Smithsonian Caves, Lets Trump Erase Impeachment to Avoid Tantrum
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History is said to have axed mentions of President Donald Trump’s two impeachments from an exhibit on the history of American presidents facing impeachment after the White House accused a museum director of political bias and Trump threw an accompanying tantrum.
The Smithsonian has suggested the omission will only be temporary, saying in a statement that “a future and updated exhibit will include all impeachments.” Until then, the exhibit has been restored to a much earlier version that features impeachment bids against “only three presidents.”
“Unfortunately for far too long the Smithsonian museums have highlighted divisive, DEI exhibits which are out of touch with mainstream America,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement. We are fully supportive of updating displays to highlight American greatness. The Trump administration will continue working to ensure that the Smithsonian removes all improper ideology and once again unites and instills pride in all Americans regarding our great history.”
The exhibit section in question — titled “Limits of Presidential Power” — highlights the impeachments of Bill Clinton, Andrew Jackson, and Richard Nixon, against whom impeachment proceedings had begun before he resigned. Trump’s twin impeachments are mentioned in a page on the museum’s website about the exhibit, but there’s nothing beyond a brief acknowledgement of the 2019 and 2021 trials.
The revision is apparently the result of an “assessment” the Smithsonian agreed to conduct in June after the Board of Regents, which includes Vice-President J.D. Vance, instructed it to review policies and personnel and root out “political bias” at the behest of the White House. Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III complied with the request at that time and told staff the museum must “do better,” since “some of our work has not aligned with our institutional values of scholarship, even-handedness and nonpartisanship.”
Bunch had already been under pressure from the White House after Trump signed an executive order demanding the erasure of “anti-American ideology” from Smithsonian museums in March, saying Congress would not fund any exhibits or programs that “divide Americans based on race.”
The president tried to fire the director of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery a few months later for, among other things, her caption on his presidential portrait mentioning “incitement of insurrection” on January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. He didn’t manage to oust her immediately and had no authority to do so anyway, but she resigned not long after, saying her presence had become too much of a distraction.
Trump has sought to impose his own vision of American culture since returning to the White House, installing himself as chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and gradually dismantling the National Endowment for the Arts. The latest push, by Trump supporters in Congress, would see the Kennedy Center renamed the Donald J. Trump Center for the Performing Arts.