Remembering Trump's biggest verbal blunder in months

Donald Trump angered a lot of people when he fumbled out a very weird message about the Civil War in April at a campaign event. Let's look back at what the former president said and how his critics responded to his biggest faux pas in months. 

While speaking at a rally in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania on April 13th, Trump verbally stumbled his way into a world of trouble when he began rambling about the beauty of Gettysburg and the reality of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s unpopularity today. 

"Gettysburg, what an unbelievable battle that was," the former president told the crowd with his usual gusto, sporting a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat and his signature black overcoat. Newsweek quoted Trump’s full comments. 

"It was so much, and so interesting, and so vicious and horrible, and so beautiful in so many different ways—it represented such a big portion of the success of this country," Trump continued. This was his first major mistake. 

Calling the Battle of Gettysburg beautiful angered many people online including Michael Steele, former Republican National Convention Chairman and current MSNBC political commentator, who wrote Trump had no idea what happened at Gettysburg.

However, the former president didn’t stop there and went on to talk about the city of Gettysburg and attempted to rile up the crowd over the apparent lack of respect that Confederate General Robert E. Lee now suffered in the modern world. 

"Gettysburg, wow—I go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to look and to watch," The former president explained to the crowd. "And the statement of Robert E. Lee, who's no longer in favor—did you ever notice it? He's no longer in favor.”

“'Never fight uphill, me boys, never fight uphill.' They were fighting uphill, he said, 'Wow, that was a big mistake,' he lost his great general. 'Never fight uphill, me boys,' but it was too late," Trump added. If that didn’t make sense to you that’s okay. 

Much of what Trump said about Gettysburg angered and confused political pundits and online commentators alike. Famed American fiction author Stephen King called Trump a "dimbulb" on Twitter while biographer and historian T.J Styles took his comments further. 

“Obviously Trump doesn't know anything about history. He mentions Lee 'losing his great general,' which is probably an echo of a memory of hearing that Stonewall Jackson was killed—at Chancellorsville, not Gettysburg. But it doesn't matter in the neo-Confederate appeal,” Styles wrote on Twitter. 

The pro-Ron DeSantis Republican strategist and political commentator Cryptid Politics echoed T.J Styles' opinion of Trump’s knowledge of history and also wrote that Trump didn’t know anything about Gettysburg in a Twitter post with a clip of the remarks. 

“Donald Trump doesn’t know the first thing about The Battle of Gettysburg,” Cryptid Politics wrote in a post that featured a clip from Trump’s comments. “He shouldn’t even try being a historian. His lack of in-depth knowledge quickly reveals itself.”

Newsweek’s Giulia Carbonaro pointed out that several users who responded to Cryptid Politics’s Twitter post specifically questioned how a battle that cost the lives of roughly 50,000 Americans was beautiful. 

However, regardless of the reactions, the former president's comments in Pennsylvania put him at the top of new headlines, something that will either help or harm Trump as he tries to win the battleground state in November 2024. 

Pennsylvania is home to nineteen electoral votes, which Newsweek noted was the most of any of the swing states—which makes the state a major prize for whichever presidential candidate can capture it. Both men have already done it once. 

In 2016, Trump beat Hilary Client in Pennsylvania by less than 45,000 votes while Biden took the state back for the Democrats in 2020. But Biden was only able to defeat Trump with a slim margin of just 80,000 votes.