Trump Tries To Disappear Impeachment References At Smithsonian

Failures

from the let's-go-for-three dept

Donald Trump is the only president in American history to have been impeached twice. That is a simple fact of history.

I can imagine it’s a fact that Donald Trump doesn’t like very much. He might even be embarrassed over it. But it’s a fact that remains no matter what the fragile ego in chief desires.

But with this administration on a blitz to erase all kinds of American history, largely over concerns about so-called DEI and “woke” content, it seems that Dear Leader has a couple of personal asks to add to this Orwellian project.

President Donald Trump’s photo portrait display at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery has had references to his two impeachments removed, the latest apparent change at the collection of museums he has accused of bias as he asserts his influence over how official presentations document U.S. history.

The wall text, which summarized Trump’s first presidency and noted his 2024 comeback victory, was part of the museum’s “American Presidents” exhibition. The description had been placed alongside a photograph of Trump taken during his first term. Now, a different photo appears without any accompanying text block, though the text was available online. Trump was the only president whose display in the gallery, as seen Sunday, did not include any extended text.

Donald Trump is the only president in American history to have been impeached twice. That is a simple fact of history.

Now, I wouldn’t have thought it possible to Streisand Effect something so monumental in our shared history, given its high profile nature, but here we are anyway. Trump’s exact impeachment from his first term is now back in the news, fodder for active discussion purely because his shakey psyche needed to remove references to it in America’s museum.

And, hey, I suppose it’s worth remembering that those impeachments happened over half a decade ago. There are some number of people who have no doubt had a political awakening between then and now. People who paid very little to politics due to their age. Children who are now at an age to actually understand how our government works and what mechanisms like impeachment votes mean. Youngsters who perhaps didn’t grasp the gravity of events such as January 6th, or who didn’t understand the importance of a president attempting to have another sovereign nation perform political dirty tricks in exchange for military assistance.

“The museum is beginning its planned update of the America’s Presidents gallery which will undergo a larger refresh this Spring,” the gallery statement said. “For some new exhibitions and displays, the museum has been exploring quotes or tombstone labels, which provide only general information, such as the artist’s name.”

For now, references to Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton being impeached in 1868 and 1998, respectively, remain as part of their portrait labels, as does President Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation as a result of the Watergate scandal.

And, the gallery statement noted, “The history of Presidential impeachments continues to be represented in our museums, including the National Museum of American History.”

Donald Trump is the only president in American history to have been impeached twice. That is a simple fact of history.

The museum can try to explain this away as normal maintenance all they like. Nobody is buying it. The AP post notes that they reached out to the Trump administration asking if they had requested this change, but did not receive a response. A response is plainly not needed. Of course they did. It’s not as though Trump himself has shied away from authoring plaques for presidential portraits in the past.

At the White House, Trump has designed a notably partisan and subjective “Presidential Walk of Fame” featuring gilded photographs of himself and his predecessors — with the exception of Biden, who is represented by an autopen — along with plaques describing their presidencies.

The White House said at the time that Trump himself was a primary author of the plaques. Notably, Trump’s two plaques praise the 45th and 47th president as a historically successful figure while those under Biden’s autopen stand-in describe the 46th executive as “by far, the worst President in American History” who “brought our Nation to the brink of destruction.”

And so the president is all too happy behave as the shit-poster in chief. He’s cruel. He’s an egomaniac. He’s in charge. But none of that changes the following:

Donald Trump is the only president in American history to have been impeached twice. That is a simple fact of history.

Filed Under: donald trump, history, impeachment, rewriting history
Companies: smithsonian