Trump Launches Bonkers Smear Campaign Against Top Museum

President Donald Trump issued an executive order targeting the highly regarded Smithsonian National Museum of American History and ordering temporary signage to be posted outside the museum alerting the public that the institution he portrays as “woke” does not accurately represent the U.S.

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The history at the museum will also reportedly be “corrected” by White House officials on signs and exhibits inside and outside the Smithsonian under Trump’s order.

The president’s startling command, issued Friday, came in the wake of a titled “Saving America’s Story,” issued on July 4 by Trump’s Domestic Policy Council. The report accused the museum of “extreme political activism” via exhibits including those on slavery, immigration, and transgender issues. It concluded that the museum “cannot be trusted” with American history, while Trump officials can be.

Trump’s order accused the museum leadership of using American history as a “prime tool” to “advance ideas of social justice and the radical transformation of our society,” while failing to celebrate the nation on its 250th anniversary.

Last year, the president ordered that “improper ideology” be eliminated from all Smithsonian museums.

The Daily Beast has reached out to the Smithsonian for comment.

When museum director Anthea Hartig was grilled over the issue at a hostile hearing convened by the House’s Republican DOGE Subcommittee earlier this week, she testified: “We unwaveringly attest” that the White House report “does not fairly or accurately characterize the full body of work at the museum.” She emphasized that the Smithsonian’s job is not to “erase” American history, but to present it as accurately and as fully as possible.

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The museum also celebrates “patriotism, not instructed, but inspired,” she added, with exhibits informed by “standards of scholarship… and nonpartisanship.”

Hartig noted popular exhibits at the museum, including Thomas Jefferson’s desk, where the Declaration of Independence was drafted, the score of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and American inventions.

She was attacked at the hearing for pushing “national self-loathing” and for supporting an institution too focused on “oppressors and the oppressed.”

“America’s history is complicated, and sometimes painful,” Alabama Democrat Rep. Terri Sewell said in one of the few sympathetic comments at the hearing. “But we should never shy away from telling the full story.”

She called the administration’s crusade to take control of the museum “not only dangerous” but “perilous.”