Trump reportedly doesn't know what happened at Pearl Harbor

published 15 January 2020

President Trump may need a history tutor.

A Very Stable Genius, a new book by Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig based on hundreds of interviews, alleges Trump seemed to know next to nothing about the events of Dec. 7, 1941 when he visited Pearl Harbor in Hawaii for a private tour of the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial alongside his former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general.

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The authors wrote, per an excerpt in the Post, that Trump did seem to understand Pearl Harbor was significant, but was light on the details. He reportedly appeared to think he was visiting the site of a historic battle, which isn't necessarily an inaccurate description — the attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise Japanese military strike against a U.S. naval base that prompted Washington's entry into World War II.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.

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