Smithsonian Removes Trump from Impeachment Exhibit — After Pressure from White House

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

“In the end, the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.”
― George Orwell, 1984

The Smithsonian National Museum of American History rolled back an exhibit on presidential impeachments to 2008 earlier this month, removing elements that referenced the two proceedings against President Donald Trump, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.

“A person familiar with the exhibit plans, who was not authorized to discuss them publicly, said the change came about as part of a content review that the Smithsonian agreed to undertake following pressure from the White House to remove an art museum director,” reported the Post’s Janay Kingsberry.

Trump is the only U.S. president to have been impeached twice, and both times he had enough GOP votes to be acquitted by the Senate. His first impeachment related to an abuse of power and obstruction claim over his attempts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate President Joe Biden’s family, threatening to withhold military aid. The second was for the incitement of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The content in the Smithsonian’s impeachment exhibit included “a photograph of the prosecutors in Andrew Johnson’s 1868 case, copies of the investigative report that launched Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearings in 1999 and a damaged filing cabinet from the Watergate scandal that would prompt Nixon to resign in 1974,” according to the Post, adding that a political history curator had told the paper in January 2020 that it was working to collect objects to add to the exhibit that would tell the story of Trump’s impeachments.

Until the exhibit was altered this month, there was a temporary label reading “Case under redesign (history happens)” that was installed in September 2021 and offered some Trump content. Now, the display states that “only three presidents have seriously faced removal.”

A Smithsonian spokesperson confirmed to the Post that the display had been reset to its 2008 design, offering a statement:

“In reviewing our legacy content recently, it became clear that the ‘Limits of Presidential Power’ section in The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden exhibition needed to be addressed,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “The section of this exhibition covers Congress, The Supreme Court, Impeachment, and Public Opinion. Because the other topics in this section had not been updated since 2008, the decision was made to restore the Impeachment case back to its 2008 appearance.”

An additional statement was provided from the Smithsonian after the article was published, saying that “a future and updated exhibit will include all impeachments.”