If you strip away Donald John Trump’s obvious knowledge of cultivating a massive business empire, you might be left to wonder as I am wondering: Does the president know a single thing about the history of the nation he now governs?

He was interviewed by SiriusXMPolitics and said this about the Civil War, according to the New York Daily News:

“Had Andrew Jackson been a little bit later, you wouldn’t have had the Civil War,” Trump told SiriusXMPolitics about the seventh President, who left office 24 years before, and died 16 years before, the onset of the American Civil War.

“He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart, and he was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War,” Trump said.

“He said, there’s no reason for this. People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, you think about it, why? People don’t ask that question,” Trump continued. “But why was there the Civil War. Why would that one not have been worked out?”

Let’s set aside, first of all, the mangled syntax that poured out of Trump’s mouth. I’ll merely not that this man cannot speak in coherent, complete sentences. For example: “He said, there’s no reason for this. People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, you think about it, why? People don’t ask that question,” Trump continued. “But why was there the Civil War. Why would that one not have been worked out?”

Then he utters absolute nonsense about one of the nation’s more colorful and well-known presidents.

Could Old Hickory have prevented the Civil War? Well, maybe … if he had lived long enough to renounce slavery and free the human beings he held in bondage.

This is what we have now: a know-nothing president.

Or is this what his supporters mean when they say the president “tells it like it is”?