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American History as a Big Lie [1]
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Date: 2025-03-31
Trump engaged in significant historical revisionism during his first term. The “1619 Project” was published by the “New York Times” on August 14, 2019, arguing that the American story began when “20 and odd” enslaved Africans arrived at Point Comfort, Virginia, in August 1619. Trump did not respond until over a year later, on September 17, 2020, during a Constitution Day speech at the White House Conference on American History. The irony of Trump observing Constitution Day—despite his disregard for the Constitution—was hard to miss.
He used the occasion to trash the 1619 Project, saying, “By viewing every issue through the lens of race, they want to impose a new segregation, and we must not allow that to happen. Critical race theory, the 1619 Project, and the crusade against American history is toxic propaganda, ideological poison, that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together, will destroy our country.” (Source:
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-white-house-conference-american-history/) No one, apparently, has told Trump that many White Americans have long viewed issues through a racial lens, assuming White superiority.
On November 2, 2020, Trump signed an Executive Order, “Establishing the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission.” The EO included this in its introduction: “Against this history, in recent years, a series of polemics grounded in poor scholarship has vilified our Founders and our founding. Despite the virtues and accomplishments of this Nation, many students are now taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but rather villains. This radicalized view of American history lacks perspective, obscures virtues, twists motives, ignores or distorts facts, and magnifies flaws, resulting in the truth being concealed and history disfigured. Failing to identify, challenge, and correct this distorted perspective could fray and ultimately erase the bonds that knit our country and culture together.” (Source:
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-establishing-presidents-advisory-1776-commission/)
So, what could be wrong with this statement?
1 It is a distortion that misrepresents the goals of critical historical scholarship.
2 It is based on fear fueling anxieties about American identity rather than engaging with history honestly.
3 Three: It does not appreciate the paradox of America’s history, where ideals constantly contend with greed and brutality.
4 It flinches at flaws; rather than being willing to learn from them, it seeks to erase them.
5 The untold stories of America are rooted in well-documented research.
6 Our founders are portrayed as they were, complex historical figures, warts and all—not gods on Mount Olympus.
7 The goal is not to make students hate their country but to have them appreciate the good and understand the bad.
8 Rather than “truth being concealed and history disfigured,” truth is being revealed, and history is being set free from propaganda.
9 “The bonds that knit our country and culture together” have long been frayed. You can’t pursue a “more perfect union” if you do not engage America’s imperfections with courage and imagination.
10 It is a radicalized history since “radical” comes from “root.” These historians seek to explore the roots of American history, not polished narratives that mislead. It takes courage and honesty to shine a light on the good, bad, and ugly.
The 1776 Commission released the “1776 Report” on January 18, 2021. (Source:
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/The-Presidents-Advisory-1776-Commission-Final-Report.pdf) It did not include January 6th, the fake electors, or Trump’s Big Lie about the election being stolen. It dealt with the “Challenges to America’s Principles,” exploring slavery, progressivism, fascism, communism, and racism and identity politics.
The introduction states, “The declared purpose of the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission is to ‘enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776 and to strive to form a more perfect Union.’ This requires a restoration of American education, which can only be grounded on a history of those principles that is ‘accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling.’” It would take a book to deconstruct its 45 pages and describe how they mislead.
One example of its historical manipulation involves Frederick Douglass. They write, “Frederick Douglass had been born a slave, but escaped and eventually became a prominent spokesman for the abolitionist movement. He initially condemned the Constitution, but after studying its history came to insist that it was a ‘glorious liberty document’ and that the Declaration of Independence was ‘the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny.’”
Douglass indeed said that “the Constitution is a glorious liberty document,” but that was not his point. In the next paragraph, he said, “Now, take the constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single proslavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.” (Source:
https://loveman.sdsu.edu/docs/1852FrederickDouglass.pdf). This is the cherry tree. His point was that this “glorious liberty document,” does not prescribe or condone slavery. The three-word quote was taken out of context—cherry-picking, intellectual dishonesty, and ideological scholarship. Disgraceful. Of course, every history is written from a perspective, but good histories share new insights, challenge, and force their readers to think and ask questions that can often radicalize them.
Douglass also said, “The Declaration of Independence is the very ring-bolt in the chain of your nation’s destiny; so indeed I regard it.” This was from his December 9, 1860 speech, “A Plea For Freedom of Speech in Boston.” More important than that “sliver quote,” was the reason for his address. As Douglass explained, “The world knows that last Monday a meeting assembled to discuss the question: “How Shall Slavery Be Abolished?” The world also knows that that meeting was invaded, insulted, captured by a mob of gentlemen, and thereafter broken up and dispersed by the order of the mayor, who refused to protect it, though called upon to do so.” Source:
https://lawliberty.org/frederick-douglass-plea-for-freedom-of-speech-in-boston/) To be clear, his address was about freedom of speech, not the Declaration of Independence—cherry-picking.
Douglass went on to say, “No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more sacred than the right of speech. It was in their eyes, as in the eyes of all thoughtful men, the great moral renovator of society and government.” This is ironic, given all of the ways that Trump is now trampling free speech:
1 Whether by suing the media or restricting access of reporters,
2 Threatening senators with primaries if they oppose a nominee,
3 Using executive orders against law firms to suppress their free speech and
4 Detaining and deporting foreign college students as punishment for exercising their free speech rights.
This is especially strange given Trump’s January 20, 2025, Executive Order, “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,” since he is doing the opposite—attacking free speech and promoting federal censorship.
Trump is back on his 1776 history crusade. On March 27, 2025, he signed the Executive Order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” (Source:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/restoring-truth-and-sanity-to-american-history/) In it Trump writes, “Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth. This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light. Under this historical revision, our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.” Does this revisionism include the 1776 Commission’s work “stellar” from four years prior? Does it include his own July 24, 2018, statement: “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
Like “good trouble,” good history liberates. Rather than rewriting history, the new efforts have included more of our complex, glorious, and troubled history, the untold parts of our history—adding facts and interpreting the meaning of facts, not replacing them in order to expand the truth. Writing history is, by its nature, revisionist. It strives to change the angle of light to illuminate things that were previously in the shadows or invisible. Trump is either/or, not both/and—paradox adverse. America advanced liberty, individual rights, and human happiness while being racist, sexist, and oppressive. America is only irredeemably flawed if she can not look at her sins and repent.
An illuminating 2021 poll by the American Historical Association, “History, the Past, and Public Culture: Results from a National Survey,” (Source:
https://www.historians.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/History-Past-Public-Culture-Survey-Report-2021-08.pdf was, by turns, encouraging and discouraging. Americans appear to have more interest in history than many think, but they believe “that history is primarily an assembly of names, dates, and other facts about what happened in the past” instead of it also being an explanation and critique. Rather than getting all spun up over “critical race theory,” we would do well to fret over America’s collective lack of critical thinking.
Trump breathes by lying. Now, he wants to feed us a history that is a lie worthy of Orwell’s “1984.” Just the facts, ma’am, even if few of them are actually true—a story that you would tell sheep in order to put America asleep.
Time left to January 20, 2029: 1,391 days
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