Upon returning to the White House in 2025, the Trump administration and its right-wing allies began waging a war on the Smithsonian Institution in an effort to force its museums to promote only a MAGA-approved Christian nationalist version of American history.
Given that Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton and his son Tim have played a key role in shaping this effort, It was no surprise to see Tim Barton turn up on Fox News to praise the administration's relentless attacks on the Smithsonian.
Alleging that instead of teaching "true American history," the Smithsonian has instead chosen to "promote a lot of political and social activism in what they are doing and teaching," Barton insisted that the actions taken by the Trump administration have been a "logical response" to the fact that the Smithsonian has been "promoting Marxist propaganda."
"For those that think President Trump is being political and the Smithsonian hasn't been being political, either you're being intellectually dishonest or you haven't been paying attention," Barton said. "If you review what the Smithsonian has been doing and how they have not been trying to encourage and inspire the rising generation of Americans to be greater Americans, to encourage more of the ingenuity, of the creativity, the American spirit. No, instead, when you are teaching the rising generation about how bad the nation is in which you live, all you are doing is promoting Marxist propaganda for ultimately the destruction and the overthrow of the nation instead of the encouragement and growth of what that nation is. So what President Trump has done is a logical response for the propaganda coming out of the Smithsonian and in many ways, the historic malpractice that they've not been telling the whole story or an honest story in much of what they've been presenting."
