Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump tweeted in support of Confederate statues Thursday — and offered a distorted version of history.

In drawing a false equivalence between leaders like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and Confederate generals like Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, the President demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the moral problem of the Confederacy: building monuments that lionize Confederate war heroes like Jackson and Lee celebrate the lives of men who sought to break the nation apart in the name of slavery.

"Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments," Trump tweeted, doubling down on comments he made earlier in the week to reporters at Trump Tower.

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"You can't change history but you can learn from it. Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson - who's next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish! Also the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced."

The problem with Trump's argument though, as the executive director of the American Historical Association told CNN's John Berman on Wednesday, is that comparing Jackson and Lee to Washington and Jefferson is a "specious comparison" at best.

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