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NBC Corrects Misreporting of Trump’s Comments on Lee, Grant

President Donald Trump speaks Friday at a rally at the Warren County Fairgrounds in Lebanon, Ohio. (Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters/Newscom)

NBC News issued a correction Sunday of its reporting on President Donald Trump’s comments about Civil War generals, acknowledging that the president did not describe Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee as “incredible.”

NBC News did not include Trump’s comments in full when it incorrectly reported that the president called Lee “incredible” during a speech Friday in Ohio. The president’s full remarks make clear that he was calling Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant incredible, not Lee.

“Ohio is the state that gave us a great president who hasn’t been properly recognized, OK? William McKinley has not been properly recognized,” Trump said during the rally Friday evening in Lebanon, Ohio.

“What he did in terms of trade, in terms of war, but in terms of trade—and I hate to say, in being smart in terms of tariffs, William McKinley has not been properly recognized. But maybe someday he will.”

Trump then added of Ohio and the Civil War:

It also gave you a general who was incredible. He drank a little bit too much. You know who I’m talking about, right? So Robert E. Lee was a great general. And Abraham Lincoln developed a phobia. He couldn’t beat Robert E. Lee. …

They said, ‘Don’t take him; he’s got a drinking problem.’ And Lincoln said, ‘I don’t care what problem he has. You guys aren’t winning.’ And his name was Grant, General Grant.

Trump’s “incredible” comment was in clear reference to Grant, the Ohio native who later became president and was known for his battles with alcoholism.

NBC’s correction came after Trump skewered the network Sunday morning on Twitter for distorting his speech:

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