#DeSantis responds to Trump’s Civil War remarks: ‘I don’t even know what he’s talking about’

Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis scoffed at former President Trump’s recent claim that he could have negotiated the end to the Civil War in the 19th century.

“I don’t even know what he’s talking about,” DeSantis, the governor of Florida, told ABC News when asked in an interview Sunday in Iowa about Trump’s recent remarks.

“I mean, Lincoln did what he had to do. He ended up ushering in the abolition of slavery and he saved the Union. That’s a huge victory for the Republican Party,” DeSantis added. “So, I don’t know. Relitigating that doesn’t make much sense to me.”

On Saturday, Trump said he thinks “many mistakes” were made during the Civil War and suggested so much bloodshed could have been avoided through negotiations. He also said the war was “so horrible, was so horrible, but so fascinating.”

“And it was, I don’t know, it was just different, I just find it — I’m so attracted to seeing it, so many mistakes were made,” he said.

“See there was something I think could’ve been negotiated, to be honest with you. I think you could’ve negotiated that. All the people died, so many people died,” he said.

Trump did not specify what details he thought could be negotiated to avoid the estimated 620,000 soldiers who died from 1861 to 1865. He noted, however, that President Lincoln would not have been as well remembered.

“Abraham Lincoln, of course if he negotiated it, you probably wouldn’t even know who Abraham Lincoln was,” Trump said. “He would have been president, but he would have been president, and he wouldn’t have been the Abraham Lincoln. Would’ve been different, but that would’ve been OK.”

The remarks come as fellow GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley recently took heat for her answer during a town hall about the cause of the Civil War. Her answer at first omitted any mention of slavery, prompting widespread rebuke from her fellow GOP candidates, as well as from Democrats.

She later said she thought “it was a given” that the war was about slavery.