A former Republican presidential adviser just called out President Donald Trump for promoting treasonous ideas on his social media accounts.
“A gift generated by AI. Except there's a problem — can you count the stars?” Steve Schmidt, who advised President George W. Bush, posted on his Substack on Tuesday. “The star count of the Confederacy. The Confederate flag is, and always has been, the MAGA flag. And so on this — the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg, on the edge of the 250th anniversary of our independence — when a corrupt Supreme Court will decide whether the 14th Amendment means what it says and says what it means.”
The Confederacy consisted of 11 states that illegally seceded from the United States of America in 1860 and 1861 to preserve slavery within their jurisdictions and guarantee that it could be spread to the Western territories acquired during the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). President Abraham Lincoln, who like Trump was a Republican but unlike Trump supported the Constitution over far right elements in the South, ultimately defeated the Confederacy, preserved the Union and emancipated the slaves.
“On that day, this day, Donald Trump has — is — once again raised high the stars and bars, the symbol of treason that killed 800,000 Americans and is a ready replacement for the swastika at European hate rallies,” Schmidt wrote. “It is very simple, and it is what it has been for ten years: on America, or Trump. But know this — any man who would post this abomination is no American president. What he is, is Jefferson Davis's successor. A traitor to American liberty.”
As of 2022, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) determined there were roughly 2,000 Confederate monuments remaining in the United States.
“While the term ‘domestic terror’ did not exist back then, the actions of those who championed the so-called Lost Cause mirror what we see today,” Lecia Brooks, the SPLC’s Chief of Staff and Culture, wrote to Salon in 2022. “All of this iconography was used as racist props to intimidate and remind African Americans of their place, first and foremost. Their widespread placement allowed the Confederacy to reimagine its treasonous acts as a noble effort while minimizing their brutal role in preserving slavery.”
She added, “The perception of being disrespected, dishonored, rejected, or treated as inferior — what psychological professionals call ‘narcissistic wounds’ — can be powerful drivers of violence.”
Trump’s claim that he won the 2020 presidential election is similar to the Confederacy’s “Lost Cause” mythology, according to experts, because both rely on myths to justify their cause. While the Lost Cause mythology claims that the Confederacy fought for a noble cause rather than being treasonous white supremacists, Trump’s Big Lie holds that the 2020 election was stolen from him even though the president has long claimed that any contest he loses was rigged (including the Emmy Awards for not nominating his reality TV show “The Apprentice,” the 2016 Republican Iowa caucuses and the 2016 popular vote) and his claims about the 2020 election were conclusively debunked by the American legal system.
“Someone should read to him ‘Lost, Not Stolen,’ a 2022 report by eight conservatives (two former Republican senators, three former federal appellate judges, a former Republican solicitor general, and two Republican election law specialists),” conservative writer George F. Will wrote for The Washington Post in February. “They examined all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed in multiple states by Trump and his supporters. Twenty cases were dismissed before hearings on their merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before hearings. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump’s side prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state’s result.”
Will added, “Trump’s batting average? .016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump’s advocates confirmed Trump’s loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.” Therefore he wrote of Trump, “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”
Upon taking office in both of his terms, Trump has tried to promote Confederate iconography such as by hanging a portrait of Confederate General Robert E. Lee at the West Point library.
