As a general proposition, I agree that anyone can make a verbal slip-up like this.
On the other hand, as someone who teaches university-level history, I’ve also become aware over my years of teaching that a significant number of people are incredibly ignorant about history not just in terms of understanding events, but also in terms of change over time and a sense of historical chronology. People like this often confuse World War I and World War II not because they make a simple verbal slip, but because they have so little sense of history that the two events are essentially indistinguishable to them.
I’d be willing to bet that if you sat Trump down and asked him to give you, without preparation and just off the top of his head, even the most simplistic narrative explanation of the key differences between WWI and WWII, in terms of causes, belligerent nations and alliances, major theaters of conflict, and American participation, etc., he couldn’t do it.
I’ve had students in my university-level history courses write about how some Americans made their way to the California gold rush (1849) in their cars. I have students write about how the rise of credit in the United States during the 1920s fueled a consumer revolution in, among other things, televisions. I’ve had students write about how the women who worked in the Lowell, Massachusetts textile mills (in the nineteenth century) helped American win World War II by filling the factory jobs left behind by the men fighting overseas.
This level of historical illiteracy doesn’t necessarily mean that people are stupid, but it does mean that they haven’t even learned enough to develop a basic understanding of historical change over time, and they see all historical events and time periods as essentially indistinguishable and interchangeable.
It’s a little dismaying when you see it in a college freshman; it’s fucking terrifying when you see it in a United States President.
Yes, exactly. Getting the start of the Spanish flu wrong by one year? No big deal. Repeatedly calling it “The Spanish Flu of 1917” when he’s undoubtedly been corrected a hundred times goes way beyond a simple verbal gaffe. See also “if we tested less we’d have fewer cases”. Which he’s repeated in public at least 10 times by my count.
Hold on a sec. Today is Tuesday. I just went to collect, and he outright denied ever having borrowed money from me. He even said that he does not eat those things.
And if you did get it in writing, it would be laden with a Non Disclosure Agreement, so when he stiffs you, you’ll never be allowed to tell anyone, not even in court.
Nah, this is Trump. He’d eat it all. Then tell you it was a terrible hamberder. Then tell you he’s not going to pay you the full amount and offer 20% of the price as a fair settlement for serving him such terrible food (that he still finished off).