Closing out Tuesday’s CBS Evening News Plus, the ever-pompous John Dickerson used his “Reporter’s Notebook” commentary to falsely claim President Trump wants to minimize and/or do away with slavery as a topic in the Smithsonians, arguing doing so would be an affront to “American exceptionalism” and the memory of Union soldiers who fought the Civil War to end it.

“Donald Trump’s recent comments about slavery were answered by a letter written to the president 163 years ago. This week, he complained the Smithsonian focuses too much on how bad slavery was. His administration is reviewing the museum’s exhibitions to make sure they celebrate American exceptionalism and remove divisive or partisan narratives,” Dickerson began.

That alone is a pants-on-fire lie.

Here’s the text of his Truth Social post, which argued the Smithsonians overemphasize slavery:

The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of “WOKE.” 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. We are not going to allow this to happen, and I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made. This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE. We have the “HOTTEST” Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums.

Back to Dickerson, he plowed on with a similar sentiment CBS Mornings featured co-host Vladimir Duthiers deployed hours earlier.

“Any discussion of American exceptionalism must include how bad slavery was. 600,000 people died fighting over it. That is a divisive narrative. You could water it down, avoid how bad it was, but then you would be diminishing the sweeping exceptionalism of Americans who sacrificed so much to end something so at odds with America’s ideals,” Dickerson declared.

Reread Trump’s post above. It called for quite the opposite. Rather, a de-wokening of all the nonsense inspired by the likes of Robin DeAngelo, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Ibram X. Kendi.

Dickerson was entirely correct on this point that it was a sign of our exceptionalism that so many (to the tune of at least 360,000 on the Union side) gave their lives to bring an end to slavery:

It is exceptional to fight against a moral sin when ridicule and danger are the likely response. It is exceptional to risk your life for freedom when your very appearance is a death sentence. It is exceptional to hold to ideas of liberty and equality you have never experienced because they were written in the nation`s founding document. What a document that must be to inspire hope in the midst of such darkness, a faith in things unseen.

He then cited a letter — known as Prayer for 20 Millions — from Wednesday’s date back in 1862 when Horace Greenley wrote to President Abraham Lincoln to, in Dickerson’s summation, “argu[e] that American greatness requires confronting slavery’s horrors, not minimizing them.”

“He was urging the President to act equal to the moral cause. For Greeley, American exceptionalism meant courage to face uncomfortable truths. Confronting evil directly, in the past and present, not minimizing it, demonstrates American greatness. In the past, now, and for the future,” Dickerson concluded.

Here again, we’ll refer back to what Dickerson’s network colleague Tony Dokoupil put forth on CBS Mornings as the correct approach to America’s history:

To see the relevant CBS transcript from August 20, click “expand.”

CBS Evening News Plus
August 20, 2025
7:27 p.m. Eastern

JOHN DICKERSON: Donald Trump’s recent comments about slavery were answered by a letter written to the president 163 years ago. This week, he complained the Smithsonian focuses too much on how bad slavery was. His administration is reviewing the museum’s exhibitions to make sure they celebrate American exceptionalism and remove divisive or partisan narratives. That is a hard directive. Any discussion of American exceptionalism must include how bad slavery was. 600,000 people died fighting over it. That is a divisive narrative. You could water it down, avoid how bad it was, but then you would be diminishing the sweeping exceptionalism of Americans who sacrificed so much to end something so at odds with America’s ideals. It is exceptional to fight against a moral sin when ridicule and danger are the likely response. It is exceptional to risk your life for freedom when your very appearance is a death sentence. It is exceptional to hold to ideas of liberty and equality you have never experienced because they were written in the nation`s founding document. What a document that must be to inspire hope in the midst of such darkness, a faith in things unseen. On this day in 1862, newspaper editor Horace Greeley published a letter to President Abraham Lincoln, arguing that American greatness requires confronting slavery’s horrors, not minimizing them. “The Union cause has suffered and is now suffering immensely, from mistaken deference to rebel slavery,” Greeley wrote. The letter, titled “Prayer for 20 Millions,” was published in the New York Tribune. Greeley was not trying to convince Lincoln to oppose slavery. Lincoln already did. He was urging the President to act equal to the moral cause. For Greeley, American exceptionalism meant courage to face uncomfortable truths. Confronting evil directly, in the past and present, not minimizing it, demonstrates American greatness. In the past, now, and for the future.