Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

Trump Gets Schooled After He Rants About Thomas Jefferson in Blatantly False Statement

Trump Gets Schooled After He Rants About Thomas Jefferson in Blatantly False Statement
Isaac Brekken/Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump was a massive proponent of education that taught students to unquestioningly adore the United States, even at the expense of accuracy and academic engagement.

Trump repeatedly disparaged histories like the 1619 Project and helped accelerate Republican hysteria and disinformation regarding Critical Race Theory. He established the 1776 Commission to promote so-called patriotic education.


Consistent with this message of unquestioning praise amounting to an adequate education, Trump has railed against the removal of statues lionizing confederate leaders and slave-owning revolutionaries.

Such was the case after New York's Public Design Commission voted to remove a statue of Thomas Jefferson from its display in City Hall. Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, is one of many historical figures whose legacy has been reevaluated over decades. Jefferson enslaved around 600 people in his lifetime. He repeatedly raped Sally Hemings, one of his slaves, beginning when he was in his 40s and Hemings was a young teenager.

With Jefferson's statue removed from City Hall, it's unclear where the final resting place of the statue will be. Some have proposed venues like the New York Historical Society that could accompany its display with information acknowledging the complexities of Jefferson's life and the atrocities he committed.

For his part, Trump issued a hamhanded statement decrying the removal as an assault on history—history of which he demonstrated his own ignorance in the statement itself.

Trump wrote:

"The late, great Thomas Jefferson, one of our most important founding Fathers and a principal writer of the constitution of the United States, is being 'evicted' from the magnificent New York City Council Chamber."

There's just one problem: Jefferson didn't have a role in writing the U.S. Constitution. Though he wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Jefferson was serving as a diplomat in France from 1784 to 1789, when the Constitution was being written and ratified in the United States until 1788.

Historians like Kevin M. Levin, as well as people with a basic grasp of U.S. history, were quick to point this out.



Has Trump not seen Hamilton?


People proceeded to mock Trump's argument.


Awkward.

More from People/donald-trump

Most Telling Signs That Someone Is Smarter Than They Let On

Brains and smarts.

Those two things don't always go together.

Keep ReadingShow less
Screenshots of Lauren Boebert and Roger Stone
C-SPAN

Boebert Dragged After Confusing Director Oliver Stone With Roger Stone At JFK Hearing

Colorado Republican Representative Lauren Boebert hit a new low after she attempted to grill director Oliver Stone—the director of the classic 1991 political thriller JFK—on some of his views on the assassination of JFK, only to have colleagues point out that she'd mistaken him for Roger Stone, a former adviser and strategist to President Donald Trump.

The hearing—held in response to last month’s release of 80,000 pages of documents by the Trump administration related to the 1963 assassination—took an awkward turn when more than halfway through the hearing, Boebert brought up a book Roger Stone wrote, which alleges that former President Lyndon B. Johnson played a role in former President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

Keep ReadingShow less
Amy Schumer
Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

Amy Schumer Epically Fails To Convince Husband She's Pregnant As April Fools' Prank

Stand up comic Amy Schumer realized that her husband Chris Fischer was no fool.

On April Fool's Day, the Trainwreck star tried to prank her husband by telling him she was pregnant, but he knew better than to fall for it.

Keep ReadingShow less
Val Kilmer
Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic/Getty Images

Hollywood Pays Poignant Tribute To Val Kilmer After His Tragic Death At 65

Hollywood stars are paying tribute to Top Gun actor Val Kilmer after he died on Tuesday at the age of 65 after a battle with pneumonia, surrounded by family and friends.

Kilmer got his start in Hollywood with comedic roles in Top Secret! (1984) and Real Genius (1985), but his breakout moment came with Top Gun (1986), which cemented his status as a rising star.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donald Trump; portrait of Andrew Jackson
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images; Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Trump Slammed Over Plans For Magnolia Tree Planted By Andrew Jackson To Be Chopped Down

President Donald Trump was criticized after he took to Truth Social to announce he would chop down a magnolia tree that was planted next to the White House to commemorate President Andrew Jackson's late wife in the early 1800s, touting the move as one of the "tremendous enhancements" his administration has undertaken.

Trump announced that, following consultations with the Executive Residence Staff and the National Park Service, his administration has decided to replace the tree on the White House’s south side, citing safety concerns. The tree has historically served as a backdrop for past presidents greeting foreign dignitaries.

Keep ReadingShow less