As we all know, Donald Trump would like you to believe that his inauguration smashed all available records for attendance–despite ample evidence that it was a colossal fail. Based on what his information minister, Kellyanne Conway, said on Sunday, the real figures are “alternative facts” that aren’t being reported by the media because they’re biased against the man who wants to make America great again. Sounds more like the Trump team was throwing a tantrum because the media wasn’t willing to report blatant lies on the air.
It turns out that this wasn’t the only attempt to feed Trumpian “alternative facts” to the nation. If you stopped by the National Museum of American History while you were in Washington for the inauguration, you might have seen a book entitled “Donald Trump: 45th President of the United States Collector’s Vault” in the gift shop, available for $50. Well, if you bought that book, you might want to send it back for a refund. It turns out that book is shot through with historical inaccuracies. Indeed, they were so egregious that within hours of the book being flagged by The Washington Post, it was pulled from sale.
The book was written by Brandon Hall and published by Whitman Publishing, an Alabama-based publisher of “memory books” for incoming presidents. However, it looks like Hall’s editor was asleep at the switch. That’s about the only way to explain the blatant inaccuracies that The Post found in the book. Among them:
- It blamed Hillary Clinton for starting the birther rumors–a claim that The Post’s Fact Checker gave four Pinocchios, and has been rated as “False” by Politifact. Supposedly, Hillary cooked it up to “save herself from being eaten alive by her own party,” and the media was in cahoots with her to “further cover up Hillary’s treachery.”
- It dismisses the talk about Russian cyberhackers targeting the DNC as”a strange maneuver” by the Hillary campaign to revive its sinking fortunes. Further, it argues that no one “outside her loyal supporters” believed it.
- That sets up what may be the biggest lie of all. It claims that Trump won a “sweeping” and “decisive” victory, despite losing the popular vote by 200,000 votes. As we now know, Hillary won the popular vote by almost 3 million votes.
- Trump is billed as a “kind-hearted philanthropist and humanitarian”–glossing over the fact that for years, he never donated to his own foundation.
Oy vey. This sounds like something you’d expect from Kellyanne herself. But it turns out that Hall voted for Jill Stein after supporting Bernie Sanders in the primary. Reportedly, they had a similar “memory book” about Hillary ready do go unless she won the election. As wholeheartedly as I supported Hillary, it makes me retch to think that a book filled with outright lies and puffery about her could have been on the shelves. That’s the only thing you can assume, based on the steaming pile of lies and puffery that is this Trump book.
Needless to say, when officials at the Smithsonian Institution, which runs the museum, learned about this, they were dumbfounded. Smithsonian spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas admitted that her superiors weren’t certain “if we read all the books we sell” out of the “thousands and thousands of items” that come through the Smithsonian’s many facilities. However, she promised that this book would definitely go under the microscope.
Soon afterward, the American History Museum fired off this on its Twitter feed, in response to a disgruntled visitor.
The book is no longer available for sale in our shops pending a review by our historians for factual accuracy.
— National Museum of American History (@amhistorymuseum) January 21, 2017
Hall stood by the claims about the hacking being much ado about nothing, as well as the claims that Hillary was responsible for the birther nonsense. He claimed that the hacking talk was eerily similar to the talk about WMDs in Iraq. Even when the intelligence report was released, Hall harrumphed that “they didn’t give any evidence.”
However, Hall and Whitman honcho Dennis Tucker admitted that they got Hillary’s popular vote total wrong. Tucker said he was under pressure to send the book to the printer–and when the book went to press, it was the only figure he had. Why such urgency? Well, Whitman’s printer is in China.
Hall and Tucker ought to be ashamed of themselves. They deserve to be held up for ridicule, and Whitman should be driven out of business. But they aren’t the only ones who should answer for this attempt to push “alternative facts” on the inauguration crowd. If I were the person who greenlighted this book for sale, I’d get my resume ready. There is no defensible reason to have this kind of factually inaccurate garbage in our national museum.
(featured image courtesy Ricky Carioti, The Washington Post)
