In yet another attempt to whitewash history, President Donald Trump has declared the Smithsonian Institution a bastion of wokeness and that “everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been.” And as such he’s vowed to scrub the museums of all things that show how bad slavery really was.
On Tuesday, the president took to Truth Social to complain about how the museums don’t show how great America has become.
“The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE.’ The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. We are not going to allow this to happen, and I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made. This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE. We have the ‘HOTTEST’ Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums.”
This isn’t the first time that the president has made threats to change America’s past. Earlier this month, the Trump administration sent a letter to Smithsonian secretary Lonnie Bunch, stating that there would be a review of all museums and exhibitions to “ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions,” Deadline reports.
Trump couldn’t be talking about the “Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, a wide-ranging museum that includes artifacts ranging from a George Washington sculpture to the Greensboro lunch counter to C3PO and R2D2,” Deadline reports.
It’s more than likely Trump was referring to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which, rightfully so, has several exhibits on slavery, as it’s impossible to tell the story of Black people in this country without telling the horrific ancestry of how they got here.
Not to mention that the entire museum was set up to tell the “unvarnished truth” while highlighting “the contributions, struggles, and triumphs that have shaped our nation,” per the museum.
Deadline notes that, “Trump does not control the Smithsonian; it is run by a Board of Regents that includes the chief justice, the vice president, and six members of Congress split between the parties, including three members of the U.S. Senate and three members of the House of Representatives. The board also includes nine citizens, who include figures such as Michael Govan and Michael Lynton.”
Janet Marstine, a museum ethics expert told CNN that the demands laid out by the Trump administration “set the Smithsonian up for failure.”
“Nobody could provide those kinds of materials in such a comprehensive way, in that short amount of time, and so it’s just an impossible task,” she said. The White House wants the Smithsonian to provide “a wide array of materials, from internal emails and memos to digital copies of all placards and gallery labels currently on display.”
The Smithsonian declined a request for comment from CNN on Trump’s latest threats.
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