One month into his first term, President Donald Trump emerged from a tour of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture moved by what he saw.
He called it an honor to be the second sitting president to visit the museum, which had only opened to the public in September 2016. He referenced the experience of a runaway slave who had joined the Union Army, and he quoted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as the civil rights icon’s niece stood behind him beaming. He said he wished he could’ve stayed longer.
“This tour was a meaningful reminder,” Trump said in remarks from the museum in February 2017, “of why we have to fight bigotry, intolerance and hatred in all of its very ugly forms.”
But in his second term, Trump appears to have a more selective view of what forms of bigotry, intolerance and hatred that he wants Americans to remember.
Last week, in an escalation in his efforts to purge “divisive, race-centered ideology” from the Smithsonian, which has multiple museums and institutions that he does not directly control, Trump declared that museums were the last remnants of a “WOKE” country.
“Everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been,” he complained of the Smithsonian’s focus.
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The post Trump Once Praised the Black History Museum That He Is Now Attacking appeared first on New York Times.
