A recent RedState article posed the question of whether Donald Trump was smarter than a fifth grader. If social studies (what used to be called civics) is part of the curriculum, surely he is not. Because unlike Trump, even a fifth grader understands that there are three branches of the federal government-the concept of “checks and balances.”

You may recall that during the Texas Republican presidential debate, Trump stated his belief that judges sign bills:

“Excuse me, she’s a brilliant judge. He’s been criticizing — he’s been criticizing my sister for signing a certain bill,” Trump said. “You know who else signed that bill? Justice Samuel Alito, a very conservative member of the Supreme Court, with my sister, signed that bill. So I think that maybe we should get a little bit of an apology from Ted. What do you think?”

Of course, judges do not sign bills, executives do-meaning governors and presidents.

Now Trump is confusing the judicial branch with the Justice Department, claiming that he would appoint a Supreme Court justice who would investigate Hillary Clinton’s emails:

Donald Trump said he would select justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who would investigate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Trump made the remark about Clinton’s “email disaster” a day after she tagged Trump for calling on a ban on all Muslims entering the United States. Clinton has used the remark to demonstrate to liberals in her party what she believes are Trump’s extremist positions.

I understand that Donald Trump gets his foreign policy advice from the shows. Perhaps he needs to start watching crime dramas in order to learn how the justice system works.

On a serious note, this profound ignorance is startling. It is startling that someone this uninformed-or is it misinformed-is the Republican nominee for president of the United States.