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00:00Do you ever stop to wonder how they came to think this way?
00:04One of the things that brought me into starting my Ph.D. program was finally coming to the realization that
00:12we were never really going to be able to tackle white supremacy in the way that we need to without
00:16reparations.
00:17Our ability to quantify racism, I think, is so critical.
00:23And I think we've been missing that and understanding it beyond just the general gap of race.
00:30The reparations obsession from a woman who was born in Ethiopia and whose family was allowed to come here courtesy
00:38of America's goodwill, a diversity visa.
00:41Malat Kuros is the Democrats' great socialist hope in Colorado.
00:45He's a typical lefty, overeducated and entitled, an anti-American malcontent.
00:50But there are countless more like her.
00:53Their corrosive worldview is shaped by a number of inputs.
00:57We've got to get to the bottom of all of it.
00:58Of course, the parents, in some cases, the schools, social media, and yes, cultural institutions that feed and reinforce their
01:08resentment toward all things American.
01:11And this week, the Trump administration is blowing the lid off one of the worst, the Smithsonian's National Museum of
01:18American History.
01:19Now, it's a museum led now by this woman, Anthea Hartig, with the help of top staff such as Patti
01:26Artiega.
01:27They've taken our nation's most important museum for American history and turned it into a crusade for restorative history.
01:35Our new mission statement, empowering people to create a more just and compassionate future by exploring, preserving, and sharing the
01:43complexity of our past.
01:44As we all know in this conference, Loving America is very complicated.
01:49I'm here representing the undocumented organizing collecting initiative, but chronically in the past 20 years of people without citizenship, coming
01:56out of the shadows, mobilizing and influencing legislation, and becoming their own political force in the 21st century.
02:05Oh, so the Smithsonian has been woke for years, but now you see this from this hokey video.
02:12Now it's just gone a step further.
02:14By launching its Let's Stand Together to Do Better campaign, don't you love that title?
02:19To train a new generation of activists.
02:22If we want to change the biases in our world, we need to face them.
02:27We need to stand up together and face the injustices.
02:31There is no shame in wanting a better world for all and for our future.
02:36And we will not be alone in standing up.
02:39Whether we join with our neighbors to paint over symbols of hate, or we come together to peacefully protest police
02:45violence,
02:46there is a community of allies that we join when we finally choose to stand up.
02:52Oh, my God, it's just all so tedious.
02:54Now, sure, there's still the ruby slippers and the first Macintosh computer and the first telephone in the exhibits.
03:00But the museum's political undercurrent is part BLM, part anti-ice, with a little DSA, trans, and NEA thrown in
03:09for good measure.
03:10It's kind of an amalgam of all of it.
03:13Now, mind you, we, the people, are funding the Smithsonian about a billion dollars in appropriations.
03:20So I got to say, who voted for this? I didn't.
03:22So do the Smithsonian's Board of Regents, do they even know what the museum is being used for?
03:28Here's the list of the folks on the Board of Regents.
03:31You got the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, J.D. Vance, he's a little busy, okay.
03:34You got Senator John Boozman, he's a Republican, a couple of other Republican congressmen, and various other people.
03:40Now, here's what the report from the Domestic Policy Council found, that the Smithsonian presents the founders through the lens
03:49of slavery rather than their contributions, that Christianity is portrayed as a force of oppression, ditto for the pilgrims, Natch.
03:57And museum leadership thinks our founding should be problematized, emphasizing America's shortcoming, and, of course, reframing instead of celebrating our
04:08founding.
04:08Its mission statement is removing references to American history and instead focuses on a, quote, more just and compassionate future.
04:19And exhibits are directed to focus on modern political issues across nearly every topic.
04:24The report also found anti-white and anti-oppression programming for staff.
04:31Immigration exhibits highlight activism surrounding illegal immigration.
04:36Gender-related exhibits present transgender identity as part of women's and children's history.
04:43Oh, by the way, youth exhibits contain material the report argues is inappropriate for children.
04:48Oh, no, that's never going to happen.
04:50So, look, our tax dollars are funding a museum that fails to provide a balanced view of American history.
04:57There's bad stuff, but there's a lot of good stuff.
04:58And instead, it devotes itself to left-wing activism.
05:01That's obvious the goal.
05:03Now, it's designed to encourage the dismantling of American norms and culture over time.
05:09And now, we're on to them.
05:12Now, I was watching this today, the New York Times.
05:14I think they had, like, five articles on this today.
05:16No wonder they're so upset and so many media outlets are out there running interference for the Smithsonian today.
05:24Haberman and Swan, on their book tour, had time to write a piece claiming that Trump is the one trying
05:29to impose his own view of American history on the museum.
05:34All right.
05:35Of course, that's what they're going to say.
05:36It's absurd.
05:37Trump didn't politicize the museum.
05:39The museum's directors and staff did.
05:42Look, here's the bottom line.
05:44The liberal establishment believes that the Smithsonian is theirs to use as a vehicle for advancing anti-American agendas.
05:51They believe that when Americans come to visit their nation's capital or when foreigners come to visit D.C.,
05:58they should be confronted with evidence that's built on America's racism, xenophobia, and, of course, overall greed.
06:05It's the kind of stuff that shallow celebrities spout to try to sound smart.
06:10I think him forcing us and firing and taking the names off boats of important Latino history, heroes in history
06:19and erasing all the erasure on women and black folk.
06:23The museums, the Smithsonian.
06:25Yeah.
06:25Erasing our history.
06:26Completely taking it out.
06:29And since that's the real history, right, we should all be ashamed and we should be ready to make amends,
06:36meaning they're coming to take your money and maybe even your property and then just give it to a bunch
06:41of their friends.
06:42That's what they want.
06:43And that's what they'll do unless we, the people, get involved and demand that our congressmen and our senators stop
06:51funding this anti-American madness.
06:53And that's the angle.
06:55Vince Haley is the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council,
06:59and it's been given the task of implementing the president's executive order, restoring truth and sanity to American history.
07:07Vince, the media jumped on this really fast, and they say you all are the ones who are trying to
07:15co-opt history,
07:16erase the sins of the past, and rewrite it in Trumpian terms.
07:20To that you say?
07:21Well, Laura, it's great to be with you.
07:23I mean, the bottom line is that there's no national story at the National Museum of American History.
07:28That's what has happened under the ideology that reigns supreme over there.
07:34This was not hard to write in a sentence because it's all out in the open.
07:37The statements of the leadership, their interpretive guidelines, it's very clearly designed.
07:42And the key that opened it up to me was this word that you touched upon, problematize.
07:46When the director said five years ago in the run-up to the 250, we need to problematize the 250
07:53in the Declaration of Independence,
07:55I was like, what in the world?
07:56Who uses that kind of language?
07:57Well, that's academic jargon.
07:59You take a received narrative, you poke holes in it, and you talk about power relationships, who's oppressed, who's the
08:06oppressor, and you find fault.
08:08And at the end of the day, what you wind up with is no American history at the American History
08:12Museum.
08:13There's very little on the American founding.
08:14There's a little bit on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
08:17I was over there recently.
08:18So there's a little bit of that.
08:19But it's very, very heavy on what's wrong with America.
08:23It should be called the What's Wrong with America Museum.
08:25But again, they have the ruby slippers and the stuff that everyone goes gaga over.
08:29But the undercurrent here is unmistakably political.
08:35It's unmistakably political, and it's very clear the way that the mission statement was changed from a focus on the
08:42infinite richness of American history
08:44to creating a just and compassionate future by exploring our past.
08:48It's like a political party.
08:49It is.
08:49And the words are very clear.
08:52They view the Smithsonian, in the words of the director, as a prime tool of social justice.
08:57And that is the mission.
08:59And their mission is to create activists to carry out a political program, an ideological program.
09:05You asked me the thing that I was most surprised about was how much the focus on illegal immigration
09:12and legitimizing illegal immigration comes through again and again in their programming.
09:17The effect of this kind of ideological capture is to abolish American identity.
09:23And the key vehicle and activism that they have to do that is illegal immigration.
09:30Promotion, promotion, advocacy.
09:32They had a program looking at illegal immigrants.
09:35They went to Mexico City to interview people.
09:38They lionized somebody who was involved in a legal immigrant group that was involved in defeating a sheriff in an
09:44election in North Carolina
09:45for the crime of deporting criminal illegal aliens.
09:48So this comes through again and again.
09:51We are just using the words and the program that they set forth.
09:54And we did reach out to the Smithsonian about the report.
09:57A spokesperson told us for more than 180 years, the Smithsonian has served the American public
10:02in a nonpartisan and independent scholarship and remain committed to doing so.
10:07So the fact of the matter is this Anthea Hardig is very clear in her little webinars that she's done.
10:16She did one with University of California, Riverside, I believe, where she discussed her 15 favorite exhibits in the museum.
10:24I'm going to repost this on my Instagram page so everyone can watch it.
10:29Overwhelmingly, they were negative portrayals of America.
10:32I mean, okay, a couple things are fine.
10:34But it's like the Statue of Liberty with a basket of tomatoes about the illegal immigrants.
10:38It was, you know, the internment camps for Japan.
10:42Very little to make people walk away from that museum thinking,
10:46thank God I'm in this country and not in a gulag in China or not in an internment camp somewhere
10:53else.
10:53But it's very, very, very clear when you're there, especially with young people.
10:59A lot of superintendents, okay, school trips to the Smithsonian.
11:04And it's an important school trip for kids.
11:06No, it's absolutely important.
11:07I mean, look, when President Lyndon Johnson dedicated the museum,
11:10he said it should focus on the victory of freedom and the genius of our country.
11:14You don't find that today.
11:15This is on the shortcomings of the country.
11:17This is designed in this way to problematize your understanding of American heroes and Americans' founding.
11:27Well, the Board of Regents, they're not paying attention?
11:31I don't think anybody has quite put together the statements, the LG, the interpretive plan.
11:38They actually have a woke mandate in their interpretive plan.
11:40They say that everything, whatever the topic,
11:43has to be brought back to clear ideological categories, race and gender, sexuality, income inequality, climate change.
11:51And the abortion stuff.
11:52I mean, I could do two hours on this.
11:54I'm being wrapped by about five people.
11:56Vince, great to see you.
11:58Thank you for writing this.
11:59Every senator and every congressman has got to read this report.
12:02Go over to the museum.
12:04Spend time there.
12:04I have.
12:05And you'll see exactly what you're talking about.
12:07We're staying on this topic.
12:07Great.
12:08Thank you very much.