Smithsonian Institution says it will update exhibit to reflect all impeachments of US presidents following backlash.<\/p>\n
The parent organisation of a top-visited history museum in the United States\u00a0has denied that political pressure played a role in the removal of a display about the impeachments of US President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
The Smithsonian Institution, which runs the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, said on Saturday that it removed the \u201ctemporary\u201d placard for failing to meet the museum\u2019s standards in \u201cappearance, location, timeline, and overall presentation\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was not consistent with other sections in the exhibit and moreover blocked the view of the objects inside its case. For these reasons, we removed the placard,\u201d the institution said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were not asked by any Administration or other government officials to remove content from the exhibit.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Smithsonian Institution, which runs 21 museums and the National Zoo, said the impeachment section of the museum would be updated in the coming weeks to \u201creflect all impeachment proceedings in our nation\u2019s history\u201d.<\/p>\n
The statement comes after The Washington Post on Thursday reported that the museum removed an explicit reference to Trump\u2019s impeachments last month, resulting in its exhibit about impeachment incorrectly stating that \u201conly three presidents have seriously faced removal\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Post, citing an unnamed person familiar with the exhibit plans, said the display was taken down following a \u201ccontent review that the Smithsonian agreed to undertake following pressure from the White House to remove an art museum director\u201d.<\/p>\n
The museum\u2019s removal of the display drew swift backlash, with critics of Trump casting the development as the latest capitulation to the whims of an authoritarian president.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can run, but you cannot hide from the judgment of history,\u201d Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, here\u2019s my message to the president: no matter what exhibits you try to distort, the American people will never forget that you were impeached \u2013 not once, but twice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has, with lightning speed, moved to exert greater control over political, cultural and media institutions as part of his transformative \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d agenda.<\/p>\n
In March, the US president signed an executive order to remove \u201cimproper ideology\u201d from the Smithsonian Institution\u2019s properties and deny funding for exhibits that \u201cdegrade shared American values\u201d or \u201cdivide Americans based on race\u201d.<\/p>\n
During his first term, Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives twice, in 2019 and 2021, but he was acquitted by the Senate on both occasions.<\/p>\n
He was the third US president to be impeached, after Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, and the only US president to be impeached twice.<\/p>\n
Former President Richard Nixon faced near-certain impeachment before his resignation in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Smithsonian Institution says it will update exhibit to reflect all impeachments of US presidents following backlash. The parent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[32,2348,12,285,49,978,286,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-313842","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-history","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-politics","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-us","14":"tag-us-canada","15":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114963429794005114","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}