Donald Trump appeared on Fox News this morning, where, during a characteristically bizarre interview, he suggested Abraham Lincoln could have avoided the Civil War by cutting a deal with the South—which, as a reminder, wanted slavery to remain legal.
Asked by a 10-year-old who his favorite president was when he was “little,” Trump began by saying he “liked Ronald Reagan.” (Note: Trump was 34 when Reagan first took office, and 42 when he left.) Then he turned to Lincoln, who he believes was a great president—but could’ve been better if he’d “settled” the Civil War.
“Great presidents?” Trump said. “Lincoln was probably a great president, although I’ve always said, why wasn’t that settled? You know, I’m a guy that—it doesn’t make sense we had a Civil War…. You’d almost say, like, why wasn’t that [settled]? As an example, Ukraine would have never happened, and Russia, if I were president. Israel would have never happened; October 7 would have never happened, as you know.”
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It’s not exactly clear what Trump thinks Lincoln should have done to “settle” the dispute between the North and the South, the latter of which seceded from the Union largely because it wanted to keep enslaving people. Does Trump think Abe should have come to the negotiating table, Art of the Deal–style, and let the South keep some slaves? Because that’s what it sounds like.
As for the idea that “Ukraine would have never happened…if I were president,” or October 7 for that matter, these are claims that he has repeatedly made with zero evidence to back them up. He did suggest on Thursday, though, that he would end the war in Ukraine by siding with Russia, bizarrely claiming that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy “let that war start.” (In fact, Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.)
Elsewhere in Trump’s sit-down with Fox, he claimed that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is “very much into women’s health,” that Kamala Harris is “a low-IQ person,” and that in a Harris presidency, “you won’t have any cows anymore.”