Trump’s Absurd Plan to De-Woke History

What if he tries to target smaller institutions that can't fight back?

View in Browser  Wednesday, August 20, 2025 The president's next front in his relentless culture war is American museums, and his first salvo is aimed at The Smithsonian. In a column today, Esquire's political columnist, Charles P. Pierce, highlights the absurdity of Trump's latest mission and issues a dire warning about the threat this poses. You can read his dispatch here.   – Michael Sebastian, editor-in-chief Plus: The new Mayor of Kingstown trailer looks like the best season yet The 31 best furniture pieces you can unearth on Amazon The 11 best Aperol cocktail recipes Trump Thinks American History Is Too "Woke." Now He Wants to Reduce Focus on Slavery in Museums. He's already going after the Smithsonian. What if he tries to target smaller institutions that can't fight back? On Tuesday afternoon, the president once again tried to put his banana pants on over his head. This time, his topic was the nation's museums and his plans to shake them down the way he did the country's elite colleges and universities if they don't stop being "WOKE." This, of course, is a concept he doesn't remotely understand—among many, many others—except as a kind of primer cord to set off the primal fear in Meemaw and the others he has invited into the third-rate haunted-house exhibit of his mind.   What worries me most are the hundreds of small museums dealing with all those parts of American history that make the president feel icky—the Nicodemus National Historical Site out in Kansas or the Lest We Forget Museum in Pennsylvania or the beautiful little museum at Wounded Knee. These places don't have anywhere near the wherewithal to resist if and when the Eye of Sauron falls upon them.  READ THE STORY Netflix has a new documentary about the Dallas Cowboys, and unlike most of this summer's sports, it's worth watching. Brady Langmann reviews your next big binge-watch favorite. >> Going camping soon? You need a lantern. Bryn Gelbart reviews a Duracell lantern that demands a place in your hardware storage.. >> All Hail the $26 Million Ferrari! Plus, Four More Wonders of Monterey Car Week 2025. Monterey Car Week is an event of extremes. It's ultra-wealthy collectors converging on a breathtaking stretch of California coast, showing off some of the most beautiful cars ever built. It's also a place where those same ultra-wealthy people can exhibit spectacularly bad behavior. Case in point: a video uploaded to Reddit where an alleged drunk guy clipped a Rolls-Royce with his Kia. The ensuing scuffle didn't exactly paint anyone in a positive light.   But look past the idiots fighting in parking lots and beyond the champagne-and-caviar-studded parties, and you'll find some of the most ingeniously engineered cars and exquisitely crafted objects on the planet. Here are the finest-looking items—automotive or otherwise—I saw at the show. By Daniel Dumas There's a Reason Everybody Loves Chris Cooper Chris Cooper was the talk of the Upper East Side. When he first moved to Manhattan in the mid-1970s to pursue acting, he brought his tools with him. And between auditions, he began to pick up home-renovation and handyman jobs—installing custom shelves, building a wet bar, putting in a kitchen, wallpapering, painting. Soon the quiet young man from Missouri with carpentry skills and a toolbox on wheels was a hot commodity in one of New York's toniest neighborhoods. "The thing that worked was I did one job at a time, from beginning to end, right to their satisfaction," says Cooper, pointing his finger at me for emphasis. "And my name spread like wildfire. Wildfire." By Brian O'Keefe Follow Us Unsubscribe | Privacy Notice | CA Notice at Collection Esquire is a publication of Hearst Magazines. ©2025 Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This email was sent by Hearst Magazines, 300 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019-3779