If you’re planning a trip to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, make sure to check out “The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden,” which will teach you about all the presidents who were impeached or resigned in lieu of impeachment. So there’s Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and … huh, that’s it.
Yes, if you look for information on President Donald Trump’s two first-term impeachments, you won’t find it in this exhibit. The Smithsonian removed them in July.
The renowned museum told NPR it would put them back one day. Sometime in the future. It wouldn’t share a timeline.
Until that day, if it ever comes, the Smithsonian is a part of Trump’s rewriting of history, one that treats his presidency like an unvarnished success, a testament to the greatness of the man himself.
Though the administration very likely forced this removal, the Smithsonian spokesperson is still obliged to pretend this is just a normal thing, no big deal, just regular museum stuff where you have to roll back history 18 years, you know?
“Because the other topics in this section had not been updated since 2008, the decision was made to restore the Impeachment case back to its 2008 appearance,” the museum said in a statement.
You see, they can’t include Trump’s impeachments because it’s just so much work to update things, per the administration’s statement to NPR: “A large permanent gallery like The American Presidency that opened in 2000, requires [a] significant amount of time and funding to update and renew. A future and updated exhibit will include all impeachments.”
That explanation might be a little less transparently bullshit if Trump’s twin impeachments hadn’t been included in the exhibit since September 2021.
If you ask the White House, they will explain to you that this is really all about returning America to its former glory and, of course, eradicating forbidden diversity. Per White House spokesperson Davis Ingle, for too long, the Smithsonian “highlighted divisive DEI exhibits which are out of touch with mainstream America,” and that the White House is “fully supportive of updating displays to highlight American greatness.”
It’s not just that the administration wants to remove negative history about Trump, though that is a driving force. It’s also about wanting the Republican Party, the federal government, and everyone else to display constant fealty to Trump. That’s why you see GOP proposals to put him on the $100 bill and on Mount Rushmore, to rename parts of the Kennedy Center after him and his wife, and to rename the Washington subway system the “Trump Train.”
But it also extends beyond Trump. They want to rewrite American history more broadly so that it panders to those like Trump and his ilk: white, straight, cis, conservative, rich. Vice President JD Vance has been empowered to purge museums of anything that doesn’t align with Trump’s view of American history as an unbroken success story. Trump’s team has demanded that museums and the national parks remove anything that’s supposedly divisive, which broadly translates to things that make white people sad.
It used to feel like saying Trump wanted to memory-hole the history he doesn’t like was a bit of a stretch. These days, though, if anything, it may be an understatement.
