Donald Trump Is Using ‘Confederate Battle Flag’ As ‘Campaign Banner,’ Republican Strategist Says
Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, who was an aide to late Sen. John McCain, appeared on MSNBC on Wednesday and spoke of Donald Trump’s purported support of the Confederacy, Raw Story reported.
“He’s hoisting the Confederate flag, The Confederate battle flag as his campaign banner in a fundamental way,” Schmidt said.
“What we see with Trump is he’s really historically — he’s the second president of the Confederacy. This is exactly what the George Wallace presidency would have looked like. It would have been one of incitement and division.”
According to Schmidt, one of the “great tragedies” of the Republican Party is how intertwined it has become with the old Confederacy in the south. Schmidt claimed that Americans are rejecting Trump’s “divisions and incitements” and pointed to the shifting demographics of America, which he suggests is a “death knell” for the GOP in its current form.
At one point in the discussion, Schmidt claimed that Trump is historically the “second president of the confederacy.”
“This is exactly what the George Wallace presidency would have looked like,” he said, referring to the former Alabama governor. “It would have been one of incitement and division.”
Schmidt isn’t the first to compare Trump to Wallace. As The Inquisitr previously reported, conservative columnist Max Boot also made such a parallel and suggested the president’s leadership is a reflection of how the former governor would have led the country.
Wallace was an ardent supporter of segregation. In 1968, he infamously threatened to run over demonstrators after they blocked former President Lyndon B. Johnson’s limousine. Notably, Wallace — like Trump — used a quote first uttered by Miami police chief Walter Headley — “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
Schmidt made his comments amid the president’s opposition to the removal of Confederate commanders’ names from U.S. military bases. Per CNN, Trump’s defense of the commanders runs in opposition to U.S. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who claimed they were open on discussing the renaming of such military bases. According to the president, the stations are part of America’s long “history” of victory, success, and freedom.
The renewed conversation of the Confederacy and its role in American history comes after the death of George Floyd, an African American who died at the hands of a white police officer, Derek Chauvin. Supporters of remnants of the Confederacy point to their historical value, while critics argue that for many Americans, they are painful reminders of the country’s racist past.
