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Trump teaches history? Twitter meme earns an A+ for humor

The president's Civil War comments sparked a trip through history's Twilight Zone, from biblical days to The Beatles.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
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Gael Cooper

Donald Trump, history teacher? That's how Twitter imagined the president on Monday after he said President Andrew Jackson, who died 16 years before the Civil War, was angry about that conflict and could've somehow prevented it.

The hashtag #TrumpTeachesHistory (sparked by @midnight with Chris Hardwick) soon imagined the commander-in-chief with a very different vision of historical events.

American history, naturally, came in for a star-spangled Trump take, or 10.

But some tweets gave professor Trump's lessons an international flair.

And some were very specific to the businessman-turned-politician's own history.


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