President Trump's American history credentials have rarely been questioned, except by anyone who knows even a modicum of history. So it was surprising on Monday when the president flubbed his take on the Civil War: the whole thing could have been avoided; President Andrew Jackson was upset by the war even though he died 16 years before it began; and why didn't anyone stop it, anyway? The incident prompted The New York Times to re-examine the president's past issues with history, including when he thought Frederick Douglass was still alive, and the time he bought a "fixer-upper" golf course that was once home to a Civil War battle site. Sort of.

The Times article links to the paper's 2015 report on the incident, which recounted how Trump bought the course in Virginia—now renamed the Trump National Golf Club—back in 2009, and got to work getting it up to The Trump Standard. That included building a flagpole along the river complete with a plaque commemorating the "River of Blood," a dramatic name for a harrowing event that never happened. But the plaque begged to differ:

via NYTimes

"Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot," the inscription reads. "The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as 'The River of Blood.'"

This actually sounds like it was dictated by Trump, who in a phone interview with the Times called himself "a big history fan." Reporters from the paper told him they'd spoken with multiple local historians, all of whom said there was no Civil War battle within 11 miles of the plaque. The exchange that followed was quintessentially Trumpian:

"That was a prime site for river crossings," Mr. Trump said. "So, if people are crossing the river, and you happen to be in a civil war, I would say that people were shot — a lot of them."

People crossed there, so surely, if there was a war, people were shot while crossing. It just makes sense. But he continued:

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

How else could they know? It's not like there are writings and contemporary accounts from the time, and anyway, who would read them?

Mr. Trump repeatedly said that "numerous historians" had told him that the golf club site was known as the River of Blood. But he said he did not remember their names. Then he said the historians had spoken not to him but to "my people." But he refused to identify any underlings who might still possess the historians' names.

"Write your story the way you want to write it," Mr. Trump said finally, when pressed unsuccessfully for anything that could corroborate his claim. "You don't have to talk to anybody. It doesn't make any difference. But many people were shot. It makes sense."

"Write your story the way you want to write it" is eerily similar to Trump's exchange with John Dickerson on Sunday, when the Face the Nation host pressed Trump on his earlier claim that President Obama wiretapped him at Trump Tower. Trump essentially told Dickerson they could each have their own opinions with regard to objective fact. It's not just that Trump is deflecting; he seems to genuinely believe that all versions of past events are inherently equal, and the one that wins out is simply the one that's sold the best—and which the most people subsequently believe. Gathering evidence, assembling the facts, acknowledging that there is a set of circumstances that make up reality past and present: These are not part of the equation.

It's a symptom of a disease that has spread throughout the White House. That's how you get Press Secretary Sean Spicer's inexplicable "Even Hitler" diatribe, in which the mass-murdering Nazi dictator did not use chemical weapons against his own people, except at "Holocaust Centers." Even closer to Trump's "River of Blood" was Kellyanne Conway's "Bowling Green Massacre," another macabre world-historical event that you won't find on any record outside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Trump administration's history with history is so bad because they spend their days trying to warp reality to their own devices. Sometimes that bleeds from the present to the past, and leaves you with a River of Blood.

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Jack Holmes is a senior staff writer at Esquire, where he covers politics and sports. He also hosts Unapocalypse, a show about solutions to the climate crisis. 

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