Former President Donald Trump said that negotiations could have prevented the Civil War while speaking at a campaign event in Iowa on Saturday, as the more than 150-year-old conflict remains an unexpected talking point along the Republican primary campaign trail.
✱ Of the war, Trump said “so many mistakes were made,” adding: “This is something that could have been negotiated.”
✱ He claimed that had it been negotiated, “you probably wouldn’t know who Abraham Lincoln was,” but “that would’ve been OK.”
✱ Trump did not elaborate on what negotiations he thought would have prevented the outbreak of the Civil War—the deadliest war in U.S. history.
✱ “I know it very well, I know the whole process that they went through and they just couldn’t get along,” Trump said. “That would have been something that could have been negotiated and they wouldn’t have had that problem. But it was a hell of a time.”
