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Donald Trump.
More Americans believe President Donald Trump would've stopped the Civil War from ever taking place than believe the same about former President Andrew Jackson, a Public Policy Polling survey showed Tuesday.
PPP found that 20% of respondents believe that Trump would have stopped the Civil War from happening if he was alive at the time, whereas 16% of respondents believe Jackson would have if he was.
However, in both cases, far more respondents believe that both would have been unable to stop the war. In Trump's case, 53% of respondents said he would not have been able to stop it, and 43% said Jackson would not have. Another 28% were unsure if Trump would have been able to stop the war while 41% were not sure if Jackson would have.
The question was posed as a result of Trump's interview with Salena Zito of The Washington Examiner earlier this month. In that interview, Trump asked why the Civil War happened and suggested it would have been avoided had Jackson been president.
"People don't realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why?" the president said. "People don't ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?"
Those comments came after a lengthy riff about Jackson, who Trump said he believed was similar to himself because of his populist views and bombastic campaigning.
"I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn't have had the Civil War," Trump said of the slave-owning president. "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."
Jackson, who was president from 1829 to 1837, died in 1845, 16 years before the Civil War started.
The Civil War broke out after years of tensions between the northern and southern states, namely over the issues of slavery and whether western territories being added to the union would enter as "slave" or "free" states, which had a significant effect on the makeup of Congress.
In total, 11 southern states seceded from the US and formed the Confederate States of America. The war between the Confederacy and the Union was, to this day, the bloodiest in US history. It eventually led to the abolition of slavery in the US, freeing millions of slaves in the South.
PPP surveyed 692 registered voters between May 12 and 14 and the margin of error was 3.7 percentage points.
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