Bill Press: American history is not whatever Trump says it is

If anything, Donald Trump is consistent. Everything he does is bad. The big things and the little things.

Of course, Trump’s big, bad things get the most attention: sending troops into American cities; kidnapping the president of another country and throwing him in prison; blowing up small boats in the Caribbean and killing all onboard; tweeting out racist images; and tearing down half of the White House.

The problem is, the spotlight on the big stuff takes attention from all the other bad things Trump is doing – which may not have the same shocking impact, but are just as insidious.

Latest example: following his orders, the National Park Service took down the rainbow flag from the Stonewall National Monument in New York – which follows removal of signs last year noting the important role of transsexuals in Stonewall’s history. Why? Because Trump doesn’t want people to know that gay activists had anything to do with the birthplace of the gay rights movement.

Taking down the LGBTQ flag didn’t trigger any national headlines. But it should have. It’s all part of Trump’s determined efforts to rewrite – or, more accurately, to “whitewash” – American history.

It started on Jan. 20, 2025, the first day of his second term, with an executive order pardoning some 1,600 armed protesters who stormed the United States Capitol. Under Trump’s edict, Jan. 6, 2021 should no longer be condemned as an insurrection against the government, the destruction of federal property or an assault on police officers. History should now remember January 6th as nothing but a peaceful protest.

Next, Trump signed an executive order on March 27, 2025 called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” – which, in truth, should have been dubbed “Rewriting and Telling Lies about American History” – ordering federal agencies to remove any historical evidence that “fosters a sense of national shame” – as if we have nothing to be ashamed of.

Making his case, Trump accused the Smithsonian Institution of being “out of control” because the new African-American museum portrayed “how bad slavery was.” (He didn’t say what was “good” about it).

For almost a year, the National Park Service – which used to be the most highly regarded and least-political of federal agencies – has shamelessly carried out Trump’s executive order by erasing any evidence that straight, white Americans have ever done anything wrong.

At the President’s House in Philadelphia, NPS agents removed plaques commemorating nine enslaved Black Americans who lived there, serving George and Martha Washington. In Trump’s America, they just didn’t exist.

At all national monuments, as first reported by the Washington Post, officials were ordered to no longer display a famous 1863 photo of a man named Peter, known as the “Scourged Back.” Because the photo of a man’s back heavily scarred by whipping showed only one side of slavery.

At California’s Muir Woods, NPS staff removed signage that acknowledged the roles of Native American Miwok Americans and conservation-minded Marin County women in saving the redwoods. Instead, all credit for creating the park goes to influential, philanthropic white men.

At the National Portrait Gallery, the text under Trump’s portrait was changed to eliminate any mention of two impeachments during his first term. The text under Bill Clinton’s portrait, however, still states he was impeached for “lying under oath about a sexual relationship he had with a White House intern.”

This week, the White House attempted to rewrite the history of the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), celebrating it as a glorious victory against Latin American aggressors, rather than what most historians agree was an attempt to seize lands from Mexico, where slavery was prohibited, in order to create more slave states.

Meanwhile, in some red states, efforts are underway to rewrite American history books, drop certain courses and remove critical books from libraries in order to deny students any knowledge of the shameless treatment of Native Americans or Black Americans – thus creating an entire generation ignorant of history. Which would be a real tragedy. Because unless you know and accept the reality of history, both the good and the bad, you can never apply the lessons of history to charting a better future.

In the long run, Trump will lose his battle to rewrite history. As soon as he’s gone, historians will go back to telling the truth about America. And that will include painting Donald Trump as the most dishonest, disgusting, hateful, ignorant, ineffective, divisive, egomaniacal, gold-digging, feckless president in history. No historian can dispute that. It’s a fact.

(Bill Press is host of The BillPressPod, and author of 10 books, including: “From the Left: My Life in the Crossfire.” His email address is: bill@billpress.com. Readers may also follow him on Twitter @billpresspod and on BlueSky @BillPress.bsky.social.)