“Morning Joe” co-host Jonathan Lemire said President Donald Trump is trying to “rewrite history” after The Wall Street Journal reported that the White House is planning to conduct an extensive review of exhibitions, materials and operations at the Smithsonian Institution ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary “to ensure the museums align with President Trump’s interpretation of American history.”
“Let’s be blunt,” Lemire said Wednesday. “This is really bad and really, really dangerous.”
“A nation needs to know its history, has to be honest about its history, to learn from it, to honor it — and also then to grow and improve for the present and future,” Lemire said.
He added, “There’s no way that rewriting a history to fit one president’s vision is good for a nation’s health or good for a nation’s democracy.”
Lemire noted that the museum had already “sanitized” one exhibit on Trump’s two impeachments, which he called the “first step to a sweeping revisiting of American history.” Earlier this month, the museum announced that mention of Trump’s two impeachments would be restored to an exhibit after intense criticism following its removal.
The “Morning Joe” co-host also listed several other ways he said the Trump administration was trying to revise the country’s history, noting the restoration of Confederate monuments and the renaming of military bases for Confederate generals. “This is not what a healthy democracy does,” Lemire continued. “You know, you can be patriotic. You can love your country. We have the 250th anniversary next year — certainly, President Trump and his team are already gearing up towards really celebrating that. Some of that is good — but to honor a nation’s history, you have to be honest about it. And to rewash it, to sanitize it, to whitewash it, to not be honest about it — that’s not good.” You can watch Lemire’s full reaction to the administration’s move in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.
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