Maryland Gov. Wes Moore slammed President Donald Trump’s executive order to weed out “divisive narratives” at the Smithsonian earlier this week.
On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order to restore “truth and sanity to American history,” claiming that the Smithsonian Institution—which operates museums in Washington, D.C., including the National Museum of African American History and Culture—has “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.”
Moore took exception to the president’s historical revisionism.
“I just find it deeply disrespectful that their definition of making America great again is actually challenging some of the things that makes America great in the first place,” Moore said on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday.
Moore—the first Black governor of the Free State and the third Black governor of any state—added that “loving your country” does not equate to “lying about its history.”
“Loving your country does not mean dismantling those who have helped to make this country so powerful and make America so unique in world history in the first place,” he added.
Trump’s order gives Vice President JD Vance express power to eliminate any museum content that does not align with the administration’s ideological views.
“Museums in our nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn,” the order decreed—not “to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history.”
“President Trump is restoring patriotism and pride in American history to our greatest public museums and protecting taxpayers from having their money wasted on divisive ideologies,” said Vance’s press secretary, Taylor Van Kirk, in a statement to Politico on Friday.
The order could herald the return of Confederate icons, symbols, and public statues that have already been removed. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has been empowered to remove any aforementioned public displays across the country that give a “false construction” of American history, “inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.”
