Prior to Monday evening's college football national championship in Atlanta, fans in attendance were asked to rise for the customary pregame rendition of the national anthem. But as country artist Zac Brown broke into the song's first few bars, every set of eyes in the building remained fixed on President Donald Trump, who took in the game's first half from a luxury box. Since Trump has made getting angry about African-American players peacefully protesting systemic racism into one of his agenda's signature issues during the first year of his administration, you might think that he would take this opportunity—on national television, and with the whole country watching—to make a big show of how much he loves every single word of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

You would be wrong.

Our esteemed commander-in-chief mumbled his way through—and this is a charitable estimate—about one-third of the song's lyrics, happily taking on the signature lines but leaving some of the trickier excerpts to the pros. ("The bombs bursting in air"? Absolutely. "O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming"? Um, not so much!). For the majority of Brown's tidy, minute-plus performance, Trump wore the grim, determined expression of a man squinting to read the items on the McDonald's Dollar Menu in front of him.

Because no story about a man who allegedly prefers fast food because he fears being poisoned is too absurd, many reacted to his performance by seriously pondering the previously-unimaginable question: Does the President of the United States not know the words to the national anthem?

History has not been particularly kind to Trump on this front. My colleague Drew Magary believes that there is zero chance that Trump could recite the lyrics upon request, citing to this clip in which Trump spend the song's entire first half merrily tapping his hand along with the beat before coming to life when he realizes that it's time to start shouting about rockets and bombs again.

It's not hard to imagine that a man who requires constant reminders about basic anthem decorum might have a few "dawnzer lee light"-style gaps in his comprehension. Again, here he is at a campaign rally, singing most demonstratively during the lines that assert the existence of broad stripes and bright stars—all of which, by the way, are phrases contained in lines that consist entirely of monosyllabic words.

On the other hand, it's tough to definitively conclude that someone doesn't know the words to a song from a video of them listening to a rendition that they're not actually performing. Do you silently mouth along to the anthem at the game? I don't think I do, but if a few stray punchlines subconsciously cross my lips, it doesn't mean that I don't know the rest of it, too. Put another way, the fact that I take a break from screaming the lyrics to "Teenage Dream" when the bridge hits so that I can focus on dancing does not alter the reality that I have every single word spiritually tattooed on my heart. (For what it's worth, I think "Teenage Dream" would make a good national anthem.)