Trump’s push to rewrite U.S. history. Literally.

0:00Uncover from CBC Podcasts is your source for exceptional storytelling and groundbreaking journalism. Hear how lives were altered forever by results from one DNA lab. I'm like, what? What do you mean he's not my son? And unravel the clues that a gravel pit may hold about one woman's disappearance. It's just, it's odd because there was no trace of a scuffle. There was no, nothing. Hear the very best in award-winning true crime. Listen to Uncover wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Katie, we keep missing each other, but there you are, right on screen and everything. How are you?

0:43Paul Hunter:We're just like ships passing in the night, Paul. Where are you? I am in the lovely capital of Canada in Ottawa. I'm filling in as host of Power and Politics for the next two weeks. So you'll be seeing me from this lovely setup for the next two weeks. Well, I'm in Toronto hosting The National for a week. I'm in the building where the magic happens for CBC. You've got CBC Investigates up on the wall over there. You've got the CN Tower out the window. You've got an old 1980s News World poster behind me. So I feel, you know, everything seems very CBC-ish. But look who we have as well. Hello. The OG.

1:15Are you the OG podcaster, Jamie? Jamie Poisson, host of FrontBurner. How are you? And you're in Washington. What's going on?

1:21Jayme Poisson:We have like literally switched places. I mean, not really switched places. I could not fill your shoes, but I'm here. I'm in Washington. I'm in Washington for a couple of weeks, kind of filling some vacation backfill. It's a great city. I'm having a great time. Although I miss both of you. Jamie, you've also been getting out and doing what everybody's supposed to do when they get to Washington, and that is go see some of the Smithsonian. Yes. Which is kind of what we're going to be talking about in part today. I did. I mean, I did the Air and Space Museum, which is amazing, by the way. And these museums are all free.

1:55Jayme Poisson:So that's incredible. And on the weekend, I did the American History Museum. Beautiful. I got to say, I had my six-year-old with me. My kids are visiting right now. And he's really into history right now. So it felt like kind of a gift to be able to have these exhibits as like a guide to help explain U.S. history to him. He was really into sort of the history of like the railway in America. But we also talked about slavery, Selma, Montgomery, the Civil Rights Movement. It was awesome. It was a great day. Were the plaques up? The plaques were not up yet. They're not up yet. But my husband did see a couple of protesters outside.

2:36Jayme Poisson:sort of talking about how they don't want the plaques to go up and how they don't want history rewritten in the museum.

2:42Paul Hunter:For Canadians who might be wondering what we're talking about when we say plaques, this is something that the Trump administration has ordered. Donald Trump signing an executive order demanding that plaques be placed in front of certain museums to correct inaccurate information, or at least that's what these plaques are going to state. And of course, as you can imagine, it is deeply controversial. Look, I mean, Donald Trump is not happy with how the, in particular, the National Museum of American History presents the story of America, right? So there's been a report, there's been a hearing, there's been a previous executive order, much of it aimed at the Smithsonian museums.

3:20And this is just the latest in Donald Trump's attempts to change major institutions in D.C. to his liking. So this week we're asking, how is Donald Trump trying to reshape American history and culture?

3:33Paul Hunter:I'm Jamie Poisson. I'm Katie Simpson. And I'm Paul Hunter. We're CBC's Washington Correspondents, sometimes two blocks from the White House. One of us is today.

3:41Jayme Poisson:I am. Jamie is.

3:49All right, Jamie, I'm going to start with you. You get the first question since you're the newcomer here to our little home. You talked a little bit about your walkabouts here in DC. Give us some more of your impressions of the Museum of American History. And for those also who don't know, you know, there was a time in my life when I thought the Smithsonian's were one giant big building. It's a bunch of buildings.

4:10Jayme Poisson:Right. And they all have their different themes, including the American history one. Give us your impressions on that and how it purports, attempts, does achieve to tell the story of America. So there is this wall text in the museum that the Trump administration has actually signaled out and complained about. And I took a picture of it. And I think that it really kind of encapsulates how the museum or at least parts of the museum presents American history. And so just let me read it to you. It's about the American Revolution and it asks the question, was it a complete, perfect, sacred event led by a great patriot who, as American children would learn, never told a lie?

4:52Jayme Poisson:Or was it part of a wider, unfinished movement for liberty, deeply imperfect but with sacred aspirations? And this, to me, is kind of the through line for the whole museum. It is exploring America's deeply imperfect project. It presents its founding as an unfinished process where ideals like liberty and equality are these kind of ongoing aspirations that people had to fight for, right? And you see this in certain exhibits, the fact that founding fathers enslaved people, the fight for voting rights, what civil rights activists had to endure. There was one part of an exhibit like my son and I were very interested in, a woman named Daisy Myers, whose family endured like rock throwing crowds and blaring music and telephone threats after moving into a white neighborhood in the 1950s.

5:42And this was part of a movement to fight for fair housing.

5:45Jayme Poisson:And so my overall impression, and I do – I want to go back again. I'm going to go back again. Was that, you know, there are parts of it that celebrate American history. I mentioned the railroads. Also, there's like Elmo and Star Wars and a section on sort of remembering America's role in World War II. But it is also like a complicated reckoning with America's past. I don't know if that's how you would frame it as well. I say yes, I would. I mean, when I first came to D.C. for this posting 150 years ago or so, what struck me almost immediately was what a celebratory city it is in terms of its history and America's history.

6:31History in any country is messy, complicated, often sometimes ugly. and what I appreciated about this place and the museums in particular and the American History Museum in particular was that it was good with dealing with those things face on because you learn from history and because of what my takeaway was that because you have a complicated or messy past can help the future and it doesn't mean the present is that, it means the country has moved on from that but the real takeaway was what a celebration of this country, the place was, even with its complications and messiness and ugliness in years and decades gone by.

7:15Katie, what about you?

7:17Paul Hunter:Yeah, and I think that the Smithsonian, not just this museum in particular, but it sort of, at least in recent years, has made an active effort to try and include perspectives that have not been included when it comes to major historical events. So you're not just seeing it from one perspective where something might be celebratory for, you know, one group of people. It may have been extremely challenging for another. And they're trying to bring those perspectives together to try to create a better understanding of what really happened and to consider different perspectives. And it really sort of showcases that in a way that, you know, lets you have a moment to like, think about it.

7:56Paul Hunter:Like if you go to a museum in DC, I always sort of recommend when you're going to go, go in the morning and then, you know, you're probably not going to get through an entire one, but take the rest of your day to sort of think about it and talk about it. And that's sort of the recommendation I do. Like, don't overwhelm yourself and just try to cram too much in because the way these exhibits are set up and the way they're done, you can sort of have a conversation about it after. And I think that's the point, right? And Katie, I want to ask you about why Trump is so upset about things in a second, but I will just throw in another museum, which is the National Portrait Gallery and the President's Wing.

8:31And Jamie, I don't know if you've been there, but I highly recommend it. It's fantastic. And one of the things you walk away from in there is, well, different people have been presidents at different times and some for good, some for less good in the minds of some anyway. There's Richard Nixon, you know, there's Bill Clinton, there's Barack Obama. Trump right now, it's a photograph. There's a longstanding thing that you don't have the official portrait while the president is still in office. And the Smithsonian, the portrait gallery did that. But at the same time, you walk around that gallery and you look at all the presidents who've done different things at different times and you learn from it.

9:06But right now we have Donald Trump, Katie, who is, I don't know how to put it. I don't want to take a side here, but it's like he's not standing for some of the things that he doesn't think are right in these museums and he's putting pressure on the Smithsonian. What's going on? Why is he so upset?

9:25Paul Hunter:Yeah, from President Donald Trump's perspective, what he has said in the public sphere and what his administration has done has sort of challenged the way that the Smithsonian operates. So for Canadians, it's 21 different museums and plus a zoo, and they cover a wide range of American history. But really, Donald Trump sort of, if we want to describe it as a fight or frustration. Let's go on a little journey here, as we often do on this podcast. Let's go back to the start of his second term, March of 2025. Donald Trump signs an executive order at the time, and it's called Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.

10:06Paul Hunter:And essentially, this executive order lays out that there needs to sort of be an examination of what's going on at Smithsonian museums. And they see he sort of outlines an argument claiming that over the past decade, according to this executive order, over the past decade, there has been a concerted effort to rewrite history, replacing objective facts with a distortive narrative driven by ideology, saying that remarkable achievements in American history are being cast in a negative light and basically arguing that these museums are perpetrating the idea that America is racist, sexist, oppressive, and that it's flawed.

10:49Paul Hunter:And basically is arguing that these museums are making people feel shame about America or feel guilty about American history. And we need to take a look at, OK, what had happened over the past decade that might make Donald Trump frustrated? Well, over the past decade, we have seen a real reckoning with America's history, particularly around the fight for racial justice. After the murder of George Floyd, we saw a movement in America and we saw sort of a concerted effort by society to try and address some of the challenges rooted in systemic racism that have been a problem for generations in America.

11:30And we saw things like statues in some places removed.

11:35Paul Hunter:That's something that Trump's executive order took issue with. Statues for Confederate generals or Confederate, as they would be described in some parts of the U.S. South, as Confederate heroes. And sort of over the past decade, we've seen a concerted effort in some communities to remove some of those symbols because of, you know, what they stand for and how people in the community today might feel when you see someone like this being sort of idolized as a hero or what it stands for. Some people have argued that, you know, perhaps some of these things should stay or they should be put in different contexts or what they are.

12:07Paul Hunter:But there was a concerted effort in some American states to remove some of these things because of what they stood for. And those are the kinds of changes that this sort of this executive order from 2025 flagged. So a study is conducted looking at what's going on with the with the Smithsonian museums and more broadly what's going on in society. And then on July 4th of this year, America's 250th birthday, the Trump administration released a 162 page report about what's going on with these museums. Now, I did not read the entire report, but I did read a chunk of it heading into this because I knew we were going to talk about this on the podcast.

12:47Paul Hunter:And it basically makes the argument that the museums, the way it presents American history, is anti-Christian, anti-white, pro-illegal immigration and pro-transgender rights. It's all of these things that the Trump administration has sort of used as wedge issues in Donald Trump's political movement. And it's taking issues with that. The report says that perhaps the plaque should say or warning should be listed outside these museums saying exhibitions in this museum were prepared by people who don't want you to love your country. And so after this report was published, we then got the notification from the Trump administration that plaques are going to be ordered in front of at least one museum, if not more.

13:32Paul Hunter:We're still waiting for details. I've asked the White House for when they're going to go up, but they haven't gotten back to me with any sort of specifics there. I think let's not forget that there are also millions of Americans who are saying right on. Absolutely. It's about time. Very much so. And Trump knows that. Very much so. Right. And, you know, we call it the MAGA base, whatever the term you want, but the people who are the hardcore Trumpy people. Because another aspect to all of this, everything that you said, is that it's effectively being done in the name of Trump. Right. Jamie, I wonder when you've been walking around, surely.

14:07I don't know if you've been by the Kennedy. I guess it's back to being called the Kennedy Center now. Last time I saw it, the scaffolding was still up. You might have seen Trump's face on the sides of different buildings.

14:19Jayme Poisson:There are like several banners that I've seen. Yeah. Very like large images of Donald Trump. Sorry, go ahead. I was just going to ask. People ask, I think, Katie and I get these questions all the time. What does that say to you when you see that in the U.S. Capitol in a way that I can't think of any other president that has done anything like that while in office or after office, I guess, for that matter? You know, I was kind of thinking about this the other night. I went for a walk in the evening by the Lincoln Monument and then through the Vietnam War Memorial, which is really so beautiful and powerful and moving.

15:00Jayme Poisson:And I was like watching. I was just people. I was people watching. I was people watching, which is, you know, great to do. It's a good place to be. Yeah. And I was just watching these people from like all over the world come here. Lots of different languages being spoken and clearly tourists. Right. People are taking photos. And, you know, you have this sense that this city is is so central to the image that America projects to the rest of the world. What happens in Washington, you know, is the message or like a very important part of the message that the world sees. And so is it is the message, you know, that the African-American History Museum, a relatively new museum that kind of grapples with the legacy of slavery, but also of black achievement.

15:50Jayme Poisson:Like you can go there and look at Michael Jackson's shoe, right, or celebrate Barack Obama. or is it like these large banners of Trump and like a giant crane coming out of the White House for a UFC match? Is it the place or is it the president, in other words? Or is it the president, yes. Yeah, what is Washington? Is it the president or is it America?

16:15Paul Hunter:Yeah. And I think people would be asking now, or what should it be? Or from President Donald Trump's perspective, is America the president?

16:33Paul Hunter:Okay, so there are millions of podcasts, and maybe you're cool to stick with the ones you already know you like. But if you're just a little paranoid about missing out on the best new stuff, we can help. Every other Thursday, the Sounds Good newsletter will bring you one must-hear show from CBC Podcasts. And because we're true audio nerds, we'll also tell you about shows that we love that we didn't make. Go to cbc.ca slash soundsgood to subscribe. I think that it's important to remember that regardless of where Trump's head is at on this, the people around him in the White House believe all of this is the right thing.

17:14Like the inner circle, all of these, not just the stuff we're talking about today, but everything they've been doing, they firmly, strongly believe this is the right path forward for America. So it complicates things. You know, I started to look at like what other presidents have tried to mess about with the Smithsonian, right? And the only one that I could find was Nixon. And that was long after the fact. It's the people who care for the Nixon brand now. next to his portrait at the smithsonia at the portrait gallery in the president's wing it said that he'd been impeached because we think nixon was impeached he wasn't the articles of impeachment had were voted upon by the house judiciary committee that passed it on to the house for a vote but he resigned before he was actually the vote came and he was not technically impeached so that was corrected that's a minor thing it's actually it's a truthful correction You could say they were splitting hairs, but it's true.

18:11But that's the only example I could find. And what sets Trump apart, I think, from other presidents in terms of all the things we've been talking about here today is he's doing all these things everywhere, even in terms of today, the Kennedy Center and the pool and the this and the that. And I'm sure, Jamie, you've seen the National Guard on the streets of D.C. and all the litany of other EOs and things, executive orders that he's done. And I think that's why people, when it comes to Trump, are just standing back and saying, what's going on? And when does it stop? How far do you go? And in terms of rewriting or changing the way American history and culture is viewed, he's a president like no other, for good or for bad.

18:58Jamie, you've been trying to jump in for a while.

19:00Jayme Poisson:I just – I think – I did this interview last year on FrontBurner with Bryan Stevenson, who is a civil rights lawyer, really incredible guy. He oversaw the creation of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. And the museum is the country's kind of largest memorial to the history of lynching and racial terror in the United States. I've been there. Have you? It's sobering. Yeah. I would love to go. So I hear it is incredible and also devastating and also beautiful. And I think about this interview all the time. It was about this kind of war on the Smithsonian that the Trump administration started waging last year as Katie so eloquently took us through.

19:45Jayme Poisson:And Brian talks about how the real evil was the narrative that was created to justify slavery, which is actually quite a striking thing to say. But his argument is essentially that the violence of slavery was horrific. But because people didn't want to think of themselves as like indecent or immoral, they created this narrative to help them kind of reckon with that brutality, right? The brutality that they were inflicting on other human beings, that black people are less than human, that they are less capable. And his argument is that that narrative, it prevailed after the Civil War, right? And it prevailed after the civil rights movement as well.