We can't say he never warned us

Every president makes mistakes. Every human being makes mistakes. As has been pointed out in the last twenty-four hours over and over again, Barack Obama once stumbled over his tongue and claimed to have visited 57 states, and stated that Hawaii, where he grew up, was part of Asia. So in themselves, President Trump's bizarre comments about the Battles of LaGuardia and Logan Airports in the Revolutionary War and his misplacing of the Siege of Fort McHenry in history are not such big deals.

But President Obama was willing to cheerfully admit that there are only fifty states and that Hawaii is actually in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Furthermore, there was never any real doubt that he knew that there were fifty states and that except in a very general kind of way involving influences rather than geography Hawaii was in no sense Asian.

But when it comes to Donald Trump and his knowledge of American history, or most other subjects, it isn't clear that has the slightest idea of what he's talking about.  We've seen what he's done to our nation's history before. Criticism of his lack of knowledge of the subject is fair game, and that's why such a big deal was made of his July 4 mistakes. But I'm sure that Mr. Trump knows that there were no airports around in 1775. I'm not so sure that he knows that contrary to what he implied Thursday the Siege of Fort McHenry, which inspired Francis Scott Key to write our national anthem, took place during the War of 1812.  Still, taken in isolation, that would be no big deal. Taken in isolation Mr. Trump's July 4 gaffes could have been easily defused and forgotten.

But instead of laughing at himself and moving on, as Mr. Obama would have, POTUS had to insist that he does not make mistakes. He blamed the teleprompter.

This is the same guy who read one line from London Mayor Khan's statement on the London Bridge terrorist incident a few days ago out of context, misinterpreted it, and caused an international incident by blaming Mr. Khan for saying that Londoners shouldn't be alarmed by the attack when what he had actually said was that they shouldn't be alarmed by the fact that there would be extra police around for the next several days and that, unusually in the UK, they would be armed. And then, even when his mistake was pointed out by virtually everyone in the world, he doubled down on it- and still won't admit that he was wrong.

This is the guy who asked once why a person would admit to being wrong when he wasn't making mistakes. He was referring at the time to confessing his sins to God, whom, he said, he "doesn't bring in" to the sin business.

Beware of people who cannot laugh at themselves. Beware of people who can't admit that they're ever wrong. These are not signs of people with healthy personalities, nor are such folks the best ones to entrust with power.

But more than that, beware of people who have demonstrated over and over an incredible ignorance of the Constitution and the way our government works and have previously made excursions into the realm of American history with, well, unfortunate results.

Yeah, we who are not particularly fans of Donald John Trump had a good laugh yesterday over his claim that American troops retook airports from the Redcoats during the revolutionary war and his apparent misplacement of the Siege of Fort McHenry, which didn't actually happen until 1814.  And yes, instead of defusing the situation with self-deprecating humor the way George W. Bush or Barack Obama would have, he played into the hands of those making fun of his mistake by becoming defensive. One wonders how that mistake was even possible- was a White House speechwriter that incompetent, or was it the people in charge of the technical side of teleprompter care?- and any way you look at it the guy in whose administration that person serves is ultimately responsible. But at best that mistake was worth a raised eyebrow.

The question remains, of course, why- stumbling through those teleprompter remarks as he is inclined to stumble through his speeches- he didn't at least try to fix the mistakes. But no. I'll concede that he might not have realized that Francis Scott Key was writing about a subsequent war. But I'm fairly sure that Mr. Trump is aware that the airplane had not been invented in 1775.

Yet Mr. Trump's oft-demonstrated ignorance of American history is an issue. It deserves more of an acknowledgment than his supporters have been willing to give it even in the wake of the howlers Mr. Trump came up with in his Fourth of July speech. But after all, we've known for quite some time that Mr. Trump's supporters tend to live in a hermetically-sealed micro-reality in which he is never to blame for anything and any criticism of him, no matter how well-documented, is "fake news."

And that is more worrisome than Mr. Trump's ignorance of history.  If there's one thing more dangerous than a leader who refuses to take responsibility for his own mistakes, it's one whose supporters will uncritically accept anything he says and defend pretty much anything he does.

They're doing it again. It seems that Mr. Trump's supporters are no more willing to hold him accountable than he is willing to hold himself accountable.  But we can't say that Mr. Trump didn't warn us about that back when we still could have done something about it.