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Most know President Trump has a tendency to overreact to situations he doesn’t like. But the exhibits at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History are even worse than he described.
First, recall the latest controversy that surrounded the resignation of Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III on Sept. 8. He is described with such acclaim that it was difficult to accept that the criticisms of his leadership were justified:
Bunch, 73, has earned a reputation as a historian unafraid of confronting some of the darkest periods in U.S. history and an adept political operator who maintained strong bipartisan support during his tenure.
Bunch served the Smithsonian Institution for 38 years and oversaw some of the Smithsonian's most ambitious projects, including the construction of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which he founded.
He has been defended by a national organization of his colleagues, who were appalled at the comments of President Trump published in a report from the White House:
The Organization of American Historians, the nation’s largest group of scholars of U.S. history, issued a scathing statement condemning the report as ‘part of an ongoing and multipronged assault by the Trump administration against accurate and evidence-based history in American public life.’
The historians pushed back even further, as did the director of NMAH, Anthea Hartig, when they disagreed with the report’s assessment:
The Organization of American Historians dismissed the July report as part of an attempt to return to a superficial vision of America that never existed, noting that the museum complex houses foundational artifacts like the Star-Spangled Banner, Abraham Lincoln’s top hat, and exhibits celebrating American industrial might. Anthea Hartig, director of the National Museum of American History, defended the institution during a July congressional hearing, testifying before a House subcommittee that the museum does not take sides in political debates and operates under strict standards of scholarship and nonpartisanship.
To help you, the reader, determine whether I’m overreacting to the statements of the Smithsonian defenders, I'll provide some of their comments documented in the White House report. You can be the judge:
As Director Hartig explained in a June 2024 presentation, all her attention was focused on flying the Smithsonian Pride Alliance’s ‘intersexual pride flag during June’ in 2023 and 2024: ‘One of the other key policy changes that’s just happened this month internally has been—I’m the liaison to the Pride Alliance here—and for the first time in the history of the Smithsonian, we flew the pride flag last year and this year, and so that’s a small thing in a way: to fly their intersexual pride flag during June.’
[snip]
In fact, NMAH’s Calendar of Exhibitions and Events for the summer of 2025 reveals that America’s national history museum did not devote any special programming to celebrate Independence Day on July 4th, 2025, despite the museum being open that day. Even the article NMAH published describing the NMAH-related programming that would be taking place during July 2025 failed to even refer to ‘Independence Day’ or ‘July 4.’ No one reading that article would even know the holiday exists, let alone that the following year—2026—is the 250th anniversary of the drafting and adoption of the Declaration of Independence for which we celebrate it.
[snip]
NMAH leadership has openly stated that it seeks to focus on America’s flaws this year. In 2020, Director Hartig asserted that the museum profession has ‘to figure out’ how ‘we’re going to problematize’ the ‘250th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 2026.’ In 2023, Hartig wrote that ‘given that we are lurching towards the semiquincentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 2026, let’s focus on the gaps surrounding that document.’
These are only a fraction of the statements that were documented in the White House report. I think that anyone who is looking for a balance in the exhibits in the museum would agree that promoting Pride Day was a Leftist effort; excluding Independence Day was an insult to our Founders who risked their lives against Great Britain; and intentionally focusing on America’s flaws to denigrate our country all constitute political portrayals of our country.
These efforts by Bunch and his cohorts are an attack on our country. They are intended to rewrite history through a hateful, Marxist lens, so that our Founders are portrayed as white supremacists (language that is used in the museum) with few redeeming qualities.
I suspect President Trump will ensure that the next leaders of the Smithsonian and its museums will make an effort to provide some objectivity, but also some celebrating of our country, the only successful democratic republic in the world.
[Originally published in American Thinker]
Discussion (28)
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Those people are exhausting.
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No kidding! And they never tire of listening to themselves.
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Yes, they are. I spent years while my daughter went through the schools to counter the various ignorant or ideological falsehoods being taught. Now I am doing the same for my grandson. Exhausting? You bet. But truth sets us free, so one must "endeavor to persevere." Carry on.
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I seem to recall that when the Olympics were in Seoul, Korea many years ago, the US News Media, I think it was NBC, did one of their in depth background stories and did a piece about Seoul that highlighted its good points but also focused a lot on its bad points. The Koreans were quite insulted by this and I remember that someone who was interviewed about it said something like: "It's like being invited to a wedding and instead of photographing the bride and happy guests, you focus on the piles of dirty dishes and the garbage". At first I was inclined to support NBC (I was young and foolish) but then after reading the quote, I thought "You know, she is right. This wasn't the right time. The people were so proud of hosting the Olympics - they wanted to show off their city."
The same goes for the Smithsonian, especially for the 250th. I don't know anyone who is not aware of the darker aspects of our history, but you would expect our national museum to focus on the great and glorious on the 4th. But you can tell that saying anything positive other than "This is Abraham Lincoln's hat" sticks in their craw. They just can't do it. And having the endorsement of the "Organization of American Historians" pretty much means you are doing something wrong. The humanities became cesspools of Marxism a long time ago.
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When one side is anti-American, to be neutral you have to take sides.
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