CNN’s Laura Coates welcomed Prof. Michael Eric Dyson to her Tuesday show to react to a Truth Social post from President Trump lamenting current content at Smithsonian museums. According to Dyson, Trump’s desired changes put him in the same category of leader as Benito Mussolini.
Coates saw something sinister afoot, “I want to bring in Michael Eric Dyson to this conversation as well because I'd be remiss if I did not lean on his mind as well, as the scholar that he is. But why are we back here with a conversation from the president of the United States wanting to curate, read: eliminate the history of slavery?”
It should be noted that even CNN’s chyron appeared to disagree with the choice of the word “eliminate” as it read, “Trump: Smithsonian focuses too much on 'how bad slavery was.'”
That would suggest the conversation should be about how prevalent talk about slavery is at the museums and whether they are using slavery to make some partisan point about today’s culture or politics.
Nevertheless, Dyson began by recalling something co-panelist Prof. Tim Naftali had said, “Well, as Professor Naftali just indicated here, the reality is that museums are bulwarks against collective amnesia. The purpose of a museum is to remind us through independent curatorial impulse, through research, through libraries, through museums, right, to create the collective conscience of a nation and the collective conscience of a nation.”
Dyson added, “And in order to do that, you have to have artifacts, you have to have facts, you have to have deposits made, you have to have arguments made. You have to feature the good, the bad, the ugly. You've got to feature the entire culture.”
Playing the fascism card, Dyson rolled on:
Fascists are interested in deploying museums as extensions of propaganda. Remember, in Italy, under Mussolini, that's how the museum was projected to further the notion of Romantica, the Romanness. We have in this country the attempt to extend the tradition of Americana, a narrow version of what it means to be an American. And for the president to suggest that we are only focusing on the negative, you brilliantly deconstructed that. You demythologize that, Ms. Coates, at the beginning of this show when you talk about the variety of impulses, strands of history that are weaved together in that American museum that happens to be focused on African American culture and history.
Dyson then tried to suggest that what Trump was complaining about is analogous to decrying Holocaust memorialization, “And I finally say this: Is it called the Jewish museum? It's called the Holocaust Museum. Why? Because the Holocaust was central to the 20th century in defining genocide and its ability to eradicate and eviscerate entire populations.”
That’s pretty outrageous, but Dyson then circled back to slavery and turned “woke” into an acronym, “This is what happened in America. And what's happening now is that a president extends that fascist impulse to use the museum as a footstool for his personally chosen artifacts of history as opposed to the independent rigorous assessment of what we have in this nation. That's what museums are for, and he is destroying it. Woke in his mind means white oppression keeps emerging.”
Even if one were to grant CNN’s premise about Trump’s posts, it is the relevant executive order that has actual legal weight behind it, and that order simply makes clear that far-left political statements will no longer be allowed to be presented as non-partisan history at taxpayer-funded museums.
Here is a transcript for the August 19 show:
CNN Laura Coates Live
8/19/2025
11:10 PM ET
LAURA COATES: I want to bring in Michael Eric Dyson to this conversation as well because I'd be remiss if I did not lean on his mind as well, as the scholar that he is. But why are we back here with a conversation from the president of United States wanting to curate, read: eliminate the history of slavery?
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON: Well, as Professor Naftali just indicated here, the reality is that museums are bulwarks against collective amnesia. The purpose of a museum is to remind us through independent curatorial impulse, through research, through libraries, through museums, right, to create the collective conscience of a nation and the collective conscience of a nation.And in order to do that, you have to have artifacts, you have to have facts, you have to have deposits made, you have to have arguments made. You have to feature the good, the bad, the ugly. You've got to feature the entire culture.
Fascists are interested in deploying museums as extensions of propaganda. Remember, in Italy, under Mussolini, that's how the museum was projected to further the notion of Romantica, the Romanness. We have in this country the attempt to extend the tradition of Americana, a narrow version of what it means to be an American. And for the president to suggest that we are only focusing on the negative, you brilliantly deconstructed that. You demythologize that, Ms. Coates, at the beginning of this show when you talk about the variety of impulses, strands of history that are weaved together in that American museum that happens to be focused on African American culture and history.
And I finally say this: Is it called the Jewish museum? It's called the Holocaust Museum. Why? Because the Holocaust was central to the 20th century in defining genocide and its ability to eradicate and eviscerate entire populations.
This is what happened in America. And what's happening now is that a president extends that fascist impulse to use the museum as a footstool for his personally chosen artifacts of history as opposed to the independent rigorous assessment of what we have in this nation. That's what museums are for, and he is destroying it. Woke in his mind means white oppression keeps emerging.
