Trump targeted the museum director’s job — then something suspicious happened to his impeachments record at the Smithsonian

Donald Trump has gone to great lengths to bully The Smithsonian into doing his bidding and ultimately changing the way they record history, and it seems they’ve just bowed to the president’s demands.

We reported earlier that Trump was illegally pushing for the museum’s director, Kim Sajet, to be dismissed for what his administration described as “highly partisan” behavior, accusing her of trying to document “anti-American” ideology at the museum by encouraging diversity initiatives. The board at The Smithsonian ascertained that only they have the authority to hire and fire museum directors, but in an attempt to diffuse the tension, they reassured the White House that they would scrutinize partisan bias at their esteemed institution.

Even when the first report came out and the White House claimed that their reasoning was just DEI, sources were coming out of the woodwork to inform reporters that what Trump actually had a problem with was his presidential portrait mentioning his two impeachments — a feat only he has achieved, as he’s the only president to actually have been impeached twice.

In a new report released by The Washington Post, it’s been revealed that there have been a few changes at The Smithsonian. The museum has officially removed Trump’s two impeachments from their exhibition. In the online companion for the museum’s impeachment exhibition, there’s Andrew Johnson’s 1868 impeachment and photos of significance during that important time in history; the case is similar with Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. But for Trump’s two impeachment proceedings, there’s nothing.

This, of course, coming so close to the recent Paramount payout to the president in a $16 million settlement fee — and a similar amount in ad space throughout their networks — has made this look very suspicious to observers. A celebrated artist even pulled her art from the museum after there were talks that the museum was considering removing a painting of a transgender woman posing as the Statue of Liberty.

This all makes it seem that now Donald Trump is the sole arbiter of art and history that should be displayed. It’s a very concerning trend because that’s the opposite of what museums should do — document art, culture, and history. There are some practices in society that we may not agree with and some aspects of history that we’re not proud of, but museums act as documentation of them because, no matter how powerful or opinionated any of us are, we cannot bend reality to our will. Thankfully, South Park refuses to bend the knee.

A spokesperson for the museum stated that they have returned the exhibition on the limits of presidential power to how it appeared in the museum in 2008. Their logic is that other aspects of the exhibition — such as Congress, the Supreme Court, and public opinion — have also not been updated since 2008. So the idea is to take time and update the entire document as a whole and ensure the exhibit is clear and full of context in the events that follow President Barack Obama’s electoral win. It’s unclear how long this will take.

The museum has also since released an additional statement saying, “a future and updated exhibit will include all impeachments.”