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Trump's chief of staff went on Fox News and, yeah, this isn't good

The Civil War was fought over slavery, not an inability to 'compromise.'

Keith Wagstaff

on October 31, 2017

Donald Trump is freaking out over the Russia indictments, so naturally his chief of staff went on Fox News and went into damage control mode. Or he basically defended the Confederacy's position on slavery. One of the two.

John Kelly appeared Monday on the first night of Laura Ingraham's new show, The Ingraham Angle. When asked about taking down Confederate monuments, he defended Robert E. Lee and then said "the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War."

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Yeah, not great. Fun history lesson: The Civil War was very much, explicitly about slavery. So yes, lawmakers could have compromised to avoid the Civil War. But that compromise would have involved protecting slavery.

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More and more, the picture of Kelly as the "adult in the room" is looking ridiculous. To make these comments -- especially after Charlottesville, and Trump's defense of people who marched with neo-Nazis -- is inexcusable.

Topics Donald Trump Politics

Keith Wagstaff

Keith Wagstaff is an assistant editor at Mashable and a terrible Settlers of Catan player. He has written for TIME, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, NBC News, The Village Voice, VICE, GQ and New York Magazine, among many other reputable and not-so-reputable publications. After nearly a decade in New York City, he now lives in his native Los Angeles.