Shouldn't Our Presidents Know Our History? This One Doesn't.
For Trump, winning wars seems to be America's highest achievement. The nation's values, not so much.
The president was wow'd by France's Bastille Day parade on a 2017 visit. He wants one, so he's ordered one.
On the last day of April, President Trump was giving ABC's Terry Moran a tour of the Oval Office.
“Over here you have the original of Abe Lincoln and George Washington and of course you have the Declaration of Independence"
He was pointing to a framed copy on a wall. Moran asked, "What does it mean to you?" Trump replied:
"Well it means exactly what it says. It’s a declaration, it’s a declaration of unity and love and respect and it means a lot, and it’s something very special to our country.”
Moran looked dumbstruck. Very special it is, but the antitheses of "unity and love and respect". Trump revealed he had no idea what the document was about.
Last Sunday on "Meet the Press", the president was interviewed by NBC's Kristen Welker. Part of the interview went as follows:
Welker: Your secretary of state says everyone who’s here, citizens and non-citizens, deserve due process. Do you agree, Mr. President?
Trump: I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know.
Welker: Well, the Fifth Amendment says as much.
Trump: I don’t know…
He continued with his constantly repeated refrain of “thousands of people that are some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on Earth”.
Welker: Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?
Trump: I don’t know. I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.
Not long before, on January 20th, he had sworn to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”, but here he shows himself to know nothing of one of its fundamental precepts, the right to due process. He needs "brilliant lawyers" to explain it to him. Emitting a miasma of uncertainty with his non-answers effectively tells his followers, whom he supposes to be equally ignorant of the Constitution, that its inarguable words are subject to differing interpretations.
Trump once boasted of his Ivy League education at the University of Pennsylvania, which he is now attacking along with other élite universities. But his was an undergraduate offering of Penn’s Wharton School, not the ….