Daily Kos88%
Trump takes destruction of US history to a whole new level 90%
By Lisa Needham98%
7/17/2026, 12:01:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 28 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Confirmation Bias, and Appeal to Emotion, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 84.4% saturation with 535 hits. Analysis detected 2,862 faulty-reasoning hits from 634 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 84.6% and a BS Rank of 90% (1,718 of 17,005 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 89.90% of the article peer group.
Everything President Donald Trump touches turns to garbage.
Racist garbage.
His latest assault on America is his shabby treatment of some of the rarest and most important historical documents.
Beneath the Lincoln Memorial is the Undercroft, an exhibit that opened late last month and has rare copies of the Thirteenth Amendment and the Emancipation Proclamation—both signed by Abraham Lincoln.
In short, they memorialize the country’s efforts—in fits and starts—to repudiate the brutal horror of slavery.
So perhaps it’s no surprise that the administration is giving them the Reflecting Pool treatment, showing constant disregard for U.S. history and constant shoddiness in construction.
On Monday, City Cast DC reported that temperatures were exceeding 80 degrees—that’s inside the exhibit.
Additionally, harsh, bright lights were trained on the documents, which are incredibly fragile.
It doesn’t take a document expert to know that this is super bad for old documents, but the National Park Service insisted that staff “continually manage the space to ensure the documents are cared for” without explaining how 80 degrees and harsh lighting counts as caring for them.
By Thursday, the administration wised up and decided that they should be removed, which pretty much confirms that the documents were at risk.
Well, more accurately, the billionaire hedge fund GOP megadonor Ken Griffin, who owns the documents—because apparently you can just buy up U.S. history if you have $18 million—had his spokesperson issue a statement on the matter.
“Out of an abundance of caution, these sacred documents are being temporarily relocated while the National Park Service resolves the environmental challenges driven by the heatwave engulfing Washington D.C.,” the statement said.
Griffin had loaned the government the documents, which, thankfully, aren’t the only copies.
The originals remain secure—well, for now, at least—in the National Archives.
These were supposed to be displayed through June 2027, but because Trump is turning the entirety of the capital into a golden trash heap, now they’re unavailable—just like the Reflecting Pool and Lafayette Park.
Related | Trump’s propaganda history trucks may soon visit your neighborhood
While you can pretty much assume that Trump would have treated any important historical documents with his characteristic disregard, it’s no coincidence that the documents that the administration decided weren’t worth keeping an eye on were ones documenting the nation’s history of slavery.
Treating these documents with such disdain is the same racist impulse behind the administration’s sneaky and pathetic dead-of-night removal of a Philadelphia exhibit about George Washington’s enslavement of Black people—because we can’t have that.
The administration fought for months in court for the right to do this because they’re really committed to their racism.
After they prevailed, an Interior Department spokesperson bragged that this was part of “restoring truth and sanity to our country.”
Yeah, literally whitewashing our history is definitely restoring truth.
This is also the same racist impulse behind ending free admission to national parks on Martin Luther King Jr.
Day and Juneteenth as days with free admission to national parks.
But don’t worry, they were replaced with free admission on June 14—as in Trump’s birthday.
This is also the same racist impulse behind removing signs about the shameful detention of Japanese people during World War II.
And last—but certainly not least—this is the same racist impulse behind giving Vice President JD Vance, a white supremacist who touts the Great Replacement theory, the keys to the Smithsonian so he can take a racist little wander through the exhibits and throw out anything he doesn’t like.
The Trump team doesn’t want to tell the true story of America.
That’s not because they don’t want to grapple with our history; it’s because they simply don’t care.
They’re here to tear things down and loot the government.
They were never going to respect anything.
Analysis
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