Do you think Trump knows who Frederick Douglass is?

No. We truly have an imbecile as president.

Not until they make a cartoon about him. Even then…

I’d say he does

I don’t think he does and also I don’t think he know who George Washington Carver was.

Doubt it but I will give him a pass on this. Why? Because most Americans know squat about history. Bet you, somewhere in this country you can ask who is Louis Armstrong and you will find someone who says he went to space. Of course that would be Neil Armstrong.
Americans probably know way less about their own history than any other nation knows about theirs. Hell. I’ve met people from other nations that know our history better than most Americans do. I sometimes feel that other nations must require it in their education to know about other countries.

I don’t understand the speculation.
POTUS named a number of persons who are recognized for their historical contributions, and added that he thinks Douglas is gaining notoriety, and well deserved.
How does any of that make him seem uninformed?

@Patty_Melt I think it was because most of it, he was reading from a piece of paper. The speech was short enough where it doesn’t seem to be something necessary for a President to jot down unless he has difficulty recalling names of famous people.
But I don’t think it’s such a big deal either. Now if he was standing in front of some huge black civil rights leaders at a fund raiser, than I would find this speech very poor indeed.
I think there is a ton more we can pick on him for than, he didn’t say enough.

@Patty_Melt “somebody who’s done an amazing job” is the wrong verb tense for someone who died in the 18th Century. For someone deceased, he should have said, “somebody who did an amazing job”. So it implies he thinks Douglass is still alive.

@Pandora It’s one thing to not know who Frederick Douglass was. It’s another to pretend that you do. It’s another to talk at the head of a group honoring MLK and act like you know about the subject and pretend that you know who Frederick Douglass was and you have some significant opinion about him. It’s yet another to be the President Of The United States Of America and pull that shit, showing that you have unmentionably foul sludge for integrity yet again.

No, he demonstrated that he does not know who Douglass was.

Being able to speak clearly and precisely matters when you’re the president. Not that Trump realizes that, either.

I don’t think Trump knows much about American history, or the history of slavery, and praising Frederick Douglass for doing ‘an amazing job’ reinforces that. It is an empty phrase that Trump uses often. It would have been better if he had done some background research so he could have made an original comment.

Out of curiosity I read this speech given by Frederick Douglass in Ayr, Scotland in 1846. It is worth reading. Frederick Douglass spoke the truth about slavery and said that the slave owners tried to discredit him. They said he was a fake and that he couldn’t possibly have been a real slave.

In a similar way Trump tries to discredit the media today and he even used this Black History Month meeting as another opportunity to do so.

The example he gave, of Martin Luther King’s bust being removed from the Oval Office, wasn’t a media story as Trump claimed. It appeared in the Twitter account of a Time reporter and was corrected within the hour. It was quite dishonest of Trump to use this as an example of ‘fake news’ in the media.

I’ve read several articles about DT that describe his speech,vocabulary, and punctuation as equal to that of someone with an 8th grade education.

It’s possible that he knew who FD was ,but was unable to correctly articulate his thoughts.

Everything he said was in past tense. Don’t know what more you want on that. Should he have given the man’s birth and death dates?

He is a shitty public speaker, his vocabulary is not broad or articulate. That does not mean he does not know history.

Check out this article; I particularly like the tombstone picture. Next time Trump might want to spend five minutes of google searching.

I heard someone comment on the clip and said it’s like watching the kid who wasn’t paying attention in class get called on to answer a question, and the kid just bullshits out a few vague and general sentences. The crazy part is that he had time to prepare the speech, and it’s like he didn’t really bother to make an effort, or have someone make the effort on his behalf. He had time to review the declining ratings of Schwarzenegger’s reality show though… I guess when you’re in charge of the free world, you have to make time for the important stuff.

@Patty_Melt Again, saying “somebody who’s done [something]” is not simple past tense but past perfect tense, which implies it’s not something over 100 years old that is not still happening. The appropriate form would be “he did” not “he has done”.

I would refer all of you to the op, which puts Douglas in the present.
I guess humans can make grammar blunders.

There is always the possibility that Trump is playing to racists. In effect, he might be saying, “Well I had to say something, so I just blabbered some crap. You know how I really feel.”

Is there a grammar mistake in my OP? Frederick Douglass is a deceased abolitionist.

It doesn’t say deceased in the topic, or body, just is, is, is.

Right. Is it incorrect to ask

“Do you know who Frederick Douglass is?”

when the correct answer is

“Frederick Douglass is a deceased American Abolitionist?”

Anyway, I know who he is/was. I’ve read his speeches.

Sooooo, did anyone ask the President if he meant to be paster tense than just a little bit past?

@flutherother But doesn’t he do that with just about everything. Act like he knows things that he knows nothing about. After he is asked a question he doesn’t know. He gives a vague answer and when asked about details.
Believing that their should be knowledge and decency from Trump is like expecting a new hamster daddy not to eat his young.

@Pandora Trump has spent his life doing deals and he doesn’t seem to know much about anything else. How he ended up as leader of the free world remains a mystery to me. He was on weak ground at the Black History Month event as he has next to no interest in it. That’s why he changed the subject and began railing about “fake news” in the media today. He is shallow and he is shameless.

@Pandora “Believing that their should be knowledge and decency from Trump is like expecting a new hamster daddy not to eat his young.”

That is a very strange choice of analogy but I dig it.

@flutherother You are not alone. But a guest on the news said something today that was a valid point. It was something like this. “Never underestimate what people with power or who want power are willing to rationalize”. It was something like that.

Looks like Frederick Douglass now has a Twitter account!

Another great Trump accomplishment!

Ha!

The show has begun. I didn’t think it’d end like this…

Bottoms up,cheers,whatever…..

@Pandora Obama left office with a warning to us all not to underestimate Trump.

@Patty_Melt: Saying “Frederick Douglass is an example of someone who’s done an amazing job” makes him sound like he’s currently alive and working, for example a union leader or a community organizer. Also, if you google “Do you know who Frederick Douglass is” there are lots of headlines from legitimate news sources who use that terminology “is” not “was.”

And of course it’s not just about one mistaken use of words, but about how Trump has consistently demonstrated ignorance (and self-contradiction and randomness and horribleness of various flavors), of which this is just one example, but one which fits and represents the overall picture of who we’ve got spamming extreme executive orders and making abominable cabinet picks, disastrous government department head appointments, and military decisions (war with China?) and attack orders.

@Zaku Plus avocados were turned back at the border! Monstrous!

I’m not sure what’s worse – the likelihood that he doesn’t know who FD is (was), or the fact that he couldn’t even be bothered to do five minutes of research so he could say something more specific than “he’s done a good job and is getting recognized more and more.” At a freaking Black History Month event.

“Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice” He’s just now “noticing?”

@AnonymousAccount8 Haha. Yes, what does “He’s getting recognized more and more” even mean? That Trump just learned his name? Or is he trying to imply that he keeps tabs on the relative popularity of various black historical figures, and Douglass’s stock is rising? Even if he knew who the man was, this was a weird statement to make.

I bet he could tell you who Eddie Murphy is, though. He knows all the really Important Stuff.

What is a mercy is that Frederick Douglass never knew who Donald Trump is.