Trump’s Latest Executive Order Forces Smithsonian To Rewrite America’s Racist History
In today’s episode of Every MAGA Allegation Is Actually A MAGA Confession, President Donald Trump’s latest agenda to rewrite American history to omit systemic racism targets the Smithsonian Institution. Specifically, his latest executive order targets funding for programs that advance “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology,” which, as we all know, just basically means any ideology that white conservatives hate because the truth about America doesn’t paint their beloved “shiny city on the hill” in the best light.
The most irritating part of the MAGA narrative justifying this act is that Trump — Donald J. Trump, the current commander-in-lies-on-repeat — has, at least in his own mind, positioned himself as the arbiter of “objective facts.”
From the Associated Press:
Trump claimed there has been a “concerted and widespread” effort over the past decade to rewrite American history by replacing “objective facts” with a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” adding that it casts the “founding principles” of the United States in a “negative light.”
The order he signed behind closed doors puts Vice President JD Vance, who serves on the Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regents, in charge of overseeing efforts to “remove improper ideology” from all areas of the institution, including its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo.
Here’s an objective fact: Donald Trump lies about literally everything.
Are we really going to sit here and pretend Trump’s entire existence in politics hasn’t revolved around “distorted narratives driven by ideology rather than truth?” We’re talking about Donald J. Trump — the president who embarked on a yearslong propaganda campaign to convince America the 2020 election had been rigged against him, which he launched without ever presenting a single shred of evidence that it was true while ignoring every judge, election official and member of his own cabinet who said repeatedly that there is no evidence of it.
Hell, Trump is even currently trying to rewrite the aftermath of his propaganda campaign, Jan. 6. Earlier this week, we reported that Trump was toying around with the idea of paying reparations to the Jan. 6 convicts he pardoned, claiming they protested “peacefully and patriotically,” as if there isn’t footage of them viciously attacking Capitol police officers, breaking down barricades and scaling the Capitol walls in order to overturn the election Trump lied about being rigged. He even tried to rewrite the story of Ashli Babbitt, the rioter who was shot and killed by a Capitol Lt. Michael Byrd as she attempted to climb through a shattered window into the Speaker’s Lobby — or as Trump put it: “Ashli Babbitt was a really good person who was a big MAGA fan, Trump fan, and she was innocently standing there — they even say trying to sort of hold back the crowd — and a man did something to her that was unthinkable when he shot her.”
Trump got himself elected back into office, in part, by lying about a fictional rise in violent crime, lying about undocumented migrants voting in U.S. elections, lying about what DEI is and how it operates, and lying about cops being disallowed to do their jobs when they witness crimes happening because: “They’re told if you do anything, you’re gonna lose your pension, you’re gonna lose your family, your house, your car.”
But, please, tell us more about how this is the man who is going to restore “truth” to American history.
Of course, it should surprise no one that Trump and his white nationalist minions are specifically targeting Black history and women’s history.
More from AP:
Trump singled out the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in 2016 near the White House, the Women’s History Museum, which is in development, and the American Art Museum for criticism.
“Museums in our Nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history,” he said.
Linda St. Thomas, the Smithsonian Institution’s chief spokesperson, said in an email late Thursday, “We have no comment for now.”
Under Trump’s order, Vance will also work with the White House budget office to make sure future funding for the Smithsonian Institution isn’t spent on programs that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with federal law and policy.” Trump also wants to ensure that the Women’s History Museum celebrates women and does not “recognize men as women in any respect.”
Here’s another objective fact: Black history can not be taught truthfully without teaching the history of white American racism. The two are inseparable because there is nothing a Black historical figure accomplished that they didn’t have to accomplish in the face of white opposition and oppression.
Here’s the thing: White conservatives are free to believe whatever White Nationalist Cliff Notes version of American history they want. They can believe that America is this noble nation where enslaved people benefited from slavery and the Founding Fathers had always intended to end the practice, as opposed to the objective truth that most Founding Fathers owned slaves, all of them believed Black people were inferior, and America helped the Western world drive up the demand for free slave labor. They can believe in their hearts that America is not and has never been a racist country, as opposed to the objective truth that two and a half centuries of slavery followed by another 100 years of legally sanctioned anti-Black racism represents the overwhelming majority of the nation’s history, which is the only viable explanation for the racial disparities that exist today.
It’s one thing to believe these white lies; it’s another thing for a presidential administration to unilaterally implement policies that force institutions to back those lies under penalty of defunding — which Trump and his cohorts have also done at the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, Columbia University, and a slew of other institutions the government has no business overseeing or asserting its authority over.
A government entity forcibly taking control of the arts, education and the way history is told is a government practicing fascism. It’s really that simple.
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