Trump imagines a more efficient Civil War

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The news, in brief …

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• Tucker Carlson schools Ted Cruz on Iran

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Make me smarter …

The cringe-ification of protest

As the lawlessness of Trump’s second term compounds, social media is undermining the value of large-scale protests. Disobedience still serves a purpose, and we can’t let “cringe” be the enemy of correct. Read more.

Other than that, Mrs. Trump, how was Les Mis?

President Donald Trump’s conman brain can only see the world in terms of bum deals and great swindles.

He’s made a life out of floating checks and breaking promises, and he can’t see money going out as anything other than a failure. He thinks of big numbers that aren’t a count of his crowds or his memecoin profits as deeply evil, and possibly anti-American. So, it follows that he would be taken aback by the hundreds of thousands of Americans who died in the Civil War, not because it was a great national tragedy, but because he thinks he could have saved the Union for less.

Per Trump, the Great Emancipator wouldn’t know a discount from a cannonball lodged in the icy ground.

“The Civil War, it always seemed to me maybe that could've been solved without losing 600,000 plus people,” Trump said on Wednesday.

Beyond his party label, Trump has very little in common with Abraham Lincoln. Still, it’s an interesting exercise to imagine what he might get up to after the schism.

Would Pete Hegseth be able to steady his shaking hands long enough to torch Burlington? Would Trump’s promises of reconciliation follow the same route as his many trade deals, always just a few days away and never on paper? Would he convince half the country that very few people died in the conflict, by inflating the census data the same way he does his rally attendance? Would some actor in a touring company of an Andrew Lloyd Webber production turn up in the history books with three names and slightly better aim?

What do you think? Is there some trade-off that Trump could have made if he were in charge in the 1860s, beyond the glaringly obvious and morally reprehensible one? Sound off in the comments.

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Before you go …

Trump has become an easy mark — and so has America

The president's erratic behavior has left him — and us — open to manipulation from allies and enemies alike. Read more.

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