Trump Tries To Fire Head Of National Portrait Gallery For Being Too Woke. Yes, Really.

That he doesn't have the authority to do it isn't going to stop him.

National Portrait Gallery

Donald Trump had a busy Friday, for him. He ranted about judges on his dumb social media site. He mocked Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis and clowned around the Oval Office with Elon Musk in front of the press corps. And he fired the head of the National Portrait Gallery for excessive wokeness.

We guess all those trade deals have been wrapped up and Russia and Ukraine signed a peace treaty. (BIG nope on that, and big update coming shortly.) Laser-focused on the public you serve as always, sir!

We’re still trying to figure out why Trump thinks he has the power to fire the head of the National Portrait Gallery, given that it’s not part of the executive branch and its head is not hired or appointed by presidents. Not that that has ever stopped him from doing anything. Maybe he’s run out of other federal employees to fire and he’s jonesing for it like it’s a box of McDonald’s fries.

Anyway, here is his Great and Exalted Holiness doing what he does best, posting to social media while sitting on his gold toilet:

Upon the request and recommendation of many people, I am herby terminating the employment of Kim Sajet as Director of the National Portrait Gallery. She is a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI, which is totally inappropriate for her position. Her replacement will be named shortly. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Again, the NPG is part of the Smithsonian Institution, which is not a formal part of the executive or any other branch of government. It’s a public-private partnership and gets about two-thirds of its funding from the feds. There are high-level members of the federal government that serve on its Board of Regents — the vice president, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, a handful of members of Congress appointed by the leaders of both chambers — but it is not something a president controls.

This is a long way of saying good luck to the DOJ lawyers who will be defending Trump in the inevitable lawsuit. You guys must be wiped out, what with all the illegal orders people he keeps giving and people keep suing him over.

What is Trump’s problem with Kim Sajet, and in what way is she too supportive of DEI, which has become an all-purpose codeword for liberal amongst the wingnuts? Well, Sajet is a woman, so there’s that. What else, Washington Post?

Born in Nigeria, Sajet is a citizen of the Netherlands who has worked in the United States for 30 years.

A furriner! Has ICE been alerted? Ha ha, we joke, but you know someone in the administration has checked her immigration status.

Sajet has focused on diversifying the gallery’s collection and programming by acquiring works that reflected a broader range of artists and subjects and integrating Spanish into the museum’s communications strategy.

Ah, there it is. There will be no diversifying collections or showcasing any artists who aren’t white dudes born and raised in America. It’s called merit, people.

On Saturday, the Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum plan to host their family Pride festival.

Well, we certainly can’t have that. Children might learn that gays exist!

This move would seem to be part of a larger Trump administration move to control the Smithsonian and its content so that the museums won’t display anything that Stephen Miller finds icky. Trump signed an executive order two months ago to this effect. After some yammering about the Smithsonian having replaced objective facts with ideological-driven narratives — and what incredible lack of self-awareness from the Trump administration — the EO says:

Under this historical revision, our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.

How dare anyone suggest that a nation that allowed slavery of another race at its founding and gave women about the same rights it gave broodmares might have a racist or sexist bone in its collective body?

The EO also tasked JD Vance and someone named Lindsey Halligan with the job of removing “improper ideologies” from the Smithsonian and its exhibits. Halligan is a lawyer who Trump hired mostly because he spotted her at Trump International Golf Club and apparently thought she was hot. (He “noticed her,” says WaPo.)

When Halligan moved to Washington in January to work for the administration, she went to the Smithsonian one day and saw an exhibit titled “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture.” The exhibit did not “reflect the America she knows and loves,” so she complained to Trump about it. Now she’s in charge of making sure no one else gets to see anything that might impugn the America that she knows and loves.

How shoving wingnut propaganda into American museums is any different from the left allegedly replacing objective history with an ideological narrative is not something Halligan is going to address. They’re both ideological narratives in a way, but she works for Trump so we don’t expect any introspection or intellectual consistency.

All of this is part of the MAGA desire to capture culture by brute force. You have the Smithsonian. You have the Kennedy Center, which Trump took over because it wasn’t producing enough conservative-friendly theater. You have Hollywood execs allegedly scrambling to produce shows and movies that will keep Trump from yelling at them.

Well. They can turn the National Portrait Gallery into a white-men-only club, they can put all the reboots of Davey and Goliath they want on Amazon, but they can’t make us watch any of it, can they?

Nailing it at usual, creeps.

[WaPo]

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