[SutterBrother]

Head of the Smithsonian next on the Dotard's list.

Though the men do not share a personal relationship, Mr. Bunch gave Mr. Trump a tour of the museum in 2017, after which the President online called the museum “A great job done by amazing people!”

But the level of disregard the Trump administration now feels toward him is evident in the fact that he was not told in advance of the president’s order.

Asked directly on Tuesday whether Mr. Trump supported the institution’s leadership, specifically Mr. Bunch, the White House in a statement said, “President Trump is ensuring that we are celebrating true American history and ingenuity instead of corrupting it in the name of left-wing ideology.”

But later on Tuesday, asked to comment on how a book by Mr. Bunch depicted his 2017 tour with Mr. Trump of the African American history museum, Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, responded: “Lonnie Bunch is a Democrat donor and rabid partisan who manufactured lies out of thin air in order to boost sales of his miserable book. Fortunately, he, along with his garbage book, are complete failures.”

In that book, from 2019, “A Fool’s Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump,” Mr. Bunch discussed Mr. Trump in several passages and described in some detail their museum tour, focusing in part on Mr. Trump’s reaction when they stopped at part of an exhibit that spoke of the roles countries like Portugal, England and the Netherlands played in the slave trade.

After Mr. Trump paused to read the label, the book reported, he said simply, “You know, they love me in the Netherlands.”

“All I could say was let’s continue walking,” Mr. Bunch wrote.

Mr. Bunch, a registered Democrat, declined to be interviewed. Election records show that his only federal campaign contribution was $250 he donated to Jesse Jackson two decades ago.

NY Times (paywall)