Trump buried by Spike Lee for new move to ‘roll back the clock'

Director Spike Lee railed against President Donald Trump Saturday over his plans to reshape Smithsonian museums as an attempt to “roll back the clock,” and argued the Trump administration had successfully erased the United States’ status as the “so-called beacon of democracy.”

Trump has ordered a “far-reaching review” of Smithsonian exhibits across the nation to ensure they fit his own “historical vision,” telling reporters this week that he wants museums to “talk about the history of our country in a fair manner, not in a woke or racist manner.”

Lee was asked by CNN’s Victor Blackwell Saturday about what he thought Trump’s goals were in reshaping the Smithsonian museums.

“To roll back the clock,” Lee said bluntly. “And what's interesting is that the world leaders, they know what's going on here too. The citizens of the world know what's happening here in the United States, formally the so-called beacon of democracy. It don't look like that now!”

Lee, whose films like 1989’s “Do the Right Thing” and 2018’s “BlacKkKlansman” often explore race relations and challenges facing the Black community, has long been an outspoken critic of Trump. In 2021, he compared Trump – calling him “president agent orange” – to Adolf Hitler, and in 2020 referred to Trump as “that Klansman in the Oval Office.”

On Trump’s latest effort to curate historical exhibits at museums to his liking, Lee argued it was a clear sign of a weakening democracy.

“You've got to (view) countries or people by their actions, and I don't think that the actions of this administration look like the beacon of democracy to me,” he said. “But I'm just one kid from Brooklyn, New York, so what are you going to say – an old kid!”

Trump’s “far-reaching review” of Smithsonian exhibits seeks to eliminate “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology,” which some critics have decried as “weaponizing history.” Even some Republicans, such as GOP strategist Shermichael Singleton, have suggested the move to be a “mistake.”

“You have seen in the past couple of months where some officials have attempted to make changes, to only come around and say 'maybe we went too far, this was a mistake, this was an error, we need to correct this,'” Singleton said earlier this week on CNN. “I ultimately think you'll probably see some combination of that moving forward if I'm going to be honest with you.”

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