President Trump said Monday he’ll deliver his acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination from either the White House or the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg PA.
Both sites are problematic.
They are both properties of the U.S. government — “raising legal and ethical issues for their use in a political event,” reports the Associated Press.
In addition, Gettysburg was the turning point of the Civil War, when the Confederacy began its slide to defeat and destruction; inevitably, that puts a spotlight on Trump’s defense of monuments to Confederate heroes who fought to preserve slavery.
The president’s announcement, delivered in a Twitter post, stirred a frenzy of reactions, many of them deeply sarcastic.
“A number of Republicans — not to mention Democrats — have questioned both the optics and the legality of Trump delivering his acceptance speech from the White House, given that past presidents have usually drawn a firm line between the White House and their campaigns,” reports Axios.
“The president would likely love the optics of delivering a speech at the site of [Abraham Lincoln’s] Gettysburg Address, one of the most famous presidential speeches in history.”
Gettysburg appears to have stronger support among Trump advisers as a site for the speech than does the executive mansion itself.
“White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany suggested a Trump speech from Gettysburg would focus on themes of unity, saying ‘the president has done a lot to bring this country together’ despite intense polarization throughout his first term,” says The Hill.
