Posted on 08/19/2025 1:53:59 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
President Donald Trump escalated his campaign to purge cultural institutions of materials that conflict with his political directives on Tuesday, alleging museums were too focused on highlighting negative aspects of American history, including “how bad slavery was.”
In a Truth Social post, Trump directed his attorneys to conduct a review of museums, comparing the effort to his crackdown on universities across the country.
“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,” Trump wrote.
Trump’s comments come days after the White House announced an unprecedented, sweeping review of the Smithsonian Institution, which runs the nation’s major public museums. The initiative, a trio of top Trump aides wrote in a letter to Smithsonian Institution secretary Lonnie Bunch III last week, “aims 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.”
The letter said the review would focus on public-facing content, the curatorial process to understand how work is selected for exhibits, current and future exhibition planning, the use of existing materials and collections and guidelines for narrative standards.
Exhibits at the Smithsonian take years of planning and are heavily evaluated by teams of scholars and curatorial experts before they make their debut. Janet Marstine, a museum ethics expert, said that the demands laid out by the Trump administration “set the Smithsonian up for failure.”
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” Trump wrote.
Oh oh!
Perhaps Ms. Marstine’s ox has been gored.
Finally.....I like this idea.
If we are going to have a huge bureaucracy, at least don’t have it constantly tell me how terrible I am and how bad my country is.
Hopefully, Trump (and other Republicans! Ahem!) will take advantage of the predictable demonicRAT outrage machine to point out that it was primarily, if not totally, demonicRATS who owned slaves.
In fact, if Trump was trying to end slavery today, demonicRATS would oppose him.
Prove me wrong.
"President Donald Trump continued fulfilling his campaign promise to purge public institutions of materials that promote socialist and anti-American propaganda on Tuesday
So many Debbie Downers at the Smithsonian.
Slam dunk this will be the next liberal talking point tomorow.
Here’s an idea for people who are obsessed with “saving our democracy”:
Ask the Majority of Americans if they want to be constantly insulted, put down, and blamed for every bad thing because once upon a time, this country had slavery.
I bet the Majority would rather move on. So ... there you go. Basic democracy: Majority wins, and the Minority view can go suck it.
The history of Greenfield Village and Henry Ford Museum has a section about tourists seeing the outdoor exhibits of small Indvidual white block slave houses each with a bed and fireplace from a plantation and various items from slave life. Many tourists commented that the slave life didn’t seem very bad at all. The curators then added more to the spoken narratives of the re-enactors and to the plaques telling the stories.
The adjacent indoor museum soon added a full civil rights era exhibit and the museum paid for the original bus where Detroit native Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus.
👍 👌
WTF is a museum ethics expert?
Someone who couldn't hold a job in the real world.
Trump is just trying to help the DEMOCRATS because they were the slave owners.
Maybe exhibits showing the valiant Republicans fighting and dying to end the democrats’ evil practices?
And please, nobody try to FReepsplain to me how it wasn't. It will only fall on deaf ears. Or eyes. Blind eyes. Whatever. You know the thing.
“Ask the Majority of Americans if they want to be constantly insulted, put down, and blamed for every bad thing because once upon a time, this country had slavery.”
I can’t help but wonder if the Smithsonian has exhibits explaining that African slavery was invented in Africa?
If so, does the narrative encourage people of African descent to hang their heads low knowing that their native continent was the birthplace of African slavery? Are they told how shameful it is to be identified with Africa?
Tonight I imagine
On the Apple series “Masters of the Air”, a black pilot captured by the Germans was questioned why he fought for the United States when they treated blacks so badly. His response was fantastic, “I don’t fight for what it is, but what it could become.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.