Presidential historian and frequent MSNBC and CNN talking head Douglas Brinkley joined former CBS and NBC anchor Katie Couric on her Thursday on her YouTube channel. According to Brinkley, President Trump’s Smithsonian Institute plans are some sort of Russian or Chinese-inspired attempt to rewrite history and bring back the era of “segregation of some kind.” Meanwhile, Couric unwittingly proved Trump’s point by suggesting that institutionalized racism today is as bad as it was in the days of slavery and Jim Crow.

Asked why Trump is doing what he is, Brinkley opined, “that President Trump is trying to whitewash history and that he has a long narrative you can follow in his life of seeming to want to be hard on black Americans.”

Brinkley also rejected Trump’s depiction of the Smithsonian, “So, there's a timeline if you go to the Smithsonian where they'll talk about slavery. You'll see shackles, you'll understand the horror of it, but it's also the triumphalism of the Civil War. They have at the Smithsonian, you know, Harriet Tubman's hymnbook, and then it follows black, you know, progress and there are fun objects there from Muhammad Ali in boxing or Chuck Berry's Red Cadillac or Romare Bearden's incredible Great Migration paintings.”

Okay, fine, but that does not undermine the actual, legally relevant executive order. Still, Brinkley continued to project negative intents on the move, “So it, it's, the assault he's doing on the Smithsonian is just because he thinks turning the clock back to segregation of some kind is where America should be. And it's a sad day when a president of the United States can't zip it up, get off Truth Social, stop putting things in capital, and let professionals with the curators of the Smithsonian are—let them do their job, and you can have input, but you don't megaphone this kind of nonsense.”

Later, Brinkley added, “Why constantly be, you know, mocking, belittling Black America? And it's because, you know, he wants to empower this sense of the white fantasy narrative of history.”

He also continued to suggest that The Smithsonian will now not talk about slavery at all:

Look, 1776 is huge. We should all talk about the founders. It is the beginning of our country, but we also have to talk about Jefferson as a slave owner and Washington and what did it mean and what are the differences? Why wouldn't we? Why wouldn't The Smithsonian grapple with that? Why would we sweep that under the rug? The danger becomes you become like Russia, you become like China, where you don't want true history, you want to kind of create a narrative that's based on your base, your 30 percent MAGA base.”

What this is really about for people like Trump is ensuring that taxpayer-funded museums do not push far-left politics under the guise of truthful history. At the end of the show, Couric let the mask slip and admitted that is what she wants:

So, I also think that people, you know, slavery wasn't one moment in time, systemic racism emanates from the institution of slavery and, as we know, from the Jim Crow era and beyond that slavery, it didn't, that racism and sort of the treatment of black Americans and now people of color in general hasn't changed, you know, and the remnants of racism continue to exist today, and that's why I think it's so important to learn and appreciate and understand the origins and how they reverberate in our modern society.

Brinkley agreed, “Yeah, true history is always more interesting than fantasy history of any kind… there's fake history, and he's basically promoting fake history when he says that the Smithsonian is overplaying slavery and has to rewrite their storyboards or something because it wasn't that bad. I don't understand somebody who thinks like that.”

It is utterly insane to claim that the treatment of black Americans “in general hasn’t changed” since Jim Crow. If you want to tackle the problem of fake history, start right there.

Here is a transcript for the August 21 show:

Katie Couric’s Substack

8/21/2025

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY: Well, that President Trump is trying to whitewash history and that he has a long narrative you can follow in his life of seeming to want to be hard on black Americans and this is something The Smithsonian does in a remarkable job of explaining black life and it talks about everything and yes, you can't do it without slavery. How, could you do-- study it? So, there's a timeline if you go to the Smithsonian where they'll talk about slavery. You'll see shackles, you'll understand the horror of it, but it's also the triumphalism of the Civil War. They have at the Smithsonian, you know, Harriet Tubman's hymnbook and then it follows black, you know, progress and there are fun objects there from Muhammad Ali in boxing or Chuck Berry's Red Cadillac or Romare Bearden's incredible Great Migration paintings. So it, it's, the assault he's doing on the Smithsonian is just because he thinks turning the clock back to segregation of some kind is where America should be.

And it's a sad day when a president of the United States can't zip it up, get off Truth Social, stop putting things in capital, and let professionals with the curators of the Smithsonian are — let them do their job, and you can have input, but you don't megaphone this kind of nonsense.

…

Why constantly be, you know, mocking, belittling Black America? And it's because, you know, he wants to empower this sense of the white fantasy narrative of history. Now that I, look, 1776 is huge. We should all talk about the founders. It is the beginning of our country, but we also have to talk about Jefferson as a slave owner and Washington and what did it mean and what are the differences? Why wouldn't we? Why wouldn't The Smithsonian grapple with that? Why would we sweep that under the rug? The danger becomes you become like Russia, you become like China, where you don't want true history, you want to kind of create a narrative that's based on your base, your 30 percent MAGA base.

…

KATIE COURIC: So, I also think that people, you know, slavery wasn't one moment in time, systemic racism emanates from the institution of slavery and, as we know, from the Jim Crow era and beyond that slavery, it didn't, that racism and sort of the treatment of black Americans and now people of color in general hasn't changed, you know, and the remnants of racism continue to exist today, and that's why I think it's so important to learn and appreciate and understand the origins and how they reverberate in our modern society.

BRINKLEY: Yeah, true history is always more interesting than fantasy history of any kind. President Trump likes about fake news and you know, well, there's fake history, and he's basically promoting fake history when he says that the Smithsonian is overplaying slavery and has to rewrite their storyboards or something because it wasn't that bad. I don't understand somebody who thinks like that.