Slavery is the latest issue that has drawn Trump’s ire.

“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” Trump ranted in a social media post. “This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE. We have the ‘HOTTEST’ Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our museums.”

Yes, you read that correctly. Thankfully, a number of historians, journalists, and legal scholars rapidly contested such intellectually dishonest commentary.

“It’s the epitome of dumbness to criticize the Smithsonian for dealing with the reality of slavery in America,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian. Annette Gordon-Reed, professor of history at Harvard University, president of the Organization of American Historians, and a Pulitzer Prize award-winning author, said on Democracy Now!, “It’s an attempt to play down or downplay what happened in the United States with slavery . . . This is a whitewashing of history.”

CNN host Abby Phillip delivered a lavishly eloquent and passionate argument, deftly detailing the immense impact that slavery has had from the nation’s birth to today. Even after the Thirteenth Amendment officially abolished slavery in 1865, approximately 700,000 Americans died as a result of such a horrid practice, not to mention the havoc it caused to the country’s then four million freedmen and freedwomen that continues to manifest itself today.

Trump’s attitude towards slavery is reminiscent of the behavior of Scott Terry, an attendee at the Conservative Political Action Conference who argued the inhuman practice wasn’t all that bad because it provided Black people with food, clothing, shelter, and other essentials. The right-wing media company PragerU promoted an animated cartoon of Christopher Columbus dismissing slavery’s severity: “Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no?”

Needless to say, such disingenuous rhetoric is nothing short of obscene.

According to Trump and his right-wing sycophants, supposedly “true history” museum exhibits and history books of the future will demonstrate slavery never existed, discrimination never occurred, and the slaughter of the indigenous population was brief and minimal at best. They assert there was never a time when hard-working, law-abiding immigrant families were separated, whereas current estimates put the number at 80,000 people — most of them entirely innocent — who were imprisoned, abducted, and deported from a country they had labored so diligently to benefit. Precise and real history will be forbidden, lest we allow unpatriotic ideologues to tarnish American exceptionalism.

Such rhetoric dramatically contrasts with remarks Trump made in 2017 praising the Smithsonian’s efforts to showcase the positive and negative aspects of our nation’s history. “It’s amazing to see,” Trump said, following a tour of the museum. “I’m deeply proud that we now have a museum that honors the millions of African American men and women who built our national heritage, especially when it comes to faith, culture, and the unbreakable American spirit.”

When Trump argues that our history focuses too much on how atrocious slavery was (and it was), he downplays the realities of human bondage and advocates for a world in which Black people should allow white men to lead them and be grateful for such leadership. Upscale enslavers prior to the Civil War espoused similar arguments to defend their demolition of democracy in an effort to establish an oligarch class. When Trump urges Republicans to slash voting rights to prohibit socialism and retain power, he employs identical arguments former Confederates espoused after the war to deprive from voting those who would utilize the government for the public good.

Since taking office for his second term, Trump has spearheaded a ruthlessly aggressive effort to eradicate DEI policies from the federal government and has harassed and investigated institutions that have embraced such inclusive policies. He has tried to redefine the nation’s sordid past by attempting to absolve the chronic and perennial racism and discrimination that have largely defined America by mitigating and obscuring such history, preferring to promote a pristine and utopian vision of America.

History provides context for the present. Failing to acknowledge American history makes it nearly impossible to arrive at a fundamental understanding of how we arrived at our present predicament.

The fact is that slavery was violent, responsible for the deaths of millions of people, destroyed families, economically decimated entire populations, and robbed them of their religion and cultural heritage. There was nothing positive about it.

White men such as Donald Trump, Dennis Prager, and others who feel compelled to justify slavery as a benign institution should consider placing themselves in chains, be taken to an unknown territory, allow themselves to be sold to the highest bidder, and let things play out from there.

Better yet, they should take a long, deep, hard look in the mirror of their souls and ask themselves: “Am I defending what I would want for myself?”

I can pretty much anticipate their answer.

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Copyright 2025 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate

Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.