TVC E. Donald Trump has during a town hall on the “Today” show on NBC Thursday morning slammed the United State’s decision to use Harriet Tubman on the new $20 bill as pure political correctness.
Donald Trump thinks African-American anti-slavery icon Harriet Tubman, is “fantastic” — but he says the move to have her replace seventh president Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill is “pure political correctness.”
“Well, Andrew Jackson had a great history, and I think it’s very rough when you take somebody off the bill,” Trump said during a town hall on the “Today” show on NBC Thursday morning. “I think Harriet Tubman is fantastic, but I would love to leave Andrew Jackson or see if we can maybe come up with another denomination.”
Trump suggested — as Ben Carson also has– that Tubman be put on the $2 bill, which is no longer printed.
The business mogul heaped praise on Jackson, whose presence on the $20 bill was criticized due to his history as a slave-owner and his dismal record on Native American and racial issues, epitomized by the Jackson administration’s infamous “Trail of Tears” policy that forcibly relocated the Cherokee people to devastating effect.
Meanwhile, Trump’s primary competitor John Kasich has praised Tubman on the campaign trailThursday.
“She wasn’t some big shot. She became a big shot because of what she did,” Kasich said. “She saw something that she thought did not represent justice, she saw something she thought that was just patently unfair.
Tubman, who died in 1913 at the age of 91, escaped slavery in the South and eventually led hundreds of escaped slaves to freedom as a “conductor” of the Underground Railroad. After the slaves were freed, Tubman was a staunch supporter of a woman’s right to vote.
Of the decision to put Tubman on the $20 bill, which was announced this week, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said, “What she did to free people on an individual basis and what she did afterward — that’s a legacy of what an individual can do in a democracy.”
