On This Day In 2020
Trump doesn't know about Pearl Harbor? Seriously?
Unfathomable ignorance: The attack on Pearl Harbor killed 2,400+ service members and led to the U.S. joining World War II. But when he visited the USS Arizona Memorial there, Trump turned to his Chief of Staff, John Kelly, and asked: "Hey, John, what's this all about? What's this a tour of?"
OTDI 2020, this story leaked from the book “A Very Stable Genius,” by @CarolLeonnig and @PhilipRucker. Trump just didn’t understand what Pearl Harbor represented; beforehand, he said the visit was “going to be very exciting for me.”
Trump knows little of his country’s history. This was far from the only time Trump was, as a senior aide put it, “dangerously uninformed.” We here at OTDI will recount several of those stories throughout this year, and CNN (see below) explains why his ignorance is a problem.
Here's another example: When he visited the home of Andrew Jackson--whom he said was one of his favorite predecessors--he noted that Jackson was “really angry” about the Civil War. Of course the Civil War started…20 years after Jackson’s death.
Buy your copy of “A Very Stable Genius” here on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3Hh1yRg
The Pearl Harbor incident is here in Business Insider: https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-pearl-harbor-memorial-tour-john-kelly-stable-genius-2020-1
CNN has a (shocking) look at some of the things Trump gets wrong about history: https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/19/politics/trump-history-facts-historians/index.html
Trump doesn't
know about Pearl Harbor? Seriously?