Trump’s lawyer forwards email arguing Robert E. Lee and George Washington were the same

This is the guy leading the Donald Trump legal team.

Mr. [John] Dowd received the email on Tuesday night and forwarded it on Wednesday morning to more than two dozen recipients, including a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security, The Wall Street Journal editorial page and journalists at Fox News and The Washington Times. There is no evidence that any of the journalists used the contents of the email in their coverage. One of the recipients provided a copy to The New York Times.

“You’re sticking your nose in my personal email?” Mr. Dowd told The Times in a brief telephone interview. “People send me things. I forward them.” He then hung up.

1. Mr Dowd, you’re getting pissy because someone you forwarded the email on to sent it further on? What are you, ten years old?
2. What do you know about Jerome Almon, the conspiracy nut who forwarded this to you? Because he sounds like a real jewel.
3. Are you nuts? Or did you just never learn any American history?

The key portion of the email (apparently there’s other rantings and ravings in it as well) focuses on a series of assertions that Lee and Washington were nearly identical in every important way.

LEE IS NO DIFFERENT THAN WASHINGTON

Both owned slaves.

Well, yes, that’s true. Gen. Lee was evidently a very harsh slave owner, but let’s not cavil over that. Neither man is traditionally acclaimed for their slave-holding ways, and neither feature distingishes the men from many, many others prior to 1865.

Both rebelled against the ruling government.

The implication here is that there was no substantive difference between the governments being rebelled against (Britain’s monarchy vs the United States that the Confederate states were a voting member of), nor in the cause being fought for (“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” in the complaints Jefferson codified in the Declaration of Independence, vs. the right to own chattel slaves).

Do you not think that makes a difference, Mr Dowd?

Both men’s battle tactics are still taught at West Point.

And, arguably, Lee was a better tactician than Washington.

Both saved America.

The rationale here for Washington is fairly obvious.

The argument here for Lee, based on post-Civil War hagiography, is that he “saved” America by not shifting to a longer, bloodier guerrilla war when the conventional forces of the Confederacy had to surrender. That’s … a bit of a stretch for “saving America” (it seems unlikely that a guerrilla fight would have seriously endangered the Union, though it would have dragged out the conflict for a longer, bloodier time).

Both were great men, great Americans, and great commanders.

Great commanders, certainly. Great Americans is a bit sketchier; though Ulysses Grant argued against putting Lee on trial for treason after the war, it’s hard to plausibly suggest that someone who was willing to be the military leader of a rebellion against the United States (and renounce his oath to the US as a military officer) was a “great American.”

As to be being a great man … well, definitions might vary.

Neither man is any different than Napolean [sic], Shaka Zulu, Alexander the Great, Ramses II, etc.

I don’t recall, offhand, Washington acting as king or emperor or tyrant. I recall no grand campaigns of imperial conquest against his neighbors. On the contrary, Washington exercised significant lawful restraint with the Constitution as the first president, and then voluntarily surrendered the presidency after two terms, setting a precedent for orderly turnover of control in our democracy that has lasted for centuries.

Whether Lee could or would have been so conscientious a political leader is impossible to say, as he lost and was never then afforded the opportunity.

You literally cannot be against General Lee and be for General Washington, there is literally no difference between the two men.

I literally can be, because there literally is.

That said, Mr. Dowd, this not only demonstrates some serious quirkiness in your sense of reason and knowledge of history, but in your political savvy and judgment, forwarding around this sort of crap while serving as legal counsel to the President of the United States … and then being surprised when someone forwards it on in turn to the media.