On Constitution Day in September 2020—less than two months before his re-election defeat—President Donald Trump staged a White House Conference on American History at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
He called the National Archives, an institution he would later battle over classified and top-secret documents he would remove from the White House months later and refuse to return, “the sacred home of our national memory.”
“In this great chamber,” Trump said, “we preserve our glorious inheritance: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.”
Trump used the occasion to attack “the left” multiple times, and his political opponent, Joe Biden.
After winning a second term four years later, President Trump ordered the Declaration of Independence to be displayed in the Oval Office—the same revered space where he also chose to hang the police booking mug shot from his criminal arrest.
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“The Nationals Archives [sic] delivered the Declaration of Independence to the White House at the President’s request,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, according to the Associated Press. “It is displayed in the Oval Office where it will be carefully protected and preserved.”
The AP suggested the version hanging in the Oval Office may not be an original copy (there are about 25), since its words are “clear and legible,” while the original, centuries-old document, is faded.
Trump told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham that it has “been in the vaults for many, many decades.”
“Think Joe Biden would do this? I don’t think so,” Trump asked the Fox News host. “Do you think he knows what it is?”
Last month, President Trump told reporters, “See the Declaration of Independence? You should all read that before you leave. That’s the real deal.”
This week, during Trump’s first 100 days interview with ABC News, senior national correspondent Terry Moran asked the President of the United States what the Declaration of Independence means to him.
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But the President appears to have forgotten that the Declaration of Independence, an actual act of high treason against Britain and King George III, is a literal declaration of the 13 colonies’ independence. Detailing the founders’ grievances against the Crown, it led to the Revolutionary War. It has been said it contains “the most potent and consequential words in American history.”
Instead, Trump told Moran, “Well, it means, exactly what it says. It’s a declaration, it’s a declaration of unity and love and respect, and it means a lot, and it’s something very special to our country.”
HuffPost reported that “‘Daily Show’ correspondent Desi Lydic mocked President Donald Trump on Wednesday after he revealed what the Declaration of Independence means to him.”
“But what makes Trump’s remarks ‘even more sad,’ Lydic said, is that the document is about the 13 colonies “filing for divorce” from Britain,” HuffPost added. “’It’s the one thing Trump should absolutely recognize,’ Lydic joked in a nod to the president divorcing Ivana Trump and Marla Maples prior to marrying first lady Melania Trump in 2005.”
Others also mocked the President of the United States for appearing to not know what the Declaration of Independence is.
“Laughing through my tears,” wrote former U.S. Congressman John Yarmuth (D-KY). “The President of the United States has obviously never read the Declaration of Independence. He’s obviously never read the Constitution either.”
“Trump has absolutely no clue what the Declaration of Independence is or what it says,” charged Ron Filipkowski, an attorney and the editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch News.
“If the Democrats were better at this game, they would take Trump’s ‘explanation’ of the Declaration of Independence and run it as a 30-second ad, without comment, on every station they could find,” said journalist and columnist Jay Bookman.
The White House apparently took no issue with the President’s apparent lack of understanding of one of America’s most important founding documents. The official White House Rapid Response team posted the video from his ABC News interview that includes Trump’s unique explanation of the Declaration of Independence.
Watch the video below or at this link.