David Barton speaks during a conservative conference.
David Barton speaks during a conservative conference. Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Gage Skidmore

Assclown Alert is a column of opinion, analysis and snark. 

Ever eager to whitewash reality so it matches his MAGA fever dream, President Donald Trump last month proclaimed that the White House plans to review Smithsonian Institution exhibits that focus on negative aspects of U.S. history, including “how bad slavery was.”

Turns out Texas-based Christian nationalist David Barton was likely involved in urging President Cankles to order up the purge — or he’s at least eager to take credit for it — according to reporting by Right Wing Watch. 

Last week, on an episode of Barton’s The WallBuilders Show, the pseudo-historian claimed he’d recently visited the White House to let officials know “the most racist and most historically inaccurate museum in Washington, D.C., by far, has got to be the museum on African American history.” 

Barton — a vice chair of the Republican Party of Texas from 1997 to 2006 — blathered on about how the Smithsonian museums are corrupted by Marxist thinking and an “obsession with slavery” that leads them to depict the U.S. as a “fundamentally flawed and evil nation.”

“We can go down the list of why America ending slavery was quite impressive, but that’s not the position that any of the Smithsonians take,” Barton said during his podcast. “It’s not a position that academics take, and it was that kind of stuff that caught President Trump’s attention, saying we don’t want to tell the rising generations how bad America is and that America is fundamentally flawed, stained and is not redeemable. That’s not a story we want to tell. Instead, we want to show why is America different, why are we special — what’s made America great.”

Keep in mind that despite Barton’s tireless and tiresome assertions that he knows more about U.S. history and constitutional law than scholars with PhDs, this dictator-loving dickhead has no formal credentials in either field. To be sure, his only non-ceremonial degree is a bachelor’s in Christian education from Oral Roberts University, according to multiple media reports.

Barton’s lack of credentials — and credibility — show in the crackpot and propagandized version of history he regularly hands down to the brainwashed MAGA masses. For example, one of his key assertions is that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t call for separation of church and state. Over the years, he’s engaged in no small amount of ass-backward logic to try to explain away those troublesome Establishment and Free Exercise clauses.

Beyond that, Barton’s verbal diarrhea has included claims that the Second Amendment gives private citizens the right to stockpile nuclear weapons, that Jesus opposed the minimum wage and that a nation’s intolerance against LGBTQ+ people is a sign it’s embarking on a spiritual revival. 

It’s an open question whether an assclown like Barton is qualified or competent enough to shelve books at the local branch library. He certainly should have no part in leaving his delusional, rabid-right stamp on one of the nation’s most important museums and educational resources. 

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This article appears in Sep 3-17, 2025.

Sanford Nowlin is editor-in-chief of the San Antonio Current. He holds degrees from Trinity University and the University of Texas at San Antonio, and his work has been featured in Salon, Alternet, Creative...