Case in point: Last night, on commentator Laura Ingraham’s new Fox News show, Kelly was asked about the decision of a Virginia church to remove plaques honoring Robert E. Lee and George Washington. His response was to share an aggressively bad take on the Civil War:

“I think we make a mistake though, as a society and certainly as individuals, when we take what is accepted today as right and wrong and go back and 100, 200 or 300 years […] It shows you a lack of appreciation for history and what history is,” he told Ingraham.

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“I would tell you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man. He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it’s different today. But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand.”

Hmm. No.

First, a factual point. The Civil War was about slavery, not “lack of compromise” — historians and well-educated citizens agree. Efforts to elide that fact are rooted in the “Lost Cause” narrative that sought to whitewash the South’s misdeeds.

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Second, appreciating history and “what history is” means looking closely at past events from a variety of perspectives, not evaluating them in a vacuum. Robert E. Lee may have been a conscientious-enough individual (his slaves recalled him less fondly; one described him as “the worst man I ever see“), but his contribution to history was defined by his waging war to defend the view that black people were inferior to whites and deserved to be enslaved. Not an honorable cause — in fact, one that was viewed as treasonous in the 1800s and today.

Third, and most relevant to the chief of staff’s newly trollish nature: Kelly may have agreed to a stupid assignment, but he is not a stupid man. And, as his time in the White House has progressed, he has become more and more purposeful in fulfilling the role of President Trump’s justifier, for the purposes of division and confusion.

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In this particular dust-up, Kelly has consciously mirrored the ridiculous “both, many sides” language that the president deployed the last time Robert E. Lee was a national issue, after Charlottesville’s tragic white supremacist march in August. Back then, Kelly knew that narrative was ridiculous and wrong. (There is video of him hanging his head and grimacing as if in shame as Trump said the same words.) Today, he’s pushing the same falsehood.

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Is it accidental? Ingraham asked the question, after all — Kelly didn’t bring it up. But his unnecessarily divisive response is an obvious pitch to Trump’s base at a time when the administration is clearly in need of as much support as it can get. It is also a transparent attempt to cause a distraction when all eyes are trained on news of indictments, arrests and guilty pleas emanating from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe into Russian collusion with the Trump campaign.

Distraction does work, at least in the short term. Much of today’s news cycle has concerned itself with Kelly’s ridiculous understanding of the Civil War. But in the long run, the chief of staff’s credibility is dwindling, our understanding of history is broadening, and the investigation rolls on apace.