President Donald Trump Tuesday night vowed to protect Thanksgiving, claiming there are "some people" who want to change the name of the holiday in the same way a "war on Christmas" has happened.
"We're not changing it," Trump claimed at his rally in Sunrise, Florida, reports The Hill. "You know, some people want to change the name 'Thanksgiving.' They don't want to use the term 'Thanksgiving.'"
The same thing happened with Christmas, but "now everybody's using Christmas again," Trump said. "Remember I said that?"
Back in 2015 when Trump was starting his first presidential campaign, he promised his supporters that he would fight against the "war on Christmas" and pledged that people would be saying "merry Christmas again."
"I'm a good Christian," he said in 2015. "If I become president, we're gonna be saying 'merry Christmas' at every store."
Trump said Tuesday that now the fight will have to extend to Thanksgiving as well.
"Now we're going to have to do a little work on Thanksgiving," Trump said. "People have different ideas why it shouldn't be called Thanksgiving ... everybody in this room, I know, loves the name Thanksgiving, and we're not changing it."
His comments sparked a trending Twitter hashtag, #WhatLiberalsCallThanksgiving, where many critics poked fun at the president. One self-described Native American, however, said she prefers to call the holiday a "#nationaldayofmourning."
Trump, meanwhile, declared at the Florida rally that "Americans have so much to be thankful for" this year under his administration, reports Fox News.
"The economy is booming. Wages are rising. Crime is falling. Poverty is plummeting. Confidence is soaring. And America is stronger than ever before," he said.
The president was also nostalgic about his own Thanksgiving celebrations from the past.
"For years and years and years, I was like you. I was a civilian," Trump said. "I loved my life. My life was so much simpler. It was so nice and soft and easy. You build a building and you have fun."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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