“It’s one thing to get a story wrong; it’s one thing to misunderstand … but it’s an entirely other thing to intentionally take things out of context, intentionally leave things off the table, intentionally paint a picture that you know is not true,” says Glenn Beck.
If you didn’t already guess, Glenn is talking about the mainstream media — specifically its reporting on President Trump’s recent initiatives targeting the Smithsonian Institution, which has long insisted on portraying slavery as America’s defining story.
On August 12, the White House, in accordance with President Trump’s vision of American exceptionalism, initiated a comprehensive review of eight Smithsonian museums, focusing on exhibition content, curation, and operations. A few days later, President Trump followed up the directive with a Truth Social post, explaining the need for reform in Smithsonian museums.
Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media cherry-picked from Trump’s words and published stories implying that he thinks slavery wasn’t so bad. The New York Times ran a piece titled, “Trump Says Smithsonian Focuses Too Much on ‘How Bad Slavery Was.’”
The Washington Post, NPR, and Reuters, among many other outlets, published similar pieces.
Despite the fact that President Trump has repeatedly and publicly condemned slavery, the media is pushing the narrative that Trump’s desire to highlight the whole picture — America’s failures and her accomplishments — equates to whitewashing slavery.
Glenn, a history lover and the founder of the American Journey Experience, a state-of-the-art museum and research library, knows the importance of studying the darkest parts of human history. “If we don’t teach our kids that these dark things happened in this country, two things happen,” he says. “One, they don’t believe us on the good things. … The second reason it is really important is if you don’t teach [the bad stuff], you will repeat it.”
But the problem with the Smithsonian and other historical institutions, he says, is that they’re only telling the dark parts of American history. They’re trying to “make history about now,” examining it through the lens of modern ideas, cultural trends, and political agendas.
“Well, history is about the past,” says Glenn, adding that if we are to view history rightly, we need to ask questions, such as, “How did people think back then? Why did they think that way back then? Who fought against that at that time? What was the real argument?”
When we fail to ask these honest questions and instead view history as a means to accomplish an agenda, we get academics and scholars pushing information that is “absolutely dishonest” — like the idea that “Frederick Douglass never, never said a good word about the Constitution,” when in fact he called it “the greatest freedom document of all time.”
Why do they push false narratives like this?
Because “their goal is to get rid of the Constitution,” says Glenn. From academics and liberal politicians to progressive activist groups and, of course, the mainstream media, the overarching agenda is to convince Americans that the United States is “a bad nation and communism is neat.”
President Trump’s insistence that the Smithsonian put more focus on America’s long list of incredible accomplishments is a bold and necessary effort to reverse this insidious anti-American agenda.
“You want to [talk about] slavery? Tell both sides of slavery — not just the horrors of slavery, but the miracle of those who were white who stood up and tried to stop it,” Glenn pleads.
“I absolutely want the story of slavery told, but I want it to be told in context. And it’s not the story of America. It is one of the stories of America that, thank God, we fought.”
To hear more of Glenn’s analysis and commentary, watch the clip above.
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