President Donald Trump wasn’t always at loggerheads with the museums that make up the Smithsonian Institute. In February 2017, he arrived at the brand-new National African American Museum of History and Culture for a tour with its director, Lonnie G. Bunch III, and told Bunch he’d been looking forward to it. His wife, Melania, had recently toured the museum with the first lady of Israel, Sara Netanyahu. After the visit, both women decried “the historic plight of slavery, which the Jewish and African American people have known all too well.”
Trump had brought along Senator Tim Scott and Dr. Ben Carson—the latter, a neurosurgeon and former Trump primary opponent who had an exhibit at the museum dedicated to his career—his daughter Ivanka, and the niece of Martin Luther King Jr., Alveda King, who had supported Trump in the 2016 election.
If the remarks after the tour are to be taken at face value, Trump had a pretty great time.
“This museum is a beautiful tribute to so many American heroes—heroes like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Rosa Parks, the Greensboro students, and the African American Medal of Honor recipients, among so many other really incredible heroes,” the then-and-future president said.
And then, singling out the museum’s then director, Trump said, “I am very, very proud of Lonnie Bunch. The work and the love that he has in his heart for what he’s done is—I always talk about, you need enthusiasm, you need really love for anything you do to do it successfully. And, Lonnie, you are where? Come on. Where’s Lonnie? You should be up here, Lonnie. Come on.”
A different anecdote from the day’s tour stood out to Bunch years later. As he recalled in his 2019 memoir, A Fool’s Errand, at one point during the day, the president stood in front of a display that described in detail how the Netherlands contributed to the first 200 years of the transatlantic slave trade. Trump stared at the text on the wall, then turned to Bunch.
“You know, they love me in the Netherlands,” Trump said.
“Let’s continue walking,” Bunch replied.
“I was so disappointed in his response to one of the greatest crimes against humanity in history,” he went on to write in the book (which carried the subtitle “Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump”). “Here was a chance to broaden the views and the understanding of the incoming president and I had been less successful than I had expected.”
While the Netherlands episode didn’t merit much of a response from the White House when the book was released, it’s now at the center of an effort by the administration to infiltrate the heart of the Smithsonian, and rid it of, what it recently called, “This revisionist movement [that] seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”
That choice quote comes from “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” an executive order issued by Trump late last month that explicitly asked Vice President JD Vance to remove “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian through his perch on the institution’s Board of Regents, via statute. News coverage of the order anticipated the worst. Dictating the programming of an independent cultural organization would be completely unprecedented, like so much is these days, e.g., the private universities and law firms that have acquiesced to Trump’s demands. Perhaps the leaders of the Smithsonian would as well?
But Bunch, who has served as secretary of the Smithsonian since 2019, was not ready to fold. Days later, he sent a memo to staff saying, “As always, our work will be shaped by the best scholarship, free of partisanship, to help the American public better understand our nation’s history, challenges, and triumphs.”
“Lonnie Bunch is a Democrat donor and rabid partisan who manufactured lies out of thin air in order to boost sales of his miserable book,” Trump’s smashmouth attack dog Steven Cheung told the Times. “Fortunately, he, along with his garbage book, are complete failures.”
That’s a long seven years removed from “very, very proud.”
(A representative for Bunch declined an interview request for this story, citing his schedule.)
It seems like a scary time at the Smithsonian. Last week, the NMAAHC, known colloquially as the Blacksonian, announced that Kevin Young, who succeeded Bunch as director, was stepping down permanently after spending the last few weeks on leave. (Young is also the poetry editor at fellow Condé Nast title The New Yorker.) Early in the administration, at least two museums closed their diversity departments. The Art Museum of the Americas canceled a show organized by Andil Gosine, the artist and author of the text Environmental Justice and Racism in Canada, and also canceled a show featuring artists from the African diaspora.
But can Trump actually steamroll through the Smithsonian and call in die-hard loyalists to eliminate “ideology” from the programming? Can he send 22-year-old culture-ignorant DOGE staffers into the redbrick Gothic Castle that James Renwick built in 1855 and have them start gutting the place à la USAID?
In what counts as good news these days, it might be tough for Trump to pull it off.
Here’s why: The Smithsonian is firewalled from changing administrations, protecting it from the vicissitudes of the executive branch—very much unlike the Kennedy Center, which has a board handpicked by the president, and now has a US president as its chair. Congress appoints the Smithsonian’s governing regents, who are expected to serve years—and sometimes decades—long terms.
“The Smithsonian is much more insulated from presidential oversight or control than an administrative agency in the executive branch would be,” said Richard H. Pildes, the Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law at the NYU School of Law. “The president’s theory behind his effort to assert control over the Smithsonian is: The Smithsonian is part of the executive branch, and the president should be understood to have full control and supervision over the running of the executive branch. But the Justice Department has concluded many, many times over the years that the Smithsonian is not part of the executive branch, that it’s a unique entity from a legal perspective.”
One could argue that hasn’t stopped Trump before. He could just act as a king and flout the law by declaring himself the new secretary of the Smithsonian and presiding over the board of regents. But that would likely face heavy legal headwinds.
“There would be legal challenges,” Pildes said. “The fundamental point is that the Smithsonian is not part of the executive branch—as the Justice Department has recognized for decades and decades.”
