As President Lyndon B. Johnson once put it, the national museums exist so “young children see with their own eyes … the ripe fruit of America’s historical harvest … so that others could see a little better our legacy, however so small the glimpse, it would fulfill a noble purpose.”

Despite LBJ’s vision, the current leaders of the Smithsonian Institution are using its museums not as a means for educating new generations about America’s rich history, its unique founding, and its place in the world, but as a tool for political and social change. They see their mission as bringing about a revolutionary transformation that fundamentally rejects America’s founding legacy.

In short, today’s Smithsonian is a far cry from its original purpose.

Indeed, the Smithsonian has become so captured by radical leftist ideology that, according to a report from the Domestic Policy Council, the Smithsonian failed to create “any exhibit dedicated to presenting a general narrative of American history or telling the story of any of our founding fathers, the Second Continental Congress, the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolutionary War, or the achievement of independence and the establishment of the constitutional rule of law.” In its exhibit dedicated to our nation’s 250th anniversary, “In Pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness,” the museum “fails to actually celebrate America’s founders or founding.”

Patriot Post readers will be quite familiar with this problem of the Left wokifying the once-vaunted institution. Our Douglas Andrews has repeatedly tracked this issue, including the aforementioned comprehensive report on the sorry state of the Smithsonian and the need to save the institution from this political and cultural denigration.

But this article is not intended to rehash the sorry state of the Smithsonian, or affirm that the Trump administration is entirely justified in its efforts to clear out the woke mess from within the national museums.

Rather, this is an observation of how the mainstream media has falsely framed the Trump administration as the propagandists imposing an erroneous pro-MAGA narrative onto the nation’s historical record, while at the same time “erasing” unpleasant aspects of our past.

Case in point: The Washington Post reported on the Trump administration’s release of its damning report with the headline, “White House report accuses Smithsonian museum of ‘extreme political activism.’” The obvious inference is that the Trump administration is making false allegations against a government institution operating as intended. A follow-up story from the Post reads, “Smithsonian head disputes White House report in memo to staff.”

The Post says it’s just President Trump and his team playing politics as they spin a dubious narrative that the vaunted institution is woke.

Even more telling is the Post’s framing of the issue after Anthea Hartig, the lead historian heading the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, testified before Congress. The headline reads, “Republicans press Smithsonian museum leader in contentious Hill hearing.” Talk about intentionally ignoring the elephant in the room.

The story from the hearing was not Republican lawmakers; the story was that Hartig was exposed as a radical leftist ideologue, verifying that the Trump administration’s report was spot on.

As has become a litmus test for radical woke ideology, Hartig refused to define what a woman is. South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace grilled Hartig over a number of LGBTQ-promoting exhibits, including one that depicts BDSM attire. The museum was striving to represent “queer pedophiles, indoctrination, grooming of kids,” Mace argued. “You sexualize the American history museum.”

Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert asked Hartig if the Smithsonian would include an exhibit about “tens of millions of aborted babies.” Hartig dismissed the question, saying she had not come to discuss that topic. That is priceless, given the fact that the Smithsonian fixates on America’s history of racism and slavery, while our nation’s current and greatest sin is positively framed as “women’s rights.”

Other mainstream media outlets, like CBS News, reported that the Smithsonian’s leadership was “disputing” the Trump administration’s report, but, curiously, they have yet to report on the congressional hearing. Maybe because doing so would only validate the administration’s conclusion that the Smithsonian was engaged in “extreme political activism.”

The New York Times headline of the hearing read as follows: “G.O.P. Lawmakers Join White House in Challenging a Smithsonian Museum,” with the subheader, “A House subcommittee questioned the director of the National Museum of American History after a scathing White House report characterized it as insufficiently patriotic.”

The headline should have read, “Lawmakers expose lead Smithsonian historian as leftist ideologue.”

The reality is, the mainstream media is suffering from the same leftist ideological capture as most of our nation’s leading institutions. Therefore, media reporting is not about informing the public of the truth; rather, it is about molding the public’s perception of the news to uphold a leftist worldview as the truth.