United States President Donald Trump has launched a fresh attack on American museums, accusing them of paying too much attention to slavery and not enough to the country’s achievements.
In a Truth Social post on Tuesday, Trump singled out the Smithsonian Institution, which runs 17 museums and galleries across the country. He claimed the organization is “OUT OF CONTROL” in its storytelling.
“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” Trump wrote.
He went further to describe museums as “the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE’” across the United States, criticizing efforts to highlight stories of women, people of color, and queer communities in their exhibitions.
Trump’s remarks come days after the White House revealed that eight major museums will undergo “comprehensive internal review” to, in its words, “celebrate American exceptionalism” and “remove divisive or partisan narratives.” The institutions listed include the National Museum of American History, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the National Museum of the American Indian.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump quickly reacted, saying Trump’s remarks were an attempt to silence history.
“Now museums are being targeted because they speak too openly about the horrors of slavery,” Crump posted on X. “If telling the truth about slavery makes a museum ‘too woke,’ then the problem isn’t the history, it’s the people who want to erase it.”
Historians often call the transatlantic slave trade America’s “original sin.” The Civil War of 1861 to 1865 was fought largely over the South’s attempt to preserve slavery, and African Americans have since continued their fight for civil rights, from the civil rights era to the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.
Trump has long clashed with cultural institutions. While president, he visited the National Museum of African American History in 2017, praising it as “a beautiful tribute to so many American heroes” after his tour.
