A Fox News pundit went on an unhinged rant likening the history of slavery in America to plane crashes Sunday while defending President Donald Trump’s attacks on the Smithsonian Institution.
The president raged this week that the museum complex dwells on “how horrible our Country is, how bad slavery was,” instead of celebrating “brightness.”
Speaking on his show Media Buzz on Sunday, host Howard Kurtz said Trump “had to know that using that phrase about slavery would spark an enormous backlash.”
“I think he’s right,” Fox News contributor Clay Travis responded.
The conservative radio host argued that Trump wants the nations museums to reflect the country’s “soaring aspirations and goals,” as opposed to “the things that America has done wrong,” before launching into a bizarre comparison.
“Look, I took my son to the Smithsonian, I think the Air and Space Museum. They do a fabulous job of putting on the history of air and space. I didn’t see a single report inside the Air and Space Museum about plane crashes and the thousands of people who have died in them,” Travis said.
“That doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t a substantial part of history of space and exploration and plane travel.”
Setting aside the absurd attempt to equate plane crash victims to America’s centuries-spanning history of forcibly enslaving millions of Black people, the Smithsonian does in fact feature exhibits and reports on aviation disasters.
Travis said the Air and Space Museum is an “aspirational story” that made him feel “incredibly excited about the future” and suggested, “I think that’s what President Trump wants the story of other Smithsonians [museums] to be like.”
But turning the history of chattel slavery, as well as the decades of systemic oppression, segregation, and violence under Jim Crow into an “aspirational story” remains a tall order.
Still, Trump is barreling ahead in his quest to purge “woke” from the capital, with the White House on Thursday releasing a bullet list of Smithsonian exhibits and educational programs that offend MAGA sensitivities.
Among the gripes: the National Museum of African American History and Culture covering white privilege and the American History Museum’s exhibit on Benjamin Franklin directing visitors to learn more about the enslaved people of the founding father’s household.
