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President Trump Tried To Clarify His Andrew Jackson Remarks & It Didn't Go Well

Andrea González-Ramírez
May 2, 2017, 1:45 PM
Photo: Olivier Douliery/POOL/EPA/REX/Shutterstock.
President Trump can't let go of his comments on President Andrew Jackson and the Civil War. On Monday, the president faced a ton of backlash when he said Jackson, a slaveowner, was mad when he saw "what was happening with regard to the Civil War." He then went on to question why the war had ever taken place.
"I mean had Andrew Jackson been a little bit later you wouldn't have had the Civil War. 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, 'There's no reason for this,'" Trump told the Washington Examiner's Salena Zito in an interview for Sirius XM. "People don't realize, you know, 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?"
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Besides the outrage caused by his questioning of why there was a war in the first place (hint: it was slavery), people also mocked POTUS for apparently not knowing that Jackson died a full 16 years before the war began. Naturally, the president took to Twitter on Monday night to try and clarify his remarks.
He tweeted, "President Andrew Jackson, who died 16 years before the Civil War started, saw it coming and was angry. Would never have let it happen!"
But the effort backfired — bigly. Some social media users said his tweet wasn't a huge leap from his original comments. Others joked about his effort to do some damage control.
A couple of users took the opportunity to point out, accurately, that Jackson was a slaveowner. Therefore, it's very unlikely that if he was alive by the time the Civil War began, he would have been in favor of ending slavery.
One user suggested the president should stop being fascinated by problematic political figures, like Jackson. (This weekend Trump invited President Duterte, the Phillippines' authoritarian leader, to come visit him at the White House. And on Monday, he said he is open to meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.)
And someone asked the hard-hitting question: Was Trump perhaps subtweeting President Lincoln? You be the judge.
Our only suggestion would be that President Trump take a break and crack open a U.S. history book (you know, as a refresher) — and maybe stop tweeting, too. However, it seem unlikely he'll do either.
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