Trump seems never to have studied American history. The things he says that betray his ignorance are alarming.
I think it is very important for every American to learn about history and government and civics.
Whenever he opines about the past, his comments show a man who has no background knowledge, has never learned any history.
Today, Trump tweeted that Jackson saw the Civil War coming and he would not have let it happen.
Jackson died some 15 years before the Civil War, but we know this about him. He was a slave-owner and a white supremacist. He also drove Native Americans out of their lands, in what is known as the Trail of Tears. Probably, had he been president in 1861, he would have let the South secede or avoided their secession by offering to accept slavery as okay.
But counterfactuals are always problematic. We can’t know what Jackson would have done. He might have been changed by events, or not.
Frankly, it is weird to speculate about what Jackson would have done. Might as well speculate about what Millard Fillmore or JFK would have done. Who knows? Nobody.
I feel no assurance that Trump has ever read anything about Andrew Jackson. Or any other history. He knows real estate.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Where did Trump learn this alternative fact – Breitbart, Fox, etc.?
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I really think Trump is just plain stupid and his administration (Bannon) sets him up to look even worse than he really is. The man is a bumbling idiot and he just can’t keep his mouth shut.
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Ignorance of history is no excuse for stupidity.
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What’s worse than stupid – that’s closer to Trump?
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Princeton, Wharton?
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Degrees can easily be bought if one has enough mulah.
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The President of the United States should be able to pass the U.S. Citizenship Test. Reporters should know enough U.S history to immediately call their interviewees on obvious misstatements of United States history. Subjunctive history is diverting and a basis for fiction–not fact.
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Lea good point. Give him the citizenship test and when he fails make this grounds for impeachment!!
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My two favorite quotes on this from a Yahoo story today, informed sarcasm at its best:
“First of all, historians have actually talked about the reasons for the Civil War quite a bit,” said Kevin Kruse, a professor of history at Princeton, in an email to Yahoo News.
“Historians of the U.S. were surprised to learn that nobody asks why the Civil War happened, as it’s one of the central questions of American history,” said Nicole Hemmer, assistant professor at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, to Yahoo News. “It’s even featured on the test for American citizenship. But when Donald Trump marvels at the ignorance or incuriosity of the masses, what he’s really doing is expressing his own ignorance and incuriosity. He’s saying that he’s never asked about the origins of the Civil War.”
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You’re right about Jackson as slave owner, initiator of the Trail of Tears, famous for both the Battle of New Orleans and being the symbol of westward expansion, popularly characterized “an Indian fighter.”
While we can’t know what he would have done in 1861, we do know how he responded to his VP John C Calhoun from South Carolina, whose not so secret authorship of SC’s Doctrine of Nullification held that a state can nullify a federal law in conflict with a state law.
In 1832, SC held a state convention that voted to nullify and prevent enforcement of the Tariff of 1832, i.e. from collecting tariffs on enumerated imports into SC. This was a direct threat to the authority of the U.S. government – and to Jackson.
Jackson threatened to send troops into SC and seize and hang Calhoun and issued an executive order nullifying SC’s nullification. At his behest, Congress passed the Force Act authorizing the use of force to collect tariffs on goods entering SC.
Calhoun resigned as VP. SC backed down. Tensions cooled.
So, although a slaveholder, Jackson was a nationalist, not a states’ rights sectionalist.
The attempted secession of slave states in 1860-61 was over a different issue: whether western territories could be open to slavery, which slaveholders believed was necessary for slavery to survive.
Would Jackson have sided with secession or opposed it? I tend to think he would have opposed it as did many slaveholders (they were not all in support of secession), esp. since the majority sentiment in the North was not in support of emancipation in 1860 and the Republican P platform of 1860 called for both no expansion of slavery and no interference with it where it was practiced.
I’m sure some advisor who read a little history gave Trump enough information to make that claim. Even stranger, by claiming that Jackson wouldn’t have let the CW happen, he’s implying that Lincoln could have prevented it, but didn’t. That’s bizarre.
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Erich,
I recall that Trump told a room of Republicans, “I’ll bet you didn’t know that Lincoln was a Republican,” implying that he didn’t know it until he saw his speech on the TelePrompTer.
He attacked McCain’s heroism, why not attack Lincoln, however subtly, as inferior to Jackson.
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Andrew Jackson’s economic policies were a disaster for the “common man” and led monetary instability and widespread “Panics”– which was what economic depressions were called in 19th Century. While Jackson was born in horrific poverty, Donald Trump inherited over $200 million from his father. Trump reminds me more of Warren G. Harding. His administration was almost as corrupt as Trump’s. Nothing in Trump’s economic policies reveals ANY support for the “common” US Citizen. Trump makes George W. Bush look like a master statesman.
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Trump is ILLITERATE!
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Another good one from Chris Hedges:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/reign_of_idiots_20170430
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Everything Trumpian is embarrassing.
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Notwithstanding Jackson’s policies with regard to forced relocation of Native Tribes, and other policies, Jackson is one of my favorite -presidents. He was the first president from the common people. He was not born to wealth, nor did he marry into wealth (G. Washington). He had a brilliant military record. (He led the American army that defeated the British in the Battle of New Orleans, six weeks after the peace treaty was signed. He also was the first president to bring the USA entirely out of debt. (I am sure he is spinning in his grave, with the USA being $20 Trillion in debt)
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Charles, I can see why you don’t like Trump. He was born to wealth. He avoided the draft and has no military record. And with his proposed tax cuts, he is likely to plunge the USA into unprecedented debt.
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I do not like some of Trump’s policies. I have nothing against rich people. John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt were both from wealthy families. So what?
Bill Clinton dodged the draft, again so what?
Trump’s proposed tax cuts, will (if enacted) result in a reduction in revenue, at first. Again, so what?
Our nation is approaching $20 Trillion in debt, and no politician is making any efforts to reduce it.
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I’ve noted on this blog numerous times that the primary focus of public education should be democratic citizenship, and not “college and careers”, or STEM, or SAT or ACT scores, or Advanced Placement courses and tests, or the Common Core.
I sometimes used as an example the election* of Trump, since he ran an anti-democratic campaign based on xenophobia, racism, and misogyny – and got 62 million votes (*though he was aided and abetted by Russian intelligence agencies through their hacking, dissemination of fake news, and collusion with various right-wing entities, likely including the Trump campaign itself).
Now – oddly – Trump, through his unmitigated ignorance, is helping to make my case.
Public education and the nation are in serious need of a return to democratic citizenship reliant on a commitment to democratic values and principles.
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When you compare the “knowledge” of this BUFFOON (Trump) with that of President Truman, our last non-college educated president, it is embarrassing to even allow Trump to be in the same building (White House)!
“Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”
…………George Santayana*
*Trump will probably claim that this guy is one of his favorite Rock ‘n Roll guitar players.
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Trump was educated at private schools.
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Brian,
Truman was a voracious reader of books about American history. Even though he never went to college, he knew history.
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I knew that – he was able to quote chapter and verse of both Old and New Testaments, as well as classic Greek and Roman authors!
WHAT a contrast with #45!
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I read a biography of Truman that said he spent all his free time in the local public library, reading everything he could.
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I think that’s what Brian was saying, Diane.
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Does anyone know or remember Richard Lederer’s famous compendium of malapropisms and historical misreadings,”The World According to Student Bloopers”? (“Socrates died of an overdose of wedlock.”)
Every time Trump presumes to talk about history, that piece of writing comes to mind for me.
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Please do not assume he “knows” real estate. His competence, or lack thereof, is probably displayed in his tax returns which is why he will not share them. If they were “goog, great, yuge” he surely wouldn’t miss an opportunity to brag, no?
What is dismaying is how often our President, who clearly knows nothing, is willing to speak extemporaneously. A quick Google search would have told him all he needed to know. (That’s why one has minions.) So, now we know he is lazy, as well.
Someone calculated that had Mr. Trump invested his inheritance in index funds, he would have four times as much money now as he seems to have. So, his business skills amount to him only losing three quarters of his possible fortune.
So, his “knowledge” of real estate may be a product of advisors who provide him with options from which he chooses or it might be native knowledge, like his of Andrew Jackson.
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Yes. “Please do not assume that he ‘knows’ real estate” Evidence has repeatedly suggested that what Trump actually knows is how to manipulate people and bend truth. He isn’t honest; you can get a lot done in your favor when you have no scruples around what his proponents are now calling his “deal-makers’ use of hyperbole.”
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Indeed, his forays as a builder and developer were mostly failures, as his Atlantic City casino bankruptcies attest. He has spent the last two decades successfully licensing his name as a “luxury” brand to gullible status seekers. As others have pointed out, if he had invested his inheritance in stock index funds, he’d be far wealthier than he now claims to be.
As his presidential campaign shows, he’s really a marketer and carnival barker/snake oil salesman, which is why he so perfectly represents this era.
As for his off-the-charts ignorance of history, that also is all too reflective of a country that would agree with Henry Ford’s statement that, “History is bunk,” if they ever knew it was spoken.
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Exactly, Michael…”successfully licensing his name as a ‘luxury’ brand to gullible status seekers.
Same reason as why many buy Cadillacs, Mercedes, etc.
And, for another commenter who posted on this blog–about Trump being “interested only in casinos & beauty pageants”–well, he really wasn’t interested in casinos, as evidenced by his abandonment of same, creating a huge amount of unemployment and troubled times for the residents of Atlantic City.
To use a word he frequently uses…sad.
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Several weeks ago he said that he was reading a book about Andrew Jackson.
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Reading…. a book?
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He hasn’t finished the introduction yet.
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Reading a book about Jackson? That’s a good one. The guy who wrote Trump’s “Art of the Deal” said Trump never reads books. Maybe Bannon read the book and told Trump about it.
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I think he meant to say he was looking at a book about Andrew Jackson.
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That makes sense.
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He said he was reading a book about Andrew Jackson. The interview was in the
oval office — Fox News; Brett Baier, as I recall. Suggest he is due more respect
from the hometown crowd.
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Right. I’m suggesting that when Trump says he was reading a book, what that really means is that he was holding a book and looking at it.
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Good one, FLERP!
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The guy who wrote “Art of the Deal” spent many months with Trump and said he was proud of never reading a book. Maybe not since college.
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It may have been a children’s version…a picture book, even.
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Last night, Colbert did a great take down of Trump’s embarrassing interview with Dickerson.
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Great? You mean this: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/05/01/stephen-colbert-demolishes-trump-for-insulting-face-the-nation-host-john-dickerson?via=twitter_page
Where he said, “In fact, the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s cock holster.” Really? That’s “great”?
You all know perfectly well that wouldn’t be acceptable if anyone from the right said it, so why does Colbert get a pass for homophobia?
“Homophobia for the right cause, with the right targets, is good homophobia, apparently.” –Glenn Greenwald
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Dienne, I didn’t think his rant was homophobic, and I am sensitive to homophobia.
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Diane – would it be acceptable to you if someone said, for instance, the only thing Hillary Clinton’s mouth is good for is being Eli Broad’s cock holster? What if the only thing Barack Obama’s mouth is good for is being Arne Duncan’s cock holster? Goose, gander?
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Dienne, Colbert’s comment was part of a flurry of insults. When you isolate one, it’s awful. As part of the flurry of insults, that one did net get my hackles up. As you know, Trump supporters said equally revolting things about Hillary and Obama. The lock-her-up chant was far more disgusting.
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I don’t understand this mentality, Diane. One of your main stated reasons why you support the Democrats is that they are better than the Republicans. Yet, when Democrats (and/or their supporters) sink to the same level, you refuse to condemn it. “They started it! They’re worse!” That’s playground mentality, Diane. What Colbert said was vile – you would be the first to say so had it been said about any Democrat. All I’m asking for is consistency. You seem to think that calling out Democrats somehow means that Republicans are okay. It doesn’t at all. It simply means that you really do hold the standards you claim you do, even when it’s your own side that violates them.
And, yes, it was a “flurry of insults”. I’m not sure how that makes it better. In fact, several other of those insults were dicey at best. “Prick-tator?” What if Obama had been called that? Still funny? And it’s okay to make fun of bald people? A sign-language gorilla hit on the head? Those are just sad, cheap insults that demean Colbert more than they demean Trump.
If I’m ever going to be convinced to support the Democrats again, it’s going to be because they are better than the Republicans. “Better” meaning better people, not just better at slinging slime. I haven’t seen any evidence of that in a long time.
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Dienne,
I was not endorsing Colbert’s rant. I would not say what he says. Politics is not ping-pong. Late-night shows use language unsuitable for children. There is so much to get upset about these days that I don’t have the time or temperament to seek out and denounce every offensive comment on television. Get angry about what matters, like the appointment of a far right justice to the Supreme Court and the possibility of one or two more who will roll back abortion rights, civil rights, gay rights, civil liberties, environmental protection, gun control, and destroy public schools. That’s what upsets me.
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Dienne,
None of the following, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama nor Trump’s Republican opponents for President, resorted to course and crude public comments (except Rubio, who sheepishly targeted a SPECIFIC politician, Trump, after being provoked by him). As a result of their restraint, main stream comedians returned the decency by not making crude sexual comments about them.
Trump, while talking to known media (Access Hollywood) GENERALIZED women, employing sexually predatory language. His “big hands” oratory put out a welcome mat for the comedians who speak for America’s powerless. Who was going to answer “grabbing them by the pussy”, if not for political humorists? I thank Colbert for showing the goose, that there are men who return volley, in kind.
False analogies – do they teach it in right wing schools or is it an intrinsic defect?
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correction: show the gander
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I work in a high school and today saw some sophomores (age 16) studying the Civil War. I asked them if they had “any idea” about the causes of the Civil War and they laughed and said, “Of course, slavery…”
Maybe some high school sophomores (since most seem to take US history) could get in touch with Trump and educate him about the Civil War.
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Dienne, I understand your lack of appreciation for Colbert’s crude jokes. Remember he is a comedian. He speaks on his behalf as an entertainer– not as the spokesperson for the Democratic Party.
No comedian would have joked about Obama as “prick-tator” because the joke (although sophomoric) is that Obama does not remind us of a dictator while DT certainly does. That’s how jokes work.
Colbert’s string of (some) funny comments, along with cheap shots that are beneath his usual comedy caliber, seemed to well up out of frustration. How did we get here? To what depth of depravity, indecency, and inhumanity must this president sink before we demand new leadership?
Instead of looking to Colbert as a Democratic party leader, I suggest you consider Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Deval Patrick, Chris Murphy, Sherrod Brown, Al Franken…and I came up with that list without a google search. Get behind someone whose goal is to lead our country with a progressive agenda.
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Note to Dienne77–
If you cannot examine Republican economic and social policies since 1980 and still support them, then there is nothing anyone can say to combat your willful ignorance and lack of moral outrage. Basing your support of one political party over another based upon one comedian’s abusurdity is simple minded and worthless. Ever since Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” recommended cannibalism as a solution to punitive British economic policies in Ireland, satire has been misunderstood by the concrete thinker.
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