Part of the Media Research Center’s Trump Regime Media agenda is to complain that anything Trump does is being criticized and to defend him no matter what. A good example of that is the MRC’s enthusiastic defense of Trump’s plan to purge government museums of anything he doesn’t like. Alex Christy groused in an Aug. 20 post:
CNN’s Laura Coates welcomed Prof. Michael Eric Dyson to her Tuesday show to react to a Truth Social post from President Trump lamenting current content at Smithsonian museums. According to Dyson, Trump’s desired changes put him in the same category of leader as Benito Mussolini.
[…]It should be noted that even CNN’s chyron appeared to disagree with the choice of the word “eliminate” as it read, “Trump: Smithsonian focuses too much on ‘how bad slavery was.’”
That would suggest the conversation should be about how prevalent talk about slavery is at the museums and whether they are using slavery to make some partisan point about today’s culture or politics.
Christy offered no evidence that the latter is, in fact, happening. Nevertheless, Christy insisted on defending Trump:
Even if one were to grant CNN’s premise about Trump’s posts, it is the relevant executive order that has actual legal weight behind it, and that order simply makes clear that far-left political statements will no longer be allowed to be presented as non-partisan history at taxpayer-funded museums.
Again, Christy offered no evidence that “far-left political statements” appear at any Smithsonian museum — and he avoided talking about the larger issue of Trump dictating museum contents.
Curtis Houck found a defense of Trump in an unlikely place:
Folks, he did it again. On Wednesday’s CBS Mornings, co-host Tony Dokoupil stood tall for the tens of millions of Americans who supported President Trump or simply identify as conservatives and independents by defending Trump’s insistence that the Smithsonians emphasize America’s greatness and not perpetually dwell on its shameful moments like slavery.
And better yet, Dokoupil noted most people around the globe would admit, if pressed, that the world is a far better place because our country came into existence.
Remember, Houck usually smears Dokoupil as a “socialist” because he once did a news report on income inequality. Still, he offered no evidence that the museums “perpetually dwell” on “shameful moments,” then heaped more praise on Dokoupil:
Not be confused with being as conservative or even Republican, Dokoupil is the kind of journalist David Ellison should lean into when shaping the future of CBS News and his public calls to depoliticize it. With a balanced approach, man-on-the-street interviews, and making sure all voices are heard, that is what legacy media need to regain trust.
We don’t recall Houck ever demanding that Fox News be depoliticized. He served up more defense of Trump in another post:
Closing out Tuesday’s CBS Evening News Plus, the ever-pompous John Dickerson used his “Reporter’s Notebook” commentary to falsely claim President Trump wants to minimize and/or do away with slavery as a topic in the Smithsonians, arguing doing so would be an affront to “American exceptionalism” and the memory of Union soldiers who fought the Civil War to end it.
“Donald Trump’s recent comments about slavery were answered by a letter written to the president 163 years ago. This week, he complained the Smithsonian focuses too much on how bad slavery was. His administration is reviewing the museum’s exhibitions to make sure they celebrate American exceptionalism and remove divisive or partisan narratives,” Dickerson began.
That alone is a pants-on-fire lie.
Houck then quoted Trump’s social media post on the issue in which he whines that, yes, the museums discuss “how bad Slavery was.” So, not a lie. Still, he grumbled:
Back to Dickerson, he plowed on with a similar sentiment CBS Mornings featured co-host Vladimir Duthiers deployed hours earlier.
“Any discussion of American exceptionalism must include how bad slavery was. 600,000 people died fighting over it. That is a divisive narrative. You could water it down, avoid how bad it was, but then you would be diminishing the sweeping exceptionalism of Americans who sacrificed so much to end something so at odds with America’s ideals,” Dickerson declared.
Reread Trump’s post above. It called for quite the opposite. Rather, a de-wokening of all the nonsense inspired by the likes of Robin DeAngelo, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Ibram X. Kendi.
We read the post, Curt — Trump does whine about slavery being discussd at the museums. Houck offers no evidence that the museums contain “nonsense” that require “de-wokening,” whatever that means.
Clay Waters made his own contribution to the defense narrative:
Don’t question tax-funded museum wokery: The last segment of Wednesday’s PBS News Hour presented leftist historian Peniel Joseph to jump on a social media post by President Trump claiming the Smithsonian Institution had gone overboard dwelling on American slavery.
PBS is the latest network rankled by Trump’s insistence that the Smithsonian museums emphasize America’s greatness and not perpetually dwell on shameful moments from our history, and that the tax-funded network of museums should reflect America’s imperfectly realized aspirations toward liberty and justice for all – an idea many Americans would agree with.
Like his co-workers, Waters offered no evidence whatsoever that this is, in fact, the case. His whining continued:
Joseph played all the tired left-wing hits (note that guest weren’t invited on PBS to invoke actual “Jew exclusion zones” on liberal campuses, but PBS viewers have to hear about the second coming of Jim Crow all the time).
Joseph ranted about the eight-year-old “Charlottesville and tiki torches” rally before warning “we’re heading back to the old days of Jim Crow, of racial exclusion, instead of really embracing the best that America can be.”
Waters didn’t explain why it was a bad thing to bring up Charlottesville and the white supremacists who protested there.
Tim Graham touched on the issue in his Aug. 21 podcast:
One hot topic right now is President Trump’s crusade to impose the notion of “American exceptionalism” in taxpayer-funded museums before the nation’s 250th anniversary, and to root out divisive and partisan narratives. It’s a little like the fight over PBS and NPR. Conservative taxpayers are expected to foot the bill for liberal bias. How dare anyone review their content!
Like the others, Graham offered no evidence of museum content that calls out to be “reviewed” — they’re all just parroting what they were told to parrot. That’s how Trump Regime Media works.