There is arguably no greater name in American history than that of documentarian Ken Burns, and in a new conversation with Politico, he didn’t hold back when discussing his thoughts on President Donald Trump’s approach to celebrating the country’s 250th birthday. Rather than honoring America, said Burns, Trump’s narcissistic spectacle comes from a place of “deep and abiding insecurity.”
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Burns was speaking with Politico Senior White House Correspondent Dasha Burns, who asked him what he thought of how the administration was approaching the historic moment that is the country’s semiquincentennial. His response was frank: “They’re not. They’re not asking Americans to look into our past, our complex past, as all pasts are. We’re not being asked to look at it. We’re being told to abbreviate it, to make it only positive, to just have it be a sunshine story.”
The renowned documentarian was referencing not only the content of the administration’s 250th celebration, but its wider effort to reconstruct historical narratives being taught across the country to suit the MAGA agenda. This has included everything from working Bible readings into school curricula, to removing discussion of slavery and indigenous genocide from textbooks, to seizing control of the country’s top history museum.
He was also asked for his thoughts on the garish celebrations themselves, which, after a controversial build-up, seemed to descend into chaos within a few hours. The whole affair has been spackled with Trump’s vanity projects, from the gold-coated horse statues, to a mini-mock-up of his much-demanded arch (which promptly collapsed), to the Reflecting Pool debacle.
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“These are all examples of a deep and abiding insecurity,” asserted Burns. “Greatness doesn’t need it. The best memorial that there is in all of Washington is the Lincoln Memorial. It’s one of the most extraordinary places on the face of the earth, which will be cheapened by some of [Trump’s] activities. The monument will survive, but Lincoln, like Washington, needed no monument in his lifetime. He wasn’t worried about what it was that people would do to build in honor of him.”
On the note of George Washington, Dasha Burns asked what Ken Burns thought would happen in a Washington-Trump encounter.
“I mean, the humility that Washington displayed, the anxiety that Adams had about displays of avarice and ambition, the sense of the pursuit of happiness that Jefferson developed and that everyone who believed about lifelong learning…” These figures, asserted Burns, “would be stunned by someone who seems completely ahistorical, completely disinterested in learning. And I think that would be shocking to them. They would be upset at the brazen self-promotion that takes place daily.”
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