone like Abraham Lincoln, who Trump thought was not up to the task.

Trump’s interaction with Zito started off with the president saying: “[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 responded to that by saying: “Oh, that's right. You were in Tennessee.”

“And it was amazing. The people of Tennessee are amazing people. They love Andrew Jackson. They love Andrew Jackson in Tennessee,” Trump continued.

Zito replied: “Yeah, he's a fascinating...”

Following this, Trump made the puzzling claim about Jackson: “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. And 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 the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”

Trump's claim about Jackson being angry were hard to understand, since Jackson died in 1845 and the Civil War started only in 1861, 16 years after his death. Users on social media were quick to poke fun at the president.

However, Trump clarified his comments Monday night and said he didn’t actually say or think Jackson was alive during the Civil War, but he stood by his broader claim that the seventh president of the U.S. could have prevented the violence if he would have been alive at the time.

Trump’s admiration for Jackson has been quite evident as the president has often compared himself to the president who held office from 1829-37. On March 15, Trump also visited Jackson’s 1,000 acre estate in Nashville, Tennessee, to mark Jackson’s 250th birth anniversary. During a speech he gave during his visit, Trump described why he admired Jackson so much.

Trump said Jackson recognized "true leadership" meant "putting America first,” which was also one of Trump's campaign slogans. He added: "It was during the [American] Revolution that Jackson first confronted and defied an arrogant elite. Does that sound familiar? Captured by the [British] redcoats and ordered to shine the shoes of a British officer, Jackson simply refused. From that day on, Andrew Jackson rejected authority that looked down on the common people."

Making strange claims is not a new phenomenon for Trump. In an interview with Reuters last week, while commenting on the Israel-Palestine conflict, the president suggested there was no concrete reason for the two sides to have been fighting all these years.

“I want to see peace with Israel and the Palestinians,” Trump said. “There is no reason there's not peace between Israel and the Palestinians — none whatsoever. So we're looking at that, and we're also looking at the potential of going to Saudi Arabia,” he added.