Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis ridiculed former President Trump's recent claim that an end to the Civil War could have been negotiated in the 19th century.
“I don't even know what he's saying,” said Florida Governor DeSantis. told ABC News When asked about President Trump's recent comments during an interview Sunday in Iowa.
“So Lincoln did what he had to do. He ultimately led the way in abolishing slavery and saved the Union. This is a huge victory for the Republican Party,” DeSantis added. “So, I don't know. It doesn't make much sense to me to discuss it again.”
On Saturday, President Trump said he thought “a lot of mistakes” were made during the Civil War and suggested that so much bloodshed could have been avoided through negotiations. He also said that the war was “very scary and horrifying, but also very fascinating.”
“And it was like, I don't know, it was just different, I just found it — I'm so drawn to watching it, so many mistakes were made. '' he said.
“To be honest, I think there were things that could have been negotiated. I think you could have negotiated that. The whole population died, so many people died,” he said.
President Trump did not say what details he thought could be negotiated to avoid the deaths of an estimated 620,000 soldiers from 1861 to 1865, but President Lincoln's memory wasn't all that great. I pointed out that it would have been.
“Abraham Lincoln, of course if he were to negotiate, we probably wouldn't even know who Abraham Lincoln was,” Trump said. “He could have been president, but he wouldn't have been president, he wouldn't have been Abraham Lincoln. I wish it had been different, but I'm glad it was.”
The remarks came amid outrage over fellow Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley's recent town hall answers about the causes of the Civil War. Her response initially omitted any mention of slavery by her, prompting widespread condemnation from Democrats as well as her fellow Republican candidates.
She later said that she had taken it “for granted” that the war was about slavery.
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