It is icky that so many founding fathers and early presidents owned slaves. It tarnishes their legacy. They also created our country, so we generally honor them for that, but liberals don’t consider them gods or superheroes or anything. Confederate generals and leaders, on the other hand, not only owned slaves but tried to destroy our country in order to preserve and expand the institution of slavery. Not a mixed legacy - icky all the way down.

I doubt that Trump actually doesn’t understand this. He’s probably playing dumb. Certainly most of the people comparing Washington and Lee are.