“The Man Who Knows Even Less Than He Thinks” Award and the winner is…

Well, the competition is over, and the winner is… Donald J. Trump- again. The vote was even more than unanimous! PricewaterhouseCoopers has announced that never-have-they-ever tabulated a more than unanimous winner. The now fourfold-indicted, twice impeached, ex-president has given his name to the “The Man Who Knows Even Less Than He Thinks” Award, call it “The Donald.”

His suggestion that the Civil War could have been (if he were around at the time) negotiated ranks right up there with history’s greatest rewrites. Trump begins his inane discourse on the War between the States this way:

“I don’t know what it is, the Civil War was so fascinating, so horrible-was so horrible, but so fascinating…This is something that could’ve been negotiated, you know, it was just for all those people to die…

Abraham Lincoln, of course if you negotiated, you probably wouldn’t even know who Abraham Lincoln was…It would’ve been different, but that would’ve been okay…I know the whole process that they went through and they just couldn’t get along and that would’ve been something that could’ve been negotiated and they wouldn’t have had that problem. But, it was a hell of a time.”

- Trump, January 6, 2024

As always, his cadence has that self-same sing-songy wistfulness- eyes averted as the speaker simply finds himself enamored with his own bs. A little voice tells him “go further…” and he does, but this time he waxes empathetically on injuries sustained as only Pvt. Bonespurs could know:

So many people died. That was the disaster. If you got hit by a bullet in the leg, you were essentially going to die or lose the leg, that’s why you had so many people — no legs, no arms … because the infection, gangrene — it was just such, sort of a horrible time.

- Trump

Aw, how insightful! It is as if he knew personally the more than 600,000 soldiers who died in the 4-year war. Trump’s memory retells the past far better than he can recall the present. During his last year in office, 400,000 Americans died in the pandemic that helped end his presidency. Imagine what any future candidate could make of Trump’s handling of the crisis of his time. Bleach and ultraviolet rays may be called into question by some future candidates as being “fascinating,” “horrible,” and idiotic- a determination that even now seems non-negotiable.

Trump’s incoherent fascination with the Civil War is not new. Each time he speaks on it, it is as if it was the first time he gave the topic his serious thought. Back in 2017, the then-president was ruminating on the war and asked, “Why could that one not have been worked out?.” It was at an interview with The Washington Examiner as Trump pretended that he ruminated on such things. Using as his source the elusive “people,” he began a history lesson that included his favorite president, other than himself, Andrew Jackson:

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 the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”

- AP, “Trump on Civil War: Why couldn’t they have worked that out?”, by Jonathan Lemire

So, he had thought about the Civil War before and had wondered aloud about why the North and South could not bargain a settlement. Reporter Jonathon Lemire witnessed the interview and recorded for all time Trump’s lack of historical curiosity:

Trump’s comments about the war came after he lauded Jackson, the populist president whom he and his staff have cited as a role model. He suggested that if Jackson had been president “a little later, you wouldn’t have had the Civil War.”

“He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War. He said, ‘There’s no reason for this,’” Trump continued.

Jackson died in 1845. The Civil War began in 1861.

- AP, “Trump on Civil War: Why couldn’t they have worked that out?”, by Jonathan Lemire

Trump’s mental meanderings rarely visit facts that are inconvenient to his own imagined brilliance. Lemire goes on to quote the historian-in-chief after he was reminded of his historic faux pas:

Late Monday, after a day of incredulous news coverage, Trump took to Twitter to amplify his message and seemingly stress that he did in fact know when Jackson died, writing: “President Andrew Jackson, who died 16 years before the Civil War started, saw it coming and was angry. Would never have let it happen!”

And so, “Dolt of the Year” seems hardly adequate to honor such a gifted stooge. For a man who considers himself smarter than Lincoln, has proven often that he is dumber than dirt. His award is well-deserved.

So, today and from now on, doltary has an old face and a new name. Call it “The Donald” and leave it at that. Needs no further explanation and little description beyond his own words spoken in foppish wonderment. The man- the legend- who proudly knows far less than he thinks.

Originally published at https://vincerizzo.substack.com.