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AI slop is littering your feed and spreading misinformation, so WIRED’s here to set the record straight. Join American Historian Lindsay Chervinsky as we fact check the internet, US History edition.
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00:00Okay, what he's eating here is all wrong.
00:02Washington had very few teeth left.
00:04God, there's so much wrong with this video.
00:05How do I even want to start?
00:06I'm Lindsay Chervinsky.
00:08I'm the executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library,
00:11and let's roast some AI slop.
00:14What up, America?
00:16It's Andrew Jackson.
00:17I founded the Democrat Party and chose the jackass as our mascot.
00:20So this is Andrew Jackson.
00:22He was the first president that identified as a Democratic Party candidate.
00:26The label Democratic first emerged with Democratic Republicans,
00:31which was the party that Thomas Jefferson created in the 1790s.
00:35Over time, that party evolved, and eventually Republican was dropped,
00:38and just Democratic Party emerged,
00:40largely to support Andrew Jackson in the election of 1828.
00:44He is widely recognized as the first president of the Democratic Party.
00:48Jackson started the Democrat Party to appeal to the common man.
00:52Democrats today sometimes give him credit for that,
00:54but only after calling him an evil white bigot.
00:56The Democratic Party that supported Jackson was unique for the time
01:00in that white suffrage had expanded during the 1820s.
01:04Previously, only white men of property could vote,
01:07and over the 1820s, various states dropped that property restriction.
01:12However, as this video notes, Andrew Jackson was a bigot.
01:15He continued to buy and sell enslaved people from the White House.
01:19He oversaw the forced relocation of Native peoples from the Southeast to farther West into the Interior,
01:26and even by the standards of the day, was considered to be a racist.
01:30We were by far the pro-slavery party all the way through the Civil War.
01:33Democratic Party had support in both the North and the South prior to the Civil War,
01:38but was largely seen as the pro-slavery party.
01:41In fact, the Republican Party that emerged in the 1850s was created as the anti-slavery party
01:48and largely found its support in the North.
01:50After the war, we cleaned up our act and supported the North's reconstruction efforts.
01:54Totally kidding.
01:55We doubled down on racism and became the party of the Klan.
01:58After the Civil War, the Democratic Party only existed in the South
02:02and largely was responsible for the creation of the Ku Klux Klan to fight against Black suffrage.
02:09The Democratic Party and the Republican Party start to flip-flop their issues and their voters
02:14at the turn of the 20th century.
02:16The Republican Party started to take on the identity as the pro-business party,
02:21and the Democratic Party remained largely a stronghold in the South.
02:25The Democratic Party of Franklin D. Roosevelt did start to shift that identity.
02:30FDR won in a landslide in 1932, thanks largely to the Great Depression,
02:35and offering what he called a New Deal for the American people.
02:39People lost trust in markets, so I wheeled in to drastically expand communism across the country,
02:43and Democrats have been hooked ever since.
02:45President Franklin D. Roosevelt was intensely anti-communist.
02:49The policies he put forward, things like social security,
02:53jobs programs to try and get people back to work,
02:56or banking regulation to ensure that people's savings were not wiped out,
03:00are a part of our society today, and we don't consider to be communist.
03:04He did not advocate for actual communist policies,
03:07things like federal takeover of businesses or industry.
03:11Up until this point, Blacks had always voted Republican,
03:13as they were the party that freed the slaves.
03:15But after FDR's New Deal, Blacks swung 75% Democrat.
03:19No.
03:19Some Black voters were interested in Franklin D. Roosevelt's policies,
03:23but they also continued to support Republicans
03:25all the way up through President Eisenhower's administration.
03:29This was a complete realignment, not because of civil rights, but because of economics.
03:32That's wrong.
03:33The alignment that happened with Black voters was almost completely
03:36because of the Democratic Party's support for civil rights
03:39and the Republican opposition to civil rights.
03:42At this moment in the 1960s, you see a great realignment of voters,
03:46and you see a great realignment of geographic support for the parties.
03:51The South became a bastion of Republican support.
03:54We've pushed segregation throughout the South
03:56and filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act for 75 days.
04:00This scene is actually a combination of two different historic moments.
04:04It looks like this is referring to the enforcement
04:06of Brown v. Board of Education in Little Rock,
04:09when a number of students were escorted into school
04:12through the use of military force.
04:15And this is perhaps Governor Orville Favis,
04:17who was the Democratic governor of Arkansas at the time.
04:20It also is referring to the filibuster of the Civil Rights Act.
04:24That was Strom Thurmond.
04:26Most of the officials that actually filibustered the civil rights bills
04:29were not Democratic Party officials.
04:31They were people that had lived in the South,
04:33but they switched their party affiliation.
04:36While Strom Thurmond was initially a Democrat,
04:38he ultimately switched parties and became a Republican.
04:41When the Civil Rights Acts were passed under President Lyndon B. Johnson,
04:45Democrats largely controlled Congress.
04:47The most important thing to know is that over the course of American history,
04:51there have usually been two parties.
04:53But those parties have evolved and shifted from the very beginning.
04:57They've traded positions.
04:58They've traded voters.
05:00They've traded bases of geographic support.
05:02Okay, next video.
05:04Okay, guys, I know it's kind of a dick move,
05:06but we're about to sneak up on the British the morning after Christmas.
05:10So there's a lot that's right about this scene.
05:12The weather would have been terrible.
05:13There would have been ice in the water.
05:15And in fact, Washington did decide to attack the Hessians,
05:19which were German troops that were hired by the British
05:22in Trenton the day after Christmas
05:24because he thought he would be able to catch them unawares.
05:27There's also some stuff that's wrong.
05:28Washington would not have been in this type of boat.
05:30There would have been a particular type of boat that was flat on the bottom
05:34and had high sides so that it could carry a lot,
05:37like horses and cannons across the river.
05:40They also would have been dressed much more warmly.
05:43It was a snowstorm and Washington would have needed a coat.
05:45All right, that's where the perverts are, still sleeping in their tents.
05:48The Hessians were actually stationed in Trenton.
05:51They had taken over homes and buildings
05:53and they took over one of the university halls
05:56of what would become Princeton University.
05:58So they were not in tents.
05:59That was the Americans.
06:01Who's on the run now?
06:03In the 18th century, when troops surrendered, they often did parade.
06:07However, there are a couple of problems with this scene.
06:09They definitely wouldn't have had their hands up.
06:11They had already surrendered.
06:12They also wouldn't have been wearing these uniforms.
06:15The Hessians, because they were a separate type of troop,
06:18would have had their own uniform and their own hats.
06:21These look much more like the American uniforms
06:24that the Continental Army would have been wearing.
06:25We straight scraping these fools.
06:27This is our house now.
06:29No one has claims to these lands but us.
06:31Seriously, I can't think of anyone else.
06:33This is supposed to be a joke about the Native Americans,
06:35but Washington actually saw Native nations as other sovereign entities.
06:40And once he became president,
06:42he often invited representatives from Native nations
06:44to come meet with him and conduct diplomacy.
06:47And those treaties were actually designed
06:49to protect Native lands from white settlers.
06:52They didn't always work because Washington didn't necessarily
06:55have the military power to block white settlement,
06:58but he did think of them as foreign nations
07:00to be treated with respect.
07:02We just defeated the British at Yorktown
07:04and Cornwallis is such a f***y,
07:06he won't even come out to greet me.
07:08That's actually true.
07:09Cornwallis didn't want to surrender to Washington,
07:12so he made his number two come out.
07:14And in return, Washington refused to accept the surrender
07:16and made one of his subordinates accept the flag.
07:19We really owe you one, France.
07:21Will you help us with our revolution now?
07:23Absolutely not.
07:25That's also true.
07:26So Washington understood that the United States
07:29had no business getting into the war
07:31between France and Great Britain that broke out in 1793,
07:34and he found a way to remain neutral,
07:37much to France's displeasure.
07:39Well, we did it.
07:40The people want me to be king now,
07:42but homie, don't play that.
07:43I'll just go down as the best president you ever had.
07:46This is a really important part of the message
07:48because a lot of people did want Washington
07:51to serve for the rest of his life,
07:52and he refused to.
07:54He thought it was really important
07:55that the concept of peaceful transfer of power
07:57started while he was alive.
07:59Okay, next video.
08:01I'm Andrew Jackson, and I'm bat-*** crazy.
08:03So Andrew Jackson did kind of have this reputation
08:06of being a little bit volatile
08:07and really difficult to work with,
08:09so while they wouldn't necessarily have used that language,
08:12the essence is kind of correct.
08:14I single-handedly won the War of 1812.
08:16Small problem here.
08:18The Battle of New Orleans was a huge victory
08:20for the Americans,
08:20but it actually occurred a couple of weeks
08:23after the end of the War of 1812.
08:25The Treaty of Ghent, which was signed in Ghent,
08:28between the United States and Great Britain,
08:30ended the war,
08:31but it took a while for news of that
08:32to actually get back to the United States.
08:35So while it was really nice to have those bragging rights,
08:37the battle actually didn't have any impact
08:39on the outcome of the war.
08:41If you said something I didn't like,
08:42we stepped outside and had a duel.
08:44This guy said my wife queefed too loud in bed.
08:48So while Andrew Jackson was known for having duels,
08:51and he actually did have two,
08:53this was obviously not the language
08:54that the duel was fought over.
08:56The first duel that he fought was over a court dispute,
08:59and the second was over his wife.
09:02There were rumors that they were bigamists,
09:04that she was not actually divorced
09:05before they got married,
09:07and Jackson was really sensitive
09:08about any slight to her reputation.
09:11And that duel, he actually fatally killed
09:13the person that he was dueling against.
09:15He also received a gunshot wound,
09:17which went very close to his heart,
09:19and he lived with that bullet in his chest
09:22for the rest of his life.
09:23So what made this remarkable is,
09:25by the 19th century,
09:26dueling was illegal in most places.
09:28And so it was scandalous for Jackson
09:30to have participated
09:31and actually killed people in these duels.
09:34Most what were called affairs of honor
09:37didn't actually end up as duels,
09:39and people were able to find a way out
09:41that allowed both people
09:42to have their reputations intact.
09:44And most duels were not actually fatal,
09:47which again is why it increased Jackson's reputation
09:50as kind of a crazy person.
09:52Back in my day,
09:53I made a few controversial decisions,
09:54but hey, we've moved on, right?
09:56Now we've got this beauty
09:57right out here on the trail.
10:00So here, Andrew Jackson is referring
10:02to the forced removal of Native Americans
10:05from their tribal homelands.
10:07This is often called the Trail of Tears.
10:09It led to the death and destruction
10:12of many Native communities.
10:14Needless to say,
10:14this is not something that either Native peoples
10:17or many Americans have moved on from.
10:19Moving on.
10:21Eisenhower was on a golf trip
10:22in Palm Springs, California
10:24on February 20th, 1954.
10:26After dinner that night,
10:27he reportedly made an unscheduled trip
10:30to Edwards Air Force Base
10:31to meet with extraterrestrial beings.
10:34This conspiracy that President Eisenhower met with aliens
10:37largely comes from the fact
10:38that his diary was silent that night
10:40about what he was doing.
10:41However, it is much more likely
10:43that President Eisenhower took the trip
10:45to meet with a dentist
10:46to repair a cracked crown on one of his teeth.
10:49He'd been having trouble with that crown
10:51and it was reported for several days.
10:53And there is absolutely no evidence
10:55that he met with aliens.
10:56The very next morning,
10:57he attended a church service in Los Angeles.
11:00Could it be that what Eisenhower experienced
11:03the night before
11:03shook him so deeply to his core
11:06that he had to reconsider his beliefs?
11:08No.
11:09President Eisenhower was a devout Christian
11:11and regularly attended church
11:12whenever he was able to.
11:14The most important thing to know
11:15about alien conspiracies
11:17is that the government is actually really bad
11:19at keeping secrets.
11:20The number of people
11:21that would have been involved in this treaty,
11:23that would have been involved in this trip,
11:25the pilots of the plane,
11:27it is very hard for that many people
11:29to actually keep a secret.
11:31Just keep in mind
11:32how many people would have had to stay quiet.
11:34Next.
11:35I am Henry Kissinger,
11:37born in 1923 in Germany.
11:39My Jewish family fled the Nazis in 1938 to the USA.
11:44Henry Kissinger was born in Germany
11:45and throughout the course of his entire life,
11:48he retained a German-Austrian accent.
11:51This accent sounds pretty British to me.
11:53In 1969, President Nixon appointed me
11:56National Security Advisor
11:57and in 1973, I became Secretary of State.
12:01My diplomatic efforts contributed
12:03to ending the Vietnam War.
12:05Henry Kissinger was the architect
12:06of the secret expansion of the Vietnam War
12:09into Laos and Cambodia.
12:11He authorized, along with President Nixon,
12:14the bombing of supply lines
12:15that were supplying the Vietnamese during the war.
12:19Many critics were concerned
12:20that this was unconstitutional
12:22because Congress had not in any way
12:24authorized the expansion of violence
12:26into two nations
12:27that the United States
12:29had never declared war against.
12:30He remained a highly controversial figure
12:33because he was often an advocate
12:35for increasing military force
12:37and using that force
12:39somewhat indiscriminately around the globe.
12:41Next.
12:42Hi, I'm Sophia.
12:44I'm from the future.
12:45I am busy.
12:46You're writing the most important document
12:48in American history.
12:49I am aware.
12:49We're seeing Thomas Jefferson here
12:51writing the Declaration of Independence.
12:53The only problem is that
12:54when Thomas Jefferson wrote
12:56the Declaration of Independence,
12:57he was only 33 years old,
12:59which is both a little bit terrifying
13:01and also very different
13:03than the old man pictured here.
13:07You brought mac and cheese
13:09and French fries to America.
13:10I brought the recipes.
13:11James Hemmings cooked them.
13:12That's actually true.
13:13James Hemmings was a French-trained chef
13:16and was responsible for bringing
13:18a bunch of recipes to the United States,
13:21including mac and cheese.
13:22Most people give you the credit.
13:23Most people are wrong.
13:24He was the talent.
13:25He was enslaved.
13:29Jefferson looks shocked here
13:30that James Hemmings was enslaved,
13:32but that shouldn't have been a surprise at all.
13:35Thomas Jefferson owned and enslaved
13:37hundreds of people over the course of his life,
13:39including many members of the Hemmings family.
13:41Sally Hemmings was James Hemmings' sister,
13:44and both Sally and James were with Jefferson in France,
13:47where James would have received his training as a cook.
13:51Sally Hemmings, while she was in France,
13:53became Thomas Jefferson's enslaved mistress
13:56and ultimately went back with him to the United States
13:58and bore him several children.
14:00Okay, let's move on.
14:06The Statue of Liberty was a gift from France,
14:09and it would have been wrapped in a large tricolor flag.
14:12There would have also been enormous celebrations
14:14and a naval parade in New York Harbor.
14:18However, the main thing to know
14:19is that when the Statue of Liberty was created,
14:22it was made of copper.
14:23So it ultimately became green over time,
14:25but when it was first unveiled,
14:27it would have been like a shiny copper penny.
14:29The guy in the video down on the left
14:31is dressed with a traditional French military hat,
14:34which would have been fairly similar
14:36to what French generals would have worn at the time.
14:38A lot of the elements of this celebration
14:40were a callback to the alliance
14:42between the French and Americans during the revolution.
14:45And that was really what the gift was all about.
14:47Next.
14:48I just became president and I'm low-key cooked
14:50and I don't even know what I'm supposed to do
14:52or what I'm supposed to say.
14:53Didn't think I'd make it this far.
14:55I just applied as a joke.
14:56This is a major inaccuracy
14:57because George Washington was the only person
14:59that could become the first president
15:01and everyone knew it.
15:02In fact, at the Constitutional Convention,
15:04when the delegates were discussing the presidency,
15:06they had trouble getting into the details
15:08because it was awkward to have those conversations
15:10in front of George Washington.
15:12Once it became clear
15:13that there was gonna be a constitution
15:15and there was gonna be a presidency,
15:17he knew how the election was going to go.
15:19And he was the only president
15:21that was elected unanimously.
15:23Hey chat, we got some W-eats here,
15:24ribby and mashed potatoes.
15:26Okay, what he's eating here is all wrong.
15:28When Washington became president,
15:30he had very few teeth left.
15:32There wasn't modern dentistry
15:33and he didn't have very good dental jeans to begin with.
15:36So he mostly would have worn dentures
15:38when he was out in public
15:40and they were incredibly uncomfortable
15:41and nearly impossible to eat with.
15:44So he typically preferred soft foods.
15:46So in this case,
15:47the mashed potatoes wouldn't be wrong necessarily,
15:49but the ribeye would have been impossible for him to chew.
15:52So I've been stuck inside signing papers for hours.
15:55Had to get some fresh air.
15:56This is supposed to be the president's house in Philadelphia
16:00where Washington spent most of his presidency.
16:02But Philadelphia at the time
16:04was incredibly dense in its population.
16:06In fact, Philadelphia during Washington's presidency
16:09was just as dense as New York City
16:11just before the pandemic.
16:13So there were no big gardens behind the president's house.
16:16There were no beautiful flowers.
16:17It was a really tightly compact urban space.
16:20Let's see the next one.
16:21Boy, George Washington here,
16:23back at it with another day in the life vlog.
16:26Today's rations are bussin'.
16:27Just some locally sourced organic berries
16:29forged from the woods.
16:31Three out of 10.
16:32Pretty mid.
16:33This is a great depiction of the war
16:35because the rations at times were quite limited,
16:38especially during the winter months.
16:40And in fact,
16:41Washington regularly had to send troops out to forage
16:44from the local forest or communities
16:46to try and find sustenance.
16:48Just finished filming an unboxing video
16:50with this new six pounder from France.
16:52They sent it for free.
16:54Something about a sponsorship?
16:55This is great because France did actually send
16:58a bunch of munitions to the United States
17:00before they were official allies
17:02and often didn't charge for those arms
17:04because they had been long time foes of the British
17:08and were very happy to see the British brought down a notch.
17:11A couple of other things about this scene
17:13that's really interesting.
17:14Next to the cannon is Henry Knox,
17:16who is the major general of artillery
17:18under the Continental Army.
17:19And he was known for being particularly rotund.
17:23So that's a pretty good detail.
17:24However, you can see the way
17:25they have the cannonballs lined up.
17:27That's wildly dangerous
17:29and they would have never stored ammunition in that way.
17:31Get ready with me to catch this dub.
17:33No cap.
17:34A well-tied sash is the key to battlefield riz.
17:36This is a really funny bit of history
17:38because George Washington actually received
17:41a General Braddock sash during the Seven Years' War
17:44after Braddock was killed in battle.
17:46As he was dying, Braddock gave Washington his sash
17:49as an indication that he was now in charge.
17:53And while he was in charge,
17:54Washington organized a really important retreat,
17:58which saved a great deal of the soldiers
18:00under the British forces.
18:02However, by the time the revolution came around,
18:05Washington felt that sashes were too aristocratic.
18:08And so he actually had them done away with
18:10among the American officer corps.
18:12Well, that is all for today.
18:14Thanks for coming along with me.
18:15Remember to like and follow for more 1776 content.
18:19See ya.
18:19This is probably a pretty good depiction
18:21of how Washington would have looked at the end of the war.
18:24Most people think of him as having gray hair
18:26and sort of being an old man.
18:27But when Washington took command
18:29of the Continental Army in 1775,
18:32he was only 43 years old.
18:34And he actually had white brown, reddish hair.
18:37And that's really important
18:39because how do we think about a military hero?
18:42How do we think about someone leading an army?
18:44Having that sort of young, vigorous image
18:46makes a big difference.
18:48Okay, that's all the AI slot for today.