Earlier this week, the Washington Post’s Jenna Johnson wrote a piece detailing President Donald Trump’s tendency to say “people don’t realize” or “most people don’t even know” when describing historical facts. “Is Trump playing the role of educator in chief, or simply sharing historical facts he’s newly learned?” Johnson wrote in the piece.

During a Hardball panel on the topic, MSNBC host Chris Matthews obviously was in the camp that Trump was just learning about these things when he publicly speaks about them. And Matthews questioned whether the president had much of an education.

“First of all, I did know that the French were our allies in the American Revolution,” Matthews said. “And every Republican certainly knows that Lincoln was the first Republican president. ALL Republicans know that.”

The Hardball host continued, “Did Trump really go to college? I mean really. I mean really. Did he just go to business school? I think he just went to business school.”

After the panel joked a bit about Trump going to Wharton and what courses he took there, Matthews dinged the president a bit more over what Matthews felt the public was witnessing.

He’s learning it on our watch so we have to actually listen to him say ‘Guess what, I bet you didn’t know,'” Matthews stated, leading The Root’s Jason Johnson to compare Trump to a seven-year-old learning new words for the first time.

“He democratizes his ignorance,” Matthews exclaimed. “If I don’t know it, you don’t know it. Nobody knows it!”

Watch the clip above, via MSNBC.

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Justin Baragona on Twitter: @justinbaragona

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