Donald Trump is always saying "We have to do it/We have no choice," so why did he ask why the Civil War had to be fought?

And why did he throw out the idea that Andrew Jackson — if he'd been around a little later — could have found a way to avoid the Civil War?

Here's the idea that occurred to me, that I withheld to give you a chance to discuss it without my skewing your thought processes.

I'm not saying I definitely believe this was Trump's plan, only that it could have been and that the benefits serve his interests even if he merely bumbled into it.

Trump knows that the media will jump at opportunities to call him ignorant and/or racist. What he said about the Civil War seemed like another great opportunity. Historians — experts — were wheeled out to instruct us — imperiously, pedantically — that the Civil War had to be fought. There was no avoiding it. Nobody — not Andrew Jackson, not anybody — could have averted it.

Well, there you have it on the record now. Sometimes a war must be fought. It's not the failing of the President. Even the greatest Presidents are helpless against the coming onslaught of inevitable war.

What does Trump care about a 19th century war? He's not really trying to open up an intellectual discussion of whether there was anything that could have averted the Civil War, but he knows [OR: could have known] that historians are deeply dug in and will rouse themselves to make strong statements about the inevitability of war and the "plain nonsense" of the notion that "the right man with the right strength... can change the course of history."

Trump may never take us to war, but he wants his options. He wants to be able to say We have to do it, we have no choice and to assert that it's not his personal failure to avert war. It's plain nonsense to believe that a different man — a better man —would have avoided war. Look at all the historians who said exactly that — historians who thought they were schooling him and were, in fact, expanding his power. But they thought they were so smart, so educated, so up in a high place looking down on him. It only caused them to make their Trump-empowering statements more passionate and emphatic.

I don't know if he did that on purpose. But didn't that just happen?