Trump says he will be honoured to meet ‘smart cookie’ Kim Jong Un
FOOT IN MOUTH Claims expresident Jackson, who died 16 years before US Civil War, could have prevented conflict
President Donald Trump has said he will be “honoured” to meet North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and has invited controversial Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte to the White House and displayed a loose grasp of his country’s defining historical period, the 1861-1865 Civil War.
In media interviews to celebrate his first 100 days in office and in general remarks and statements, Trump has set off a stream of controversies.
The reaction to his surprising outreach to Kim and Duterte ranged from outrage — human rights groups and some media outlets said the president had invited a killer to the White House — to watchful wariness about Trump’s apparent break from the establishment.
But first, his take on the fouryear-long Civil War that ripped apart America over abolition of slavery.
“I mean had Andrew Jackson been a little later you wouldn’t have had the Civil War,” Trump said about the country’s seventh president in an interview to SiriusXM radio. “He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War,” he said.
The problem: Jackson, a slaveowner from pro-slavery South, died in 1845, 16 years before the civil war broke out.
The president also wondered if war was necessary. “People don’t realise, 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, who believes in the power of deal-making , may have been arguing there for the north and the south to have talked it out minus the devastations, but, unfortunately for him, historians are not on his side.
Jon Meecham, who wrote a Pulitzer-winning book on Jackson, told The New York Times, “The expansion of slavery caused the Civil War … And you can’t get around that. So what does Trump mean? Would he have let slavery exist but not expand? That’s the counterfactual question you have to ask.”
If his civil war remarks raised questions about his knowledge of the country’s past, those about Kim and Duterte were found troubling for the present and future.
“If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely; I would be honoured to do it,” Trump told Bloomberg news in an interview on Monday, when asked if he would sit down with the North Korean leader.
White House spokesperson Sean Spicer contextualised it at his daily briefing telling reporters Trump’s offer was conditional. “There’s a lot of conditions that I think would have to happen with respect to its behaviour and to show signs of good faith.”
About the invitation to the Philippine President, Trump pointed to Duterte’s popularity ratings, which are accorded a high priority by him, overlooking the extra-judicial killings he has ordered.
But the Philippine leader may have saved Trump the embarrassment by indicating he is likely to be too busy to accept the White House invitation.