From the moment President Donald Trump returned to the White House for his second term, Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton has played a key role in shaping the administration's actions, especially surrounding the celebration of the nation's 250th anniversary, which has been steeped in precisely the Christian nationalist pseudo-history that Barton ceaselessly promotes.
Barton is a right-wing political activist who masquerades as a historian, despite possessing no academic training or credentials. As such, his indifference about presenting accurate history is prevalent throughout the countless false claims he makes regarding the supposedly Christian foundation of our country. Nonetheless Barton has been highly influential to powerful figures like House Speaker Mike Johnson, other members of Congress, and those inside the Trump administration.
Earlier this week, Barton appeared on a National Awakening Livestream hosted by right-wing pastor E.W. Jackson's Staying True to America's National Destiny organization where he revealed how the false history he promotes played a role in the Trump administration's devastating shut down of USAID.
"I was asked to go to the State Department [to] address the senior officials State Department and show them what the Founding Fathers thought about foreign aid," Barton reported. "It was really easy: The Founding Fathers did not believe in foreign aid. The nations take care of themselves."
"In World War II, that changed because when Hitler took all of Europe, he destroyed all those nations," Barton continued. "He destroyed Poland, Romania and Bulgaria and all those nations and they had been so impoverished [from] all the constant bombing that went on and so that's when we created what was called the Berlin Airlift. We started sending humanitarian supplies to all those who were starving in Europe."
"The Germans bombed every city that's there, there's nothing left [so] let's help them rebuild their cities," he added. "And so that Berlin Airlift turned into the first real foreign aid that we did and since post-World War II, we have kept that going, helping every nation in the world we can possibly find."
This represents a perfect example of how Barton weaponizes his own disregard for historical accuracy in pursuit of his right-wing political agenda, as the Berlin Airlift was not an effort to provide foreign aid to European nations ravaged by war—that was the Marshall Plan—but was rather a literal allied airlift operation begun in 1948 to provide aid to millions of residents of West Berlin who had been cut off by a blockade imposed by the Soviet Union.
Unconcerned about the inaccuracy of what he had just taught, Barton went on to claim that until Trump came along, "USAID money was going into prop up Marxist governments and socialist governments and leaders who were tearing their countries apart" and bragged that since the administration cut off USAID funding, "all the elections we've had Central and South America and elsewhere have all gone to conservative leaders."
Eventually, Barton made clear that he doesn't actually oppose the U.S. government distributing foreign aid, provided that it is given out to Christian organizations, as the administration is now doing.
"Just two weeks ago, USAID said, 'All right, we're now going back to do humanitarian stuff, only humanitarian stuff. We're not gonna mess with the governments. We're gonna help people,'" Barton said. "And so what are they doing? They said, 'We're gonna give money to things like Samaritan's Purse—Franklin Graham—we're going to let them distribute the need because a Christian group will reach out and meet the needs of the people.' They're not going to get into creating a new government or revolution. And so many of these Christian organizations now will be the recipients of the USAID money and it will go to actually getting people on the ground helped."
