Trump Commands Smithsonian To Stop Showing 'How Bad Slavery Was'
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump confirmed that he is going to force changes at the Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C., including removing exhibits that talk about the ills of slavery.
Trump made the comment in a Truth Social post, in which he said that changes to the museums are part of his war on "woke”—a term conservatives can’t even define but usually refers to their anger at anything that promotes equal rights for people of color, women, and the LGBTQ+ community.
"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," Trump wrote. "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."
Of course, slavery was objectively bad, and remains a stain in U.S. history. Millions of African Americans were enslaved in cruel conditions, finding themselves raped and beaten at the hands of the white slave owners who reaped the economic benefits of their indentured servants.
Indeed, the impact of slavery still hurts Black people in the U.S. today—with Black communities facing economic and educational inequities that trace back to slavery and Jim Crow segregation.
What's more, other parts of Trump's idiotic Truth Social post are also false, as Smithsonian museums absolutely do feature success stories. Not to mention, Trump's claim that the museums do not contain anything about the future is also absurd, as history museums by definition focus on history, which by definition is in the past.
Ultimately, Trump’s vow to be the arbiter of what is included in Smithsonian museums is the latest way Trump is trying to rewrite history—and make the entire country view America through his racist and egomaniacal lens.
Since his first term in office, Trump has tried to whitewash the United States’ history, including when in 2020 he announced that he was creating the 1776 Commission in order to make sure kids were not being taught that the United States is “an irredeemably and systemically racist country.” The 1776 Commission ended up releasing a report in January 2021, right before Trump was booted from office, that the American Historical Association said amounted to “a screed against a half-century of historical scholarship.”
After taking office again in 2025, Trump quickly went to work to whitewash history, including stripping mentions of diversity and equity from government websites, which led to irrational things like the removal of photos of the Enola Gay B-29 bomber because it contained the word “gay.” A Defense Department tribute to Jackie Robinson, an Army lieutenant who became the first Black man to play Major League Baseball, was also removed. Additionally, articles about the Navajo Code Talkers, who in World War II used their native language to create a code that the Nazis could not understand that helped the Allied forces communicate battle strategy, were removed from the Defense website.
Trump also signed an executive order that deemed books that tell the story of slavery to be filled with “corrosive ideology,” and ordered them removed from the Smithsonian Institution and the national park system. And the Smithsonian changed an exhibit on presidential impeachment to make Trump's two impeachments look less damning.
Meanwhile, Trump is also attacking universities, threatening to pull funding if they do not bend to his will on everything from hiring decisions to admissions policies.
Trump during his first run for office declared that he “loves the poorly educated.” Now, he’s trying to ensure everyone in the U.S. is poorly educated, taught only his false and whitewashed view of history.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
