I don't normally pay much attention to American Thinker, which I regard as a C-list right-wing site (although it does have nearly five million site visits a month, so someone's reading it). Today, however, I learned from AT's Andrea Widburg that Donald Trump handled documents just fine -- and we know this because the folks at the National Archives who've criticized his document-handling practices are a bunch of big ol' commies.

The National Archives, which is controlled by a hard leftist cadre, very excitedly announced that President Donald Trump took classified information with him when he left the White House. The problem—which the AP reluctantly concedes—is that, as President, he had the final say over what’s classified.

Did he actually declassify every document he took with him? There's no record of that. But he could have. Maybe Widburg believes that a document instantly becomes declassified when a president steals it -- or perhaps it's just when a Republican president steals it.

As a predicate, the National Archives management has turned that government office into a purely leftist entity determined to advance all leftist causes, including destroying Donald Trump.

Wow! I missed this. I guess it's one of those Stories the LIE-beral Media Won't Tell You.

Recently, it was caught stating that the U.S. Constitution and all of America’s other founding documents contain “harmful content.” Why? Because they have “racist, sexist, misogynistic, and xenophobic opinions.”

Did the National Archives really say that all of America's founding documents contain "harmful content"? Let's go to Widburg's link, which is a story at The Federalist.

The National Archives [and] Records Administration placed a “harmful content” warning on the Constitution, labeling the governing document of the United States as “harmful or difficult to view.” The warning applies to all documents across the Archives’ cataloged website, including the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence.

“NARA’s records span the history of the United States, and it is our charge to preserve and make available these historical records,” the administration said in a statement. “As a result, some of the materials presented here may reflect outdated, biased, offensive, and possibly violent views and opinions. In addition, some of the materials may relate to violent or graphic events and are preserved for their historical significance.”

So the National Archives didn't say that all of America's founding documents contain harmful content. The National Archives includes the founding documents in a large collection of materials, some of which "may reflect outdated, biased, offensive, and possibly violent views and opinions" or "may relate to violent or graphic events" -- though they're sill made available.

But this is how truth works on the right. It's like one of those games you play as a kid: Someone tells you something and then you have to tell the next person, but in this version of the game, when you tell it, you have to change one key fact to make liberals seem more evil. So The Federalist is told that a large National Archives document collection, of which the founding documents are a part, has a warning label, and then The Federalist says that the National Archives "placed a 'harmful content' warning on the Constitution, labeling the governing document of the United States as 'harmful or difficult to view'" -- which isn't what the warning says about the Constitution specifically. Then The Federalist whispers this to the American Thinker, which says that all the founding documents have been labeled harmful. Isn't this a fun game?

Widburg continues:

Additionally, the National Archives management has concluded that the entire institution of the National Archives itself is structurally racist because it’s concerned with lauding the work of the White men who created our nation. You can read more about that insanity here.

Widburg links to a post she wrote last June, which in turn links to a Fox News story also written in June. That story tells us:

The National Archives' task force on racism claimed in a little-noticed report to the U.S.’s top librarian that the Archives' own Rotunda – which houses the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights – is an example of "structural racism" and that the Founding Fathers and other White, historically impactful Americans are portrayed too positively.

The report was completed in April and released this month but has so far flown under the media radar.

The April 2021 report, which is here, is the kind of self-assessment many corporations and other institutions have commissioned in recent years. It says, in part:

Examples of structural racism at NARA include, but are by no means limited to:

... ● a Rotunda in our flagship building that lauds wealthy White men in the nation’s founding while marginalizing BIPOC, women, and other communities.

But note that this report had such a radical impact on the National Archives and the Rotunda that no one in the media, including right-wing journalists, paid any attention to the contents of the report for two months. And no one, including the right-wing media, has talked about the report since. The Rotunda reopened last July after being shut down in response to the pandemic. It's open now. The founding documents are still there, along with large murals depicting white men.

Remind me again: What does this have to do with Donald Trump stealing classified documents? Oh, right: Liberals are history's greatest monsters, so it's categorically impossible for a right-winger to do anything wrong.

Posted with permission from No More Mr. Nice Blog