Trump Thread

[Montmorency]

Wow, remember a couple years back when we used to joke about Trump's Stalinist impulses around presenting his in-group vs. out-group?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...1a4_story.html

The large color photograph that greets visitors to a National Archives exhibit celebrating the centennial of women’s suffrage shows a massive crowd filling Pennsylvania Avenue NW for the Women’s March on Jan. 21, 2017, the day after President Trump’s inauguration.

The 49-by-69-inch photograph is a powerful display. Viewed from one perspective, it shows the 2017 march. Viewed from another angle, it shifts to show a 1913 black-and-white image of a women’s suffrage march also on Pennsylvania Avenue. The display links momentous demonstrations for women’s rights more than a century apart on the same stretch of pavement.

But a closer look reveals a different story.

The Archives acknowledged in a statement this week that it made multiple alterations to the photo of the 2017 Women’s March showcased at the museum, blurring signs held by marchers that were critical of Trump. Words on signs that referenced women’s anatomy were also blurred.

A placard that proclaims “God Hates Trump” has “Trump” blotted out so that it reads “God Hates.” A sign that reads “Trump & GOP — Hands Off Women” has the word Trump blurred out.

“As a non-partisan, non-political federal agency, we blurred references to the President’s name on some posters, so as not to engage in current political controversy,” Archives spokeswoman Miriam Kleiman said in an emailed statement.

Holy maloney, but it does track with his hollowing out of the bureaucracy and its replacement with personal whim and conditioned obsequiousness. Recall the similar but more dangerous (?) manipulation of official weather projections that did not comport with Trump's proclamations this past September.


(Just to be clear, National Archives have apologized and promised to replace the image.)