Daily Archives: May 4, 2017

President Trump has made several history-related gaffes since taking office. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)

PresidentTrump loves history.

He loves mentioning it, imagining his place in it, declaring someone (or something) to be the best or the worst init.

It's important, Trump has said, to learn from the past.

And why not? After all, as the Spanish philosopher George Santayana wrote: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

But Trump's first few months as president have been peppered with signs that he and his inner circle may not have an in-depth understanding of historical events.

Trump, as our first president with no prior political or military experience, had more to learn than anyone before him, The Washington Post's James Hohmannwrote last month. Not only does he lack a lot of historical knowledge, he is also missing institutional memory.

In his Daily 202 newsletter, Hohmann offereda robust roundup of examples of Trump's history-related gaffes since taking office.

He mentioned Abraham Lincoln during a fundraising dinner for the National Republican Congressional Committee last month. Most people don't even know he was a Republican, Trump said. Does anyone know? Lot of people don't know that! (Most likely, every person in the ballroom knew and has attended at least one Lincoln Day dinner.)

On Lincolns birthday in February, Trump tweeted out an obviously fake quote from the 16th president: In the end, its not the years in your life that count, it's the life in your years. He later deleted it.

Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody whos done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice, he said at a Black History Month event. (Douglass died in 1895.)

Have you heard of Susan B. Anthony? he asked at a Womens History Month reception in March.

In January, Trump said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) who is best known for almost getting beaten to death as he marched on Bloody Sunday in Selma is all talk, talk, talk no action or results. There are things Lewis could be fairly criticized for, but no one who knows anything about the civil rights movement would agree that being all talk is one of them.

And so on.

[Trump is learning and sometimes mislearning the lessons of the presidency]

On Monday, questions about Trump's grasp of history resurfaced when he made head-scratching (and historically inaccurate) claims about Andrew Jackson's feelings toward the Civil War in an interview with the Washington Examiner's Salena Zito.

In that exchange, Trump seemed to suggest that the Civil War might have been prevented if Jackson had been involved.

I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn't have had the Civil War, Trump told Zito. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War. He said, 'There's no reason for this.' People don't realize, you know, the Civil War if you think about it, why? People don't ask that question, but why was there a Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?

As many pointed out,Jackson couldn't have prevented the Civil War or been angry about it because he wasn't alive then. Jackson diedin 1845, more than a decade before the Civil War began in 1861.

That didn't stop Trump from taking to Twitter to double down on his statement.

And Jackson biographerJon Meacham said on Morning Joe that Trump had once bragged to him that he could have done a deal to avoid the Civil War.

It wasn't the first time Trump has pushed back on historical record.

[Memo to Donald Trump: Thomas Jefferson invented hating the media]

In 2015, the New York Times reported on a curious plaque that had been erected between the 14th and 15th holes of Trump's newly renovated golf course in Virginia, with the following message inscribed:

Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot. The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as The River of Blood. It is my great honor to have preserved this important section of the Potomac River! -Donald John Trump

After historians pointed out that there had been no such Civil War battles at that location, Trump pushed back.

How would they know that? Trump asked a Times reporter then. Were they there?

He finally told the same reporter: Write your story the way you want to write it. ... You dont have to talk to anybody. It doesnt make any difference. But many people were shot. It makes sense.

The Times noted: In a phone interview, Mr. Trump called himself a 'a big history fan' but deflected, played down and then simply disputed the local historians assertions of historical fact.

There have been all sorts of famous gaffes by presidents,said James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association. In most cases, if the mistake was brought to their attention, there was some kind of an official statement saying yeah, this was wrong or whatever.

Trump has proved unique in that his almost dismissive attitude toward historical data and evidence goes against most people who have reached the high ranks of decision-makers, he said. Those in the military rely heavily on history, as do economists. Lawyers gather evidence and scientists conduct experiments to collect data.

Historians are no different, Grossman said, analyzing physical evidence, records, archives, memoirs, archaeological objects and letters.

We check things; that's what we do, Grossman said. Any time you see any kind of evidence, one of the things that you're doing is you're evaluating the quality of the evidence.

[Thomas Jefferson and the fascinating history of Founding Fathers defending Muslim rights]

Even an undergrad history student would have questioned the plaque at Trump's golf course, he added but at least that didn't have public policy implications.

The Jackson stuff on Monday is different, Grossman said. In that case, where he was wrong deeply, deeply matters for public policy and public culture. It's important that we know that the Civil War was fought over slavery. It's important to know that it wouldn't have been good to make a dealunless that deal had freed the slaves, which obviously wasn't going to happen.

For Trump, when his views don't align with historians' conclusions, it sometimes makes sense to side with his personal gut, even if that means going against the record.

And he has certainly expressed skepticism when it comes to experts before.

Experts can't see the forest for the trees, Trump told The Post's Marc Fisherlast summer, in a conversation that mostly focused on his reading habits, or lack thereof. Trump, on the other hand, said he relied on instinct. A lot of people said, Man, he was more accurate than guys who have studied it all the time, he told Fisher.

The then-presidential candidate also statedthat he doesn't read much nor does he feel the need to, because he makes decisions with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I had, plus the words common sense, because I have a lot of common sense and I have a lot of business ability.

(Fisher noted that as Trump was preparing to be named the Republican nominee for president, he had not read any biographies of presidents. But, Fisher wrote:He said he would like to someday.)

One telling example of Trump's cavalier botching of history came when the History Channel invited him to appear as an expert in a 2012 episode of The Men Who Built America, a series on the Industrial Revolution.

Though he was on the screen only briefly, Trump delivered his contribution to the segment with confidence.

Andrew Carnegie was somebody that I think in terms of because I do buildings, Trump said on the show. And he really came up with the mass production of steel. He was the first and the biggest by far, by a factor of 30 times. And what he built was unbelievable and just got bigger and bigger and bigger.

[Hunting down runaway slaves: The cruel ads of Andrew Jackson and the master class]

Even in those few lines, there were factual issues. It was Sir Henry Bessemer who invented the first process to mass-produced steel known as the Bessemer process in England in the 1800s. Carnegie adapted the process for his business needs and, in the process, became the richest man in America.

He did not invent a steelmaking process,the American Historical Association's Grossman said of Carnegie. Often, invents something, but the first person who actually figures out how to use it in business is actually the one who makes tons of money.

It's unclear whether Trump ever corrected or clarified his input on the History Channel show, or whether he would ever have any incentive to do such a thing.

If those who ignore the past are indeed doomed to repeat it, Trump only has to study his own personal history to realize where his murky handling of historical facts has gotten him so far: to the White House.

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Donald Trump says he's a big fan of history. But he doesn't seem to trust historians. - Washington Post

Updated| U.S. President Donald Trump told Palestinian leaders visiting the White House Wednesday that he does not think achieving peace in the Middle East will be as difficult as previously thought.

Sitting down to lunch with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and senior U.S. and Palestinian officials, Trump said securing a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians after more than six decades of conflict was "frankly maybe not as difficult as people have thought over the years."

He added that he believed both parties were willing to negotiate. We need two willing parties. We believe Israel is willing, we believe you're willing, and if you both are willing, we're going to make a deal," he said, according to Reuters.

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Immediately after his meeting in the Oval Office with Abbasthe first time the two men have metTrump said he would "to do whatever is necessary" to broker a peace deal. He said he would act as mediator between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Read More: Trump seriously considering moving U.S. Embassy To Jerusalem: Pence

"I'm committed to working with Israel and the Palestinians to reach an agreement," Trump said, in comments released by the White House. But any agreement cannot be imposed by the United States or by any other nation. The Palestinians and Israelis must work together to reach an agreement that allows both peoples to live, worship, and thrive and prosper in peace."

In his first reaction to the White House meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday thatPalestinians name their schools after mass murderers of Israelis and they pay terrorists.

Netanyahu criticized Abbas for telling Trump that Palestinians sought to impart a culture of peace to their children, the Times of Israel reported. The Israeli prime minister remarked the statement was unfortunately not true.

Netanyahu, who met Trump in Washington in February, said Thursday he fervently shares the U.S. presidents commitment to advancing peace.

I hope that its possible to achieve a change and to pursue a genuine peace. This is something Israel is always ready for. Im always ready for genuine peace, Netanyahu said,before a sit-down with Romanian Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu.

Of all the U.S. presidents that have tried and failed to solve the Middle Easts most intractable conflict, Bill Clinton was perhaps the most successful; he brought together Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1993 to sign the Oslo Accords.

In 1995, Rabin was assassinated by a radical right-wing Israeli for his role in the deal and by 2000 the Second Intifada'uprising in Englishled to open warfare between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants in the West Bank and Gaza. In November 2004, Yasser Arafat died in a Paris hospital after falling ill during a protracted siege of his compound in Ramallah by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

U.S. President Donald Trump and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas arrive to deliver a statement at the White House in Washington D.C., U.S., May 3, 2017. Carlos Barria/REUTERS

In January 2008, George W. Bush called on Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank and predicted that a peace deal would be signed before he left office. But by the time Barack Obama took over the following year, talks had reached another stalemate.

As Secretary of State from 2013, John Kerry was optimistic about securing a deal until talks broke down in April 2014. The war in Gaza broke out just months later.

Trumps attitude to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been inconsistent since he took office in January.

In a February meeting with Netanyahu he appeared to drop Washingtons longstanding commitment to eventually reaching a two-state solutionunder which an independent Palestinian state would exist alongside Israel and angered Palestinians by threatening to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

But he also invited Abbas and his cabinet to Washington and has been outspoken in his criticism of Israel over its settlement building in the West Bank.

Following his meeting with Trump, Abbas reiterated his demands for a Palestinian state based on borders that existed before the 1967 Six Day War, with its capital in East Jerusalem.

This article has been updated to include comments made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday.

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Donald Trump Says Peace in the Middle East Is 'Not as Difficult as People Have Thought' - Newsweek

Donald Trump supported me during the worst crisis and most vulnerable moment in my life, defending my innocence when I was on trial in Italy for murder. He is now the president of the United States and reportedly very upset with me because I didnt vote for him.

Do I owe him my loyalty?

Trumps remarks were reported by the New York Times in a profile of his neighbor George Guido Lombardi. Yet I received negative backlash from his supporters even before Lombardis comments were published. They felt that I owed Trump my allegiance and were outraged at columns I wrote in which I criticized his policies and explained my reasons for endorsing Hillary Clinton. One person commented:

Im sorry I ever supported you. You have turned into a left wing lunatic. I see your experience in Italy has left you completely ungrateful to be an American. Donald Trump stood by you, but now you turn around and indirectly attack him? You should be ashamed of yourself.

Another wrote that, while I neednt endorse Trump, my criticism of him wasnt nice.

The message was clear: Trump defended me in the past; how dare I not defend him now? Never mind that Trump doesnt share my values. If I wont endorse him, at the very least I should keep my left-wing lunacies to myself.

This conviction is both undemocratic and dangerous. Just as a persons support of me should not be based upon my politics or identity, hinging instead on the fact of my innocence, so should my politics hinge on the merits of policy, not personal loyalty.

In The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt describes loyalty as one of the moral foundations that conservatives feel more strongly than liberals. Its part of what makes morality a force that binds and blinds. Loyalty can bind people together under a common cause, but it can also blind people as to whether or not their cause is just.

I discovered just how blinding loyalty could be when, in December 2009, an Italian court convicted me of a murder I didnt commit. That judgment rested heavily on the courts bias in favor of the prosecution, which represented the Italian people and the Italian state, over the defense, which represented a foreigner.

This is loyalty taken too far. And it calls to mind the party-over-policy approach that currently plagues our own politics.

Yes, Trump donated to my defense. And yes, Trump defended my innocence, recognizing that coercive interrogations produce false testimony authored by the interrogators themselves, a well-studied and documented fact.

But Trump claimed the exact opposite in the Central Park Five case, calling for the death penalty even though the accused teens rape convictions rested solely on coerced false confessions. Even now he views them as guilty, years after they were exonerated based on DNA evidence.

Trump recognized me as a fellow American who deserved to be assumed innocent until proven guilty, but he condemned the Central Park Five as other guilty until proven innocent. Loyalty motivated Trump to call for all Americans to boycott Italy, even though, ironically, it only served to amplify anti-American sentiment in the courtroom, stacking the deck against me.

There is a kind of loyalty I wholeheartedly support: loyalty to our ideals of due process, equal protection under the law, the freedom to speak ones mind and to vote according to ones principles. Only in banana republics do political leaders dole out favors to citizens in exchange for their silence and their vote. By holding personal loyalty above all else, Trump and some of his supporters create a political environment where reason and justice hold little sway. He was probably right when he said he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose voters thats what happens when personal loyalty is paramount.

I know many Republicans who recognized the danger of Trumps worldview, and broke party loyalty this past election. My dad was one of them. Its to their credit that they could be critical of their own party for the sake of the country.

And its to Italys credit that the Italian Supreme Court ruled against the popular opinion of the Italian people when they acquitted me. I owe my freedom to those people who saw reason beyond loyalty.

What do I owe Trump? A thank you for his well-intentioned, if undiplomatic, support. So for the record: Thank you, Mr. President.

But the more important question is, what do I owe my country? Civic engagement, careful consideration of issues that affect my fellow citizens, and support for policies that deserve support, even if it makes the president very upset.

Amanda Knox is the author of Waiting to be Heard: A Memoir.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook

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Amanda Knox: Donald Trump supported me when I was wrongly accused of murder. What do I owe him? - Los Angeles Times

Donald Trump in his 5th Avenue living room in New York City, 2005.

By Alex Webb/Magnum Photos.

What subject was Donald Trump good at in elementary school, do we think? Hes proved weak on history and has betrayed an unconventional sense of syntax. He is very good at writing his name. Nowor once again, ratherits clear math is more of a creative activity than a precise one. Forbes took a moment to fact-check a claim that Trump made while he was still on the campaign trail in 2015 regarding his Trump Tower residence.

At the time, Trump claimed the apartment was 33,000 square feet total and was worth at least $200 million. He told Forbes, I own the top three floorsthe whole floor, times three! The publication found that following some expansion in the 90s, Trumps residence has maintained an underwhelming size of 10,996 square feet, which, much like his hands, is about a third of what he says it is.

The tower itself is 10 floors shorter than it actually is, due to some height fudging on Trumps part in the early 80s, according to a recent New York Times piece. The presidents proprietary take on math is here:

Though the tower was built with 58 floors, Mr. Trump later explained to The New York Times that because there was a soaring pink marble atrium and 19 commercial floors at the bottom, he could see no good reason not to list the first residential floor as the 30th floor. The pinnacle became the 68ththe height that appears in marketing materials, online search results and news articles to this day.

So the exact height of the presidents tall tales is 10 stories. This has become a sort of real-estate practice that the city, developers, and residence all buy into from then on, according to the Times. Yes, Trump once pioneered a mutually agreed upon delusion that is all smoke and no substance for an entire industry.

Vanity Fair has reached out to the presidents team for confirmation.

See the article here:

Donald Trump May Have Exaggerated the Size of Something Else - Vanity Fair

"The Late Show" host Stephen Colbert stood steadfast Wednesday during his opening monologue while addressing the controversy surrounding a joke he made about President Donald Trump.

Colbert had joked about Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump engaging in oral sex, setting off a firestorm on Twitter.

The comments, which some interpreted as homophobic, birthed #FireColbert as a Twitter trend and a call from conservative viewers and Trump supporters to boycott Colbert's advertisers. The hashtag has been tweeted approximately 350,000 times since Tuesday.

As Wednesday night's show began, Colbert first had to double check that he was still, in fact, host of the comedy program.

"Welcome to The Late Show. I'm your host Stephen Colbert. Still? Am I still the host?" Colbert asked at the beginning of the monologue.

He then triumphantly announced, "I'm still the host!"

Colbert, tackled the accusations of homophobia, saying anyone who expresses authentic displays of love is an "American hero."

"Life is short, and anyone who expresses their love for another person in their own way is, to me, an American hero," Colbert said, adding he hoped that was the one thing he and the president could agree on.

Colbert made the controversial joke on Monday, saying that Trump had insulted a friend of his. Colbert was referring to CBS News' chief Washington correspondent John Dickerson. Trump had seemingly cut short an interview with Dickerson, which aired on Monday prior to the Late Show's taping.

Colbert frequently talks about and derides Trump in his opening monologues, criticizing the president's policies and statements, but for many, Colbert's remarks on Monday night were a step too far.

On Tuesday, Colbert, his Twitter account and representatives for the show made no remarks about the joke, according to the Washington Post, staying quiet as the backlash seeped through social media.

"This would be a fireable offense in better times. Worst thing about many Trump critics is they use him as an excuse to act as awful or worse," T. Becket Adams, a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner, tweeted.

Glenn Greenwald, of The Intercept, called Colbert's remarks "homophobic."

"Homophobia for the right cause, with the right targets, is good homophobia, apparently," Greenwald wrote.

As the #FireColbert hashtag spread, the website firecolbert.com and the Twitter account @FireColbert sprung up.

Although admitting he would have used a few different words, Colbert stood behind his Monday night remarks.

"I believe he can take care of himself. I have jokes; he has the launch codes. So, it's a fair fight," Colbert said.

CBS did not immediately respond to a request for comment and it is unclear if any of the Late Show's advertisers have been affected by the backlash.

Continued here:

Stephen Colbert Defends Donald Trump Jokes After Controversy Erupted - NBCNews.com