The two dismissal processes (impeachment) those faced by Donald Trump during his first presidency never occurred. It is what explains the exhibition of the National Museum of American History, which ensures that “only three presidents have faced a real process of dismissal.” He refers to Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson, as well as the Watergate scandal that made Richard Nixon fall, who resigned from office before his political trial began. Since July, the mentions of Trump have disappeared after months of pressures by the White House to interfere with the museum criteria of the Smithsonian Institute.
The exhibition 'The American presidency: a glorious burden' It included a temporary label on Trump's political trials in 2019 and 2021. However, the reference was eliminated without any explanation or warning last month. A person familiar with the exhibition plans explained under anonymity to the Washington Post that the poster was eliminated as part of the content review to which the Smithsonian Institute accessed after the confrontation with the White House for the dismissal of the director of the National Gallery of Portraits and the pressures to cut funds. The Smithsonian complex is partially funded by the federal government.
After Post He published the news, the Smithsonian issued a statement in which he explained that “a future and updated exhibition will include all the impeachments“And that in” the coming weeks “the poster will be restored. At the moment, it is as if it had receded to the 2008 version.
On the online page of the exhibition, Trump's political trials are still mentioned, but no more information is provided. If the word “impeachment”, 125 results appear for Johnson, Nixon and Clinton. Although Trump is the only president of the history of the United States who has lived two political judgments, the search engine only throws a result with the title“ Impeach Trump ”, which refers to an environmental protest in 2017.
The first impeachment that Trump suffered in 2019 was due to abuse of power and obstructing the action of Congress by trying to retain military aid for Ukraine and pressing to investigate Joe Biden. He managed to get out thanks to the Senate acquitted in 2020. A year later, Trump again faced an Impeachment process to instigate the assault on the Capitol during January 6. He was acquitted again, after leaving office.
An obsession to erase history
One of Trump's obsessions since he again assumed the position on January 20 has been to rewrite the history of the country. The general pardon to the assailants of the Capitol was one of the first measures to bleach one of the darkest episodes of the country, which the president reaified as a “love day.”
This crusade has continued with the persecution of universities and with an executive order signed on March 27. The document, entitled “Restoring truth and sanity in American history”, instructed to eliminate the “inappropriate, dividing or anti -American” ideology of the Museums of the Smithsonian Institute. Trump accused the largest museum, educational and research complex in the world of trying to rewrite history on issues related to race and gender.
Two months after signing the order, Trump announced that he ceased the director of the National Portrait Gallery, Kim Sajet, without citing any authority to do so. “He is a highly partisan person and a firm defender of diversity, equity and inclusion policies, which is totally inappropriate for his position. His replacement will be appointed shortly,” the president wrote in a post on his network, Truth Social. Shortly after, he threatened Smithsonian with a considerable cut in the budget for the Community Museum of Anacostia and for the future Latin American National Museum.
The museum complex has not been the only objective of Trump's pressures to put a hand in how the past is explained. The president has also taken control of the John F. Kennedy center for the performing arts, has launched drastic changes in the National Fund for Arts and the National Fund for the Humanities and has imposed budget cuts at the service of national parks. On one of the websites of the National Parks Service, it was discovered that the references to Harriet Tubman, a historical figure in the fight against slavery, had disappeared from the page on the underground railway.
In April, the Trump government replaced web pages on COVID (such as covid.gov) With a new interface where the virus that caused the pandemic left a laboratory from China. The page, entitled “Lab Leak, the authentic origin of the COVID”also accuses Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, of promoting a “favored narrative” according to which COVID originated naturally.