Bloomberg reports that Donald Trump plans to give a speech on Monday attacking Democratic rival Hillary Clinton:
The event planning then played out in front of reporters. “I don’t even know where yet. I think we are gonna do it in Washington at the club,” Trump said about delivering the speech at Trump National Golf Course in suburban Virginia. “Let’s do it at the club,” he said, turning to Hope Hicks, his top press aide. “I wouldn’t mind doing it on the Potomac.” “I almost would love to do it right at the flag,” Trump said. “I love that,” Hicks told him. “But it would depend on the weather and stuff,” Trump added.
Perhaps there is more than one flag at Trump National Golf Course, but as Liam Donovan notes, one of those flags is notable for having a historical marker affixed to it that appears to have been entirely invented:
Between the 14th hole and the 15th tee of one of the club’s two courses, Mr. Trump installed a flagpole on a stone pedestal overlooking the Potomac, to which he affixed a plaque purportedly designating “The River of Blood.” “Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot,” the inscription reads. “The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as ‘The River of Blood.'” The inscription, beneath his family crest and above Mr. Trump’s full name, concludes: “It is my great honor to have preserved this important section of the Potomac River!” Like many of Mr. Trump’s claims, the inscription was evidently not fact-checked. “No. Uh-uh. No way. Nothing like that ever happened there,” said Richard Gillespie, the executive director of the Mosby Heritage Area Association, a historical preservation and education group devoted to an 1,800-square-mile section of the Northern Virginia Piedmont, including the Lowes Island site. “The only thing that was remotely close to that,” Mr. Gillespie said, was 11 miles up the river at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff in 1861, a rout of Union forces in which several hundred were killed. “The River of Blood?” he added. “Nope, not there.”
Not that long ago, it would have been unthinkable for a presidential candidate to give a speech at the site of a fictitious historical marker that he may well have had a hand in making up. Now it seems like it is, ahem, par for the course.
