The idea that the Smithsonian Institution caved under pressure from the president’s appointees needs firmer evidence.
G oogle observed that the Washington Post’s exclusive report published late on Thursday night, which alleged that the Smithsonian Institution had attempted to rewrite history “following pressure from the White House,” had become a “highly cited” dispatch overnight. And it most certainly was.
The report indicated that an exhibit on the history of presidential impeachments had been adulterated after Trump administration officials leaned on the museum to erase Trump’s name from the ignominious list of impeached presidents. The feature in question opened in the year 2000, displaying artifacts from Andrew Johnson’s 1868 case, the 1999 investigation into Bill Clinton, and the Watergate scandal. Since September 2021, it had also featured a “temporary label” referencing Donald Trump’s two impeachments. But, according to “a person familiar with the exhibit plans,” the label was withdrawn amid a standoff between the White House and the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents over broader questions about the institution’s political neutrality.
Save for the accusation from the Post’s single source, the allegation that the institution folded under political pressure is sustained by implication.
The report concedes that an online companion to the impeachment exhibit “briefly mentions Trump’s cases,” which at least suggests that the alleged cover-up of Trump’s impeachment record was not an institution-wide initiative. Following the publication of the Post’s report, a museum spokesperson, Linda St. Thomas, assured its reporters that they were revealing nothing more untoward than a temporary administrative stopgap.
“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,” Thomas’s statement read. It would require “significant amount of time and funding to update and renew.” The Post’s reporters were unconvinced. After all, visitors to the exhibit can see more recent political relics, including regalia commemorating Trump’s and Biden’s presidential inaugurations.
The reporters further note that the exhibit’s curators promised to begin the process of updating it back in January 2020, and that project has taken a conspicuously long time. Indeed, the fact that it took a conspicuously long time under unified Democratic control of Washington does not appear to detract from the contention that the museum is passively colluding with the Trump administration to rewrite history.
Following up on the Post’s scoop, the New York Times attempted to bring more clarity to the issue than its competitor managed. It did not succeed, save for reporter Graham Bowley’s decision to include the pledge in Thomas’s statement that the updated exhibit will be comprehensive. “A future and updated exhibit will include all impeachments,” St. Thomas said.
Both the Post and the Times dwell, with all due and proper concern, on the degree to which Trump administration officials have applied political pressure to the cultural institutions within the executive branch’s portfolio. It’s not hard to believe that Trump’s subordinates — or perhaps even the president himself — chafed at the accurate retelling of events in Trump’s first term. Perhaps even the Post’s single source believed honestly and in good faith that the museum was colluding with its tormentors in the White House at the expense of our collective historical knowledge. But the Post promoted its story as though it was a bombshell — the smoking gun that revealed a practically Stalinist plot to revise the record in which Washington’s cowed and complacent bureaucrats were collaborators.
The Post didn’t stick the landing, but that didn’t stop the president’s critics from taking the sordid insinuations in the piece to their logical conclusion.
“This is what Donald Trump wants you to forget,” wrote Senator Adam Schiff, featuring the front pages of the Times that announced Trump’s House impeachment trial verdicts. “It’s almost funny how these guys unknowingly follow in the footsteps of communist dictators — and in the stupidest ways,” former Representative Tom Malinowski scoffed. Representative Jason Crow, who prosecuted one of the cases against the president in the House, wrung his hands. “He may try to change an exhibit, but he can’t erase the truth,” he observed. “Rewriting history under political pressure is a sinister step,” mourned commentator and former congressional candidate John Avlon.
It most certainly would be. What’s more, there’s ample evidence to support the inference that the Trump administration’s broader campaign against what it perceives as liberal political bias in taxpayer-funded cultural institutions would give way to overreach. This administration’s officials are hardly above civic impropriety when it comes to shielding their boss from criticism. But it is inference, nonetheless.
The Post report’s sotto voce conclusion — that the Smithsonian caved under pressure from Trump appointees — will need firmer evidence. And its reporter appears to suggest that none will be forthcoming. It concludes with a quote from Amy Sherald, an artist whose depiction of the Statue of Liberty as an African-American trans woman was recently pulled from the National Portrait Gallery (in an act she deemed “censorship”), said her profession had been terrorized by Trump. “While no single person is to blame,” Sherald confessed, “it’s clear that institutional fear shaped by a broader climate of political hostility toward trans lives played a role.”
Cultivating that climate of fear, while difficult to establish with scientific veracity, is sordid enough. The allegation alone should be sufficient to sell newspapers. But that might not have been sexy enough for the Post’s style section.