America’s Choice: Authoritarian Propaganda, or an Honest History?
A White House report on the Smithsonian is a dangerous, authoritarian attempt to replace rigorous historical scholarship with state-sanctioned propaganda.
By Jeff Nesbit
Late on the Fourth of July, while the rest of the nation celebrated 250 years of messy, complicated, sometimes divisive striving toward a more perfect union, the Trump White House quietly dropped a 162-page political hit piece aimed at the country’s chief storyteller.
The report, titled Saving America’s Story, is a dangerous, authoritarian attempt to replace rigorous historical scholarship with state-sanctioned propaganda. It accuses the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History of “extreme political activism” and “institutional capture by a radical, activist ideology.”
But here’s the truth about what’s actually happening with this report: The Smithsonian teaches history. The Trump White House is trying to rewrite it.
This isn’t just another harmless skirmish in America’s culture wars. It’s an active effort by the executive branch to seize control of an 180-year-old independent public-private trust, weaponize federal funding to enforce ideological alignment, and target its leadership --specifically Secretary Lonnie Bunch and Director Anthea Hartig.
The Trump administration’s central grievance is that the museum tells a story of “regret, tragedy, and shame” rather than “the victory of freedom.” The report aggressively attacks actual history as “divisive,” condemning the museum’s acknowledgment of indigenous displacement in its Nation-to-Nation exhibit as a “stolen land narrative.”
It frames the basic historical facts of broken treaties and forced relocation as “anti-American propaganda.” It further takes issue with any curation of founding figures like George Washington or Benjamin Franklin that dares to include the context of slavery. In the eyes of this White House, the inclusion of complete, undisputed facts is treated as an act of hostility.
But mature, strong nations look their history in the face. Fragile autocracies are the ones that demand a history of pure myth.
This report represents the culmination of a year-long campaign of executive intimidation. It follows a March 2025 Executive Order (“Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”) that has already been used to pressure the Smithsonian into altering exhibits and micromanaging wall text.
We’ve seen this pattern play out across the country: federal funding threats used to bully universities, and bitter court battles to reinstall whitewashed interpretive panels at historical sites like George Washington’s home in Philadelphia.
The ultimate goal of this new report — crafted and released over the weekend by President Trump’s Domestic Policy Council — is obvious: create a formal pretext to decapitate the Smithsonian’s current leadership and install a loyalist regime to curate a state-approved past.
Our choice, as a nation of democratic voters, is clear. We must vigorously defend the Smithsonian’s independence. As Bunch rightly noted, America’s greatest strength is not running away from our history but understanding how that history continues to shape us.
The National Museum of American History’s actual anniversary exhibit — In Pursuit of Life, Liberty & Happiness — gets this right. It displays the literal desk Thomas Jefferson used to write the Declaration of Independence right alongside the messy, ongoing, multi-generational struggle to live up to those very words.
When a government tries to force a national museum to “celebrate exceptionalism” by erasing the pain, systemic injustices, and triumphs of marginalized groups, it fundamentally betrays the revolutionary ideals of 1776.
To borrow the words of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, there is not one individual narrative that a president gets to dictate about our history. A president demanding control over how a museum interprets the past is the hallmark of a totalitarian state, not a republic.
Congress, donors, and the public must stand firm against this overreach. True patriotism does not require a country to lie to its children about its past to ensure their loyalty to its future.
Jeff Nesbit was the public affairs chief for five Cabinet secretaries or agencies under four presidents. His latest book is AUTOCRAT, a fierce political satire about a president-for-life in a future America.
We must acknowledge our past in order to ensure a more viable future. Ten of our 1st twelve Presidents owned slaves. Jackson broke solemn treaties & drove the “Five Civilized Tribes” from their land to satisfy greedy & corrupt land speculators. He also owned slaves.
The Reactionaries would deny this history.
Sally Hemings could “pass.”
She was 14 when she accompanied Jefferson to Paris.
Deal with it.
That should not be allowed at all and any attempt to mythologize our history should be thwarted in any way possible.