White House says Smithsonian pushes leftist ideology, cannot be trusted to tell America’s story

The White House issued a scathing report accusing the Smithsonian Institution of warping history to match far-left ideology, saying the world’s largest museum, education and research institution can no longer be trusted to tell America’s story.

The 162-page report issued over the weekend by the White House’s Domestic Policy Council blasted the Smithsonian and its National Museum of American History, in particular, calling them a political tool to disparage American history.

Titled “Saving America’s Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage,” the report accuses the museum of anti-White bias, minimizing the courage of America’s founders and distorting the creation of the nation. It says the museum’s mission has been transformed “from straightforward historical education and scholarship toward an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country.

“The Museum purposely presents America as a problematic country irredeemably conceived, founded by deeply flawed men and still operating today as an instrument of systemic racism and oppression. In the Museum’s current telling, the country is above all defined by White supremacy, slavery, conquest, exclusion, hierarchy, racism, xenophobia, misogyny and systemic injustice,” an executive summary of the report states.

“The report identifies a broad pattern: the founders are minimized, if not entirely excluded; traditional patriotic narratives are treated with suspicion, if not outright contempt and the basic symbols and stories that once helped unify Americans are presented not as reasons for gratitude and inspiration, but as objects to be inherently questioned, dismantled, ‘problematized’ and reinterpreted to achieve ideological ends,” the summary states.

Ultimately, the report concludes that Smithsonian’s leaders “cannot be trusted to tell America’s story honestly and in a way that is inspiring, unifying and worthy of our great republic.”

A Smithsonian spokesperson rebutted the report’s allegations.

“For more than 180 years, the Smithsonian has served the American public with nonpartisan and independent scholarship, and we remain committed to doing so,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

The report was released Saturday night, moments before fireworks rang out on the National Mall.

Specific exhibits are called out in the report. For example, a section in the museum’s learning lab discusses Whiteness as a “system of power that normalizes and reproduces structures of inequality, exclusion and violence.”

An 1840 statute of George Washington on display at the National Museum of American History includes a depiction of Hercules and describes “the perceived courage” of the American people. That language, the report says, “refuses to affirm the exceptional courage of the American people.”

The report also criticized the Smithsonian for omitting key parts of American history. It concluded that there are no major exhibits dedicated to America’s founding, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, other founding fathers, the Continental Congress, the Pilgrims, the Puritans or major moments of the American Revolution.

Instead, it claims, many of the founders presented mainly with their ties to slavery, including that many of Ben Franklin’s inventions were “enabled” by slavery.

Mr. Trump last year ordered a broad review of the Smithsonian Institution, demanding it provide exhibition plans, internal guidelines and programming materials.

The White House Domestic Policy Council is tasked with advising the president on domestic issues like education and healthcare. It is led by Vince Haley, who spearheaded the administration’s celebration of America’s 250th anniversary.