Trump says Civil War ‘could have been negotiated’

Former President Donald Trump said Saturday that he thought the Civil War “could have been negotiated.”

The front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination made the remark at a campaign rally in Iowa, telling supporters that he is fascinated by the Civil War.

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“I’m so attracted to seeing it,” Trump said. “So many mistakes were made. See, there was something that I think could have been negotiated, to be honest with you. I think you could have negotiated that. All the people died. So many people died.”

During the nearly two-minute tangent, Trump, like fellow GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley did recently, failed to address slavery as the root cause of the four-year war that left hundreds of thousands of soldiers dead. He did not mention another reason or elaborate on his suggestion.

Trump continued to muse about the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, saying people “probably wouldn’t even know” who the 16th president was “if he negotiated it.”

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“He would have been president … but he wouldn’t have been the Abraham Lincoln,” Trump said, using the article “the” for emphasis. “Would’ve been different, but that would’ve been OK. … I know it very well, I know the whole process that they went through, and they just couldn’t get along. That would’ve been something that could’ve been negotiated, and they wouldn’t have had that problem. But it was a hell of a time.”

Trump is in Iowa ahead of the Jan. 15 caucuses, the first nominating contest in the 2024 presidential election cycle. He holds a commanding polling lead over Haley, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), and other Republican hopefuls for the nomination both in the state and nationally, according to FiveThirtyEight.