Everything the Trump administration touches turns to crap, and I know there’s a lot to keep up with (or not), but I’ve been paying attention to this Smithsonian issue. Donald Trump and his merry band of fascists are leaning on the Smithsonian, and the museum has capitulated repeatedly. They already removed all trace of Donald Trump from their impeachment exhibition, and currently, Trump’s people are conducting a “review” of the Smithsonian. Well, it sounds like the review is going poorly. Trump posted this:
President Trump accused the Smithsonian Institution on Tuesday of focusing too much on “how bad slavery was” and not enough on the “brightness” of America as his administration conducts a wide-ranging review of the content in its museum exhibits.
“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,” Mr. Trump said in a social media post. “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.”
Mr. Trump made the comments a week after the White House told the Smithsonian that its museums would be required to adjust any content that the administration finds problematic in “tone, historical framing and alignment with American ideals” within 120 days. Taken together, the administration’s examination and Mr. Trump’s post on Tuesday were the latest example of Mr. Trump trying to impose his will on a cultural institution and minimize the experiences and history of Black people in the United States.
“It’s the epitome of dumbness to criticize the Smithsonian for dealing with the reality of slavery in America,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian. “It’s what led to our Civil War and is a defining aspect of our national history. And the Smithsonian deals in a robust way with what slavery was, but it also deals with human rights and civil rights in equal abundance.”
I’ll speak about the slavery part of Trump’s rant in a moment, but I’d just like to point out that “nothing about the Future” is a bizarre demand for a MUSEUM? Museums are not… science-fiction, with exhibits devoted to looking towards the future. People go to museums to learn about our shared history and to learn about the larger world. Speaking of, “where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was…” Slavery was bad. Every f–king generation needs to learn that slavery was bad. Sitting here in 2025, we feel so removed from America’s history of slavery, but it was so much worse than any museum could ever show. It was a centuries-long crime against humanity, the effects of which still infect and influence our country today. The fact that we’re still talking, today, about what can be shown and taught about slavery shows how important it is to teach people the real American history. I strongly suspect this is another barely-hidden dog whistle about The 1619 Project, critical race theory (remember that?) and MAGA’s latest tantrum, “DEI.”
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.
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- Washington, DC Arrival of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy before a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and European leaders at the White House in Washington. Pictured: Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelenskiy BACKGRID USA 18 AUGUST 2025 BYLINE MUST READ: MediaPunch / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Washington, DC United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio looks on as US President Donald J Trump meets President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, on Monday, August 18, 2025. European Leaders are at the White House in support of President Zelenskyy following President Trump’s meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia in Anchorage, Alaska. Pictured: Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump BACKGRID USA 18 AUGUST 2025 BYLINE MUST READ: MediaPunch / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Washington, DC United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio looks on as US President Donald J Trump meets President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, on Monday, August 18, 2025. European Leaders are at the White House in support of President Zelenskyy following President Trump’s meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia in Anchorage, Alaska. Pictured: Donald Trump BACKGRID USA 18 AUGUST 2025 BYLINE MUST READ: MediaPunch / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Washington, DC United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio looks on as US President Donald J Trump meets President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, on Monday, August 18, 2025. European Leaders are at the White House in support of President Zelenskyy following President Trump’s meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia in Anchorage, Alaska. Pictured: Donald Trump BACKGRID USA 18 AUGUST 2025 BYLINE MUST READ: MediaPunch / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Washington, DC President Emmanuel Macron and former President Donald Trump join President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders at the White House for high-level talks on the ongoing war in Ukraine. Pictured: Donald Trump, Giorgia Meloni BACKGRID USA 18 AUGUST 2025 BYLINE MUST READ: Best Image / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
I hate him so much!
DITTO!!
I’m pretty sure there’s a healthy crowd of us museum folk on this site, so let me just say thank you on our behalf for platforming this storyline. In fact, I learned about CB from someone who is high up at the Smithsonian, and I know so many amazing, brilliant people who put their necks on the line to tell the truth every day.
Fellow museum professional here. The chilling part is that he mentioned all museums in the country, not just the Smithsonian and called us the last remaining segment of “woke.” The last institutions protecting history. Of course woke to MAGAT’s encompasses anything that doesn’t support white male supremacy.
This just illustrates his ‘epitome of dumbness’ (I would have used nadir of stupidity, but I digress)–ALL museums are not federal institutions and ALL museums do not get federal funding (generally, grants). Therefore, he has no say whatsoever in how private museums choose to interpret the past. I mean, there’s a museum of creationism in a small town in Georgia which depicts human beings & dinosaurs walking the earth together. 🙄. (I kinda sorta wanted to visit to see what it was like but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have been able to contain my snorts of derision & get myself thrown out.). This is all trumpian bluster, anyway.
And what’s with these idiotic deadlines? 120 days? What happens if they don’t respond in 120 days? I wish somebody at the Smithsonian would grow a backbone & not send anything. Or, I dunno, maybe the geniuses in the trump regime could figure out another way to get that info? Say, actually visit the museums? Or, you know, check out their websites? Too much work?
The new narrative to justify institutionalized slavery at his deportation camps. “Hey, it’s better than being dead, and they might die if we deport them!” This can also apply to refugees and asylum seekers. I can’t wait to see the neat new, morally depraved ways they extend it. Maybe inner cities? Anyone living below the poverty line?
It also applies to anyone imprisoned— and the things that are considered “crimes” increasingly impact people who are already vulnerable. When “loitering “ and “resisting arrest”— even when someone is innocent of any other “crime” become “crimes” themselves, when prisons charge the imprisoned for their imprisonment, when prison labor adds an element of profit to the criminal justice system, it starts to look a lot like slavery — doesn’t it? Many states and even the federal government contract with private companies to incarcerate inmates. The depravity and the profits are both very real. It’s the American Way.
100% I could see this extended to the homeless population, regardless of mental illness. There are so many tent cities in Indianapolis these days, and I wouldn’t put it past our Trumpy governor to round them up and put them into forced labor camps.
Museum pros, why would potential donors ever consider giving over that important art work or artifact in their possession?
Money. It’s a tax write-off.
Professional federal archaeologist here, specializing in historical archaeology, and this has really been hitting me in the heart. I’d like to think the Smithsonian Institute won’t just roll over, but I’m not holding out much hope. They and the National Park Service have been really disappointing these last several months (gad, just months, feels like years…). 🙁
My god that man is repugnant, I can barely stomach seeing a photo of his ugly mug. He really does have the face he deserves.
It’s not just a matter of sanitizing history for the masses. This mf’er tries to make it sound like the Smithsonian is just too depressing. Well, slavery was pretty depressing, but that’s not the point of what they’re doing here. They are also restoring statues and monuments which celebrated the Confederacy. Most of those were torn down during the BLM movement in 2020 and 2021. This is a literal project to restore the Confederacy, not just in the south but the entire country. That means revising history to make slavery acceptable. I hate to think it, but dare I say, they may intend to actually bring back slavery. After all, once all of the immigrant labor is deported or imprisoned, someone is going to have to tend the fields and pick the crops. So they’re rehabbing slavery. And not just in the Smithsonian.
Spot on, brassy. The tech oligarchs are driving a paradigm shift built on AI, machine learning, and quantum computing — which only works if there’s a pliable underclass and a servitude tier. There’s a growing body of literature on Neo-Feudalism describing this: a patronage society where survival hinges on being contracted to a CEO. Trump’s propaganda machine is busy normalizing it, while his concentration/deportation camps are already turning slavery into policy.
Slavery never left. Look at our prison system.
If MAGA plans to bring back slavery for non-prisoners, imagine how bad it will be for prisoners in the for-profit prison system and farms they will be running.
That’s because racists want it to be minimized. That’s why you often hear things like you were never even a slave, or that was so long ago why are you still complaining about it like it happened to you. They want people to think that it wasn’t that bad, so that when people bring up current racist actions they can act like it’s just an exaggeration, and that long-term de jure and de facto segregation policies don’t still have a direct impact.
There are literally people out here who believe and would like others to believe that someone was a slave on Monday, the Civil war was ended on Tuesday, and by Friday they were all trusted neighbors and friends. They really want you to believe that you thought that you could own a human being at the beginning of the week and that you would not have any horrible thoughts about them at the end of the week just because the law says so.
I’m so thankful that my third grade teacher made us read the WPA slave narratives. He said if the kids in that book were old enough to experience it, we were old enough to read about it and honestly know what history was like.
I was 7 when Roots aired. Scarred me for life. But it also developed a deep horror in me for that time in American history when people were treated as subhuman. Donald Trump is a bloated piece of garbage. We need to save our museums from him.
There are literally people out here who believe and would like others to believe that someone was a slave on Monday, the Civil war was ended on Tuesday, and by Friday they were all trusted neighbors and friends.
-THIS! Every minute, every hour, every day. The effects of slavery has permeated and affected generations throughout history. There are older adults today who were taught by their grandparents what THEIR grandparents went through pre- or post- Civil War. Slavery never went away–it just transformed into institutional racism.
@Dee(2); thank you for this; if the children were old enough to live through it, you are old enough to read about it.
The problem with history education is the the American myth is taught in required courses and the American truth is hidden in the electives, especially in k-12. For reason I cannot under Texas has an outsize influence on textbooks. Textbooks have to pass Texas to be adopted nationally which is why we almost had enslaved people classified as people who came to the USA as ‘workers’– no mention of kidnapping, bondage, r*pes and beatings.
K-12 brush by slavery and RECONSTRUCTION as is one was kinda bad but the other wasn’t better–because . . .
But history classes rarely tackle SOUTHERN REDEMPTION, which lasted from 1877-mid sixties. Look it up. We are in a period of the New Confederacy who are on pace to make the policies of the Southern Redemption nationwide. This time mudsills won’t only be defined on racial lines [if they ever were] but also on socio-economic class.
They say history is cyclical, but cycles, once recognized can be broken. Folks need to get cracking.
Another day of WTF is wrong with that man?! And yes, I’m sure he’d love to bring slavery back so he wouldn’t have to pay for labor at all his tackya@@& golf courses, resorts, subpar building projects, etc.
And don’t forget several of the red states have already weakened child labor laws so it’s fine for children to work in processing plants, use industrial equipment and chemicals, etc. And don’t some also already allow modern chain gangs for farming and road cleanup labor?
I went to the African American Museum last year. They had child-sized shackles on display. That memory will not ever fade. It should not ever fade.
Oh, gad. I would have had nightmares about that as well.
I’ve had it with this asshole. Digging up the rose garden to put tacky ass patio furniture, gilding the Oval to look like Liberace’s dressing room, the list goes on. Yet we have millions in this country that voted for this crap and the Dems are in the toilet with their ratings by the public. What are we going to do?!!? Who is going to rescue us from this living hell????
Museums and libraries are extremely important institutions but they are not the main source of where we get our information anymore. Unless Trump forces Google and other search engines to wipe every iota of black history from their search results then he really isn’t gonna be able to accomplish what he’s aiming for. Not to give him any ideas because let’s face it, Stephen Miller probably has some incarnation of this on his agenda.
I’m worried about oder people like my father who considers Museums as a reliable source, as most are, or where. It it not only about fake historische, but also making it more diffucult to get reliable Information and sewing doubts about a scientific consensus to easier impose their fake reality.
I’d like to point out that we are only 7 MONTHS into this hellscape. We’re still over a year away from midterms (if they even happen given the current state of things) and over 3 years away from the next Presidential election (but, again, given the current state of things…). Twilight Zone doesn’t even begin to describe the surrealism of everything that’s happened and is happening.
Texas just passed/approved the new redistricting maps. Newsom is going to counter with redistricting CA. I hope Newsom succeeds and other Democrat-heavy states follow his lead. The godless party is trying to steal midterms. If CA cancels out TX, Trump’s next move might be to cancel elections all together. I wish I was joking. I wish I was exaggerating. I am just scared.
Texas is the first, not the only gerrymandered “red/purple-ish” state he want to do that with. I hope other blue states are willing to step up and are in planning mode should the need arise. It might not be as easy for them because they do not aggressively silence red voices/power.
Newsome the handsome, is most popular, bestest, cutest, finest dragon riding governor-king (but for this moment only) should not stop at meeting Texas five but aim for California six or seven, or a number proportional to the percent of dollars California “donates” to the federal coffers.
It is mostly the liberal blues states that keep MAGA run states income tax free and financially supported. Many if not most states of the new confederacy are welfare states.
I think California should make ALL its districts blue. Go for broke, cancelling out Texas isn’t enough.
What a POS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Remember that Trump is a person whose family fortune includes building and managing racially segregated housing in NYC, and who took out full page newspaper ads urging the execution of 5 Black and Brown teens who had not yet had trials — and who were later exonerated after years of imprisonment. When Trump wants to make America “great” again, his vision of “greatness” is the very white very racially segregated Queens that he remembers fondly — and wants to replicate.
The Smithsonian is made up of several different museums. Still, for some reason, his focus seems to be on the National Museum of African-American History and Culture. This museum traces the history of African-Americans from slavery to their significant achievements, which are showcased on the top floor. A museum that he praised when it first opened.
I’m sure all objective truth, history, and all museums are his target. I suspect that the National Museum of African American History and Culture is particularly in his crosshairs.
Go visit a museum and take a page out of (take the whole book) of FAHRENHEIT 451, become the museum yourself.
Heather Cox Tichardson has an interesting explainer about the impulse behind the attack on history and museums.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=1283394420052568
Stephen Miller is a danger here too. Mostly because he’s much younger.
We were in D.C. for the Sexy Liberal Comedy tour a few years back and took in a little of the Smithsonian midday. I couldn’t stop leaking tears after the Native American one and we switched to admiring gardens so I could pull myself together.
The betrayals and breaking of treaties was just overwhelming. It was very well done.
This is a pretty standard operating procedure within fascist regimes. We are no longer a functioning democracy.
Languages’ teacher in Portugal. In our curriculum, we teach more than grammar and vocabulary. There are many topics related to Citizenship amidst the language contents. I can give you some examples – Environment – students learn about the climate changes, the importance of recycling; Media and Technology – advancements in Technology, dangers of social media, how wrong bullying is, etc.
One of the topics is Multiculturalism where Human Rights are discussed and of course, slavery always comes up, as well as gender equality, rights to a fair salary and all you can think of.
Slavery was awful and Portugal was one of the worst in that aspect. It’s part of our History, and it’s a lesson that must be learnt not to repeat.
History is not only about good and amazing things, it also comprises so many events that shouldn’t have occurred. But it’s through learning the REAL history that we can move forward as a better society, That’s my take.
Here ya go folks, link to the Smithsonian’s Magazine’s (published by the Smithsonian Institution) feedback page: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/contact/feedback/
Echoing everyone on here that Cheetolini’s actions here are disgusting. He’s trying to mollify his racist, stupid base with this “The South Rises Again” bullshit. Anyone who watched Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Who is America?” series in 2018 knows that a huge number of Southerners want another Civil War, and would love a return to that wonderful lifestyle. Too bad that there are millions of smart people in this country who know that you’re evil, dumb crackers…
It’s sick and delusional, and it’s alarming how fast his minions are moving. I’m itching to march on Washington, since I’m pretty sure massive demonstrations will be the only way to get rid of his bloated ass!