On this episode of Trump History, the show where the president struggles to recount a historical event while completely sober, the topic was Napoleon. In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times published Wednesday, President Trump touched on his relationship with French President Emmanuel Macron. It's one that's garnered plenty of attention, not least because of the many bizarre, borderline frightening handshakes the two have participated in. Those include the time Trump appeared to try to amputate Macron's arm at the shoulder, and the 25-second shakedown.

Not to worry: Trump provided a totally normal explanation for all that:

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Trump on Macron, 3 times pic.twitter.com/IxEmQ5DHZ6 — Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) July 20, 2017

But back to the history lesson, which Trump says he got first-hand from the French president. You see, the French once had this guy named Napoleon in charge. And while it didn't end so well, many people don't know about all the great stuff he did:

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Professor Trump on Napoleon ("finished a little bit bad"), Hitler, Russia. Must have been some sugar packet he read this history from pic.twitter.com/63mzvKL8aP — Declan Cashin (@Tweet_Dec) July 20, 2017

Now, some will say that while Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Russia, it was actually Napoleon III—a different guy—who redesigned Paris with the help of Georges-Eugène Haussmann. (Also, what were the "extracurricular activities"?) This would appear to pour a bit of cold water on the idea that revolutionizing the urban planning of Paris was a kind of redemption for Bonaparte, and on the notion that Trump is overly familiar with French history.

That's something of a surprise, considering Trump's track record as a history buff. After he bought a "fixer-upper" golf course in Virginia, he set about getting it up to the Trump Standard. That included installing a monument to "The River of Blood," a Civil War battle that the monument's plaque said took place on the property but that no historian other than Trump was familiar with. Some will say the River of Blood "never happened." But Trump had a question or two for the doubters from The New York Times:

"How would they know that?" Mr. Trump asked when told that local historians had called his plaque a fiction. "Were they there?"

OK, so maybe that wasn't the first creative bit of decorating that went on at Trump's golf clubs. But he loves his Civil War history. He knows, for instance, that his personal hero, Andrew Jackson, "was really angry that he saw what was happening in regard to the Civil War," and if he was only president then, he could've stopped it. Some will say Jackson died in 1845, 16 years before the Civil War began, but Trump had a broader question:

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Here's Trump's full answer on "swashbuckler" Andrew Jackson and the Civil War: "Why could that one not have been worked out?" pic.twitter.com/Zb8OQaDqyq — Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) May 1, 2017

"The Civil War, if you think about it, why?"

Trump has also recently shared his knowledge about some other Civil War-era figures, like Abraham Lincoln:

"Great president. Most people don't even know that he's a Republican, right? Does anyone know? A lot of people don't know that."

Or Frederick Douglass:

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Trump just described Frederick Douglass as "someone who has done a terrific job that is being recognized by more and more people" — David Frum (@davidfrum) February 1, 2017

Douglass died in 1895, but he's finally getting some recognition—especially from the president, who definitely knows who Frederick Douglass is.

Of course, the clear takeaway from all this is that the president knows nothing about history. He's a man who is fundamentally incurious about the world, particularly about things that don't involve him personally. But more than that, he and his administration operate on the notion that there is no one set of facts that constitute reality. All versions of past events are inherently equal. It's about who can sell their version the best. Trump doesn't need to learn what happened as long as he can make up his own version and enough people believe it.

His whole administration is run on this worldview. That's how you get Kellyanne Conway's "Bowling Green Massacre," or Sean Spicer's "Even Hitler" rant, or Trump's claim that President Obama "wiretapped" him during the campaign. (When pressed on that by Face the Nation's John Dickerson, Trump seemed to say they could both have their opinions about whether or not it actually happened.) It's also how you get Trump's little story about the FBI later on in Wednesday's Times interview:

TRUMP: And nothing was changed other than Richard Nixon came along. And when Nixon came along [inaudible] was pretty brutal, and out of courtesy, the F.B.I. started reporting to the Department of Justice. But there was nothing official, there was nothing from Congress. There was nothing — anything. But the F.B.I. person really reports directly to the president of the United States, which is interesting. You know, which is interesting. And I think we're going to have a great new F.B.I. director.

The FBI director has always reported to the attorney general, within the Department of Justice—never the president. According to the FBI's own official account, in 1908, Attorney General Bonaparte (nice) formed a force of special agents to investigate on behalf of the Justice Department that reported directly to him. That force later became the FBI.

But none of that matters to the president, who now wants to exert control over the federal law enforcement apparatus—a hallmark of authoritarianism and an assault on the rule of law—because he's concerned about an investigation into him and his associates. This is fairly blatant interference in an ongoing federal inquiry (not to mention what he had to say about Jeff Sessions, Rod Rosenstein, and Robert Mueller), propped up by the flimsiest of "historical" anecdotes. This is the danger in dismissing history, or more accurately, the idea of history: If everything happened however you want it to have happened, suddenly you can justify anything.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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