Liberals were up in arms this week after President Trump said he wanted a review of the Smithsonian Institute — saying their displays were too negative, and too focused on slavery.

But Trump isn’t trying to “erase history,” he’s looking to reverse a woke movement that has indeed rewritten the American story to highlight suffering rather than providing a balanced picture of our past.

Trump’s criticism that the Smithsonian is overly focused on slavery is not unreasonable: In nearly every exhibit, critical race theory in general, or slavery specifically, makes an appearance.

For instance, its new Benjamin Franklin exhibit on his innovations includes a whole section on slavery — with assumptions, but no proof, that slaves assisted Franklin in his electrical innovations.

Even if they hadn’t, the curators argue that without their work around the house, Franklin couldn’t have spent the time on his experiments!

“Franklin held people enslaved during the time he pursued his electrical experiments. Their labor in his household helped make time that he could use to study electricity. Family, friends, and visitors directly participated in electrical experiments. The records are few and unclear, but enslaved people may also have directly assisted his research.”

Another example of the obsession with slavery comes from the National Portrait Gallery; nearly every early Founding Father’s description includes a statement on slavery.

For example, the description for Thomas Jefferson includes the statement: “Although Jefferson once called slavery “an abominable crime,” he consistently enslaved African Americans, including his late wife Martha’s half-sister, Sally Hemings, with whom he had several children.”

The overemphasis on the history of slavery is a fairly recent development, an offshoot of the Black Lives Matter movement.

In 2019, Lonnie G. Bunch III took over as the Secretary of the Smithsonian. Prior to that, Bunch was the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, which is nearly exclusively focused on the legacy of slavery, with exhibits such as In Slavery’s Wake, Slavery and Freedom, and Make Good the Promise, which deal with the history of slavery.

Also in 2019, the Smithsonian collaborated with the New York Times on its 1619 Project, which falsely claims that the United States started, not with the Declaration of Independence or Revolutionary War, but when the first slave ship arrived.

As curator Mary Elliot remarked at the time: “This is a shared history, everyone inherited the legacies of slavery.”

But America’s history is more than just about slavery, and not everyone inherited this legacy — after all, America is also a nation of immigrants who came after the Civil War.

In the Smithsonian 2020 annual report, more obsession with slavery comes into view.

The Smithsonian is on a mission to have a completely searchable digital museum called “The Searchable Museum Initiative.”

One may think it would begin with digitization of some our greatest moments in history, such as the landing on the moon, the passing of the US Constitution, or even its great Natural History collections.

You would be wrong; the digitization began “with the museum’s Slavery and Freedom exhibition.”

The annual report claims that “The Searchable Museum will provide rich, interactive, digital experiences that match the immersive experience of a visit to the physical museum” — unfortunately, likely as biased as a visit to the museum themselves.

The problem with modern museums is not just about the obsession with slavery; it’s also about dishonestly painting all of American history as evil and full of horrors — with little or no redeeming qualities.

For instance, in the Smithsonian’s American Indian Museum in NYC, George Washington hardly gets a mention, but his silhouette is used in a description of him as a “town destroyer” — supposedly a nickname that Native Americans still use to describe our first President.

And yet there’s no mention in either of the American Indian Museums — in NYC or DC — about slavery practiced by Native Americans, both before Europeans’ arrival and afterward.

For example, the Cherokee owned slaves. In 1835, 15,000 Cherokee owned 1,592 African slaves; by the Civil War onset, 17,000 Cherokee owned 4,000 African slaves.

While museums should provide an honest account of history, they should not be afraid to showcase and celebrate American achievement, which includes ending slavery.

At present, however, museums seem more interested in pushing a woke, revisionist history of the United States.

With two new Smithsonian museums in development, the National Museum of the American Latino and the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, we can expect more of the same — unless we take action against woke propaganda now.

Elizabeth Weiss is a professor emeritus of anthropology at San José State University and author of “On the Warpath: My Battles with Indians, Pretendians, and Woke Warriors.”