The Washington Post attacks Trump for trying to counter anti-American bias in the teaching of our history.

It assumes, without evidence, that Trump's motive was primarily political.

One of the better things Donald Trump did as president was to establish the 1776 Commission. This was a response to the 1619 Project, a scandalously fake piece of anti-American history, written by a far leftist (and non-historian) and peddled by the New York Times, that tried to make slavery the centerpiece of our country’s founding and its subsequent history.

To that end, it argued that the American Revolution was driven by a desire to preserve slavery. This absurd claim was rejected by one serious historian after another, including the one who helped fact-check the matter for the Times. Facing this barrage of criticism, the Times eventually walked back the claim.

The 1776 Commission did not downplay slavery. But it placed the focus on America’s true founding and what made our country exceptional — its status as a self-correcting constitutional democracy.

If our citizens believe the version of its history presented in the 1619 project, they will tend to dislike America And if our citizens dislike America, the country probably will face a grim future. Why support or defend a racist nation?

By the same taken, if our citizens understand our history the way the 1776 Commission views it, they will tend to love America, the way generations of Americans have loved it. The country will then tend to flourish, the way it almost always has.

It’s not surprising, therefore, that one of Joe Biden’s first acts as president was to disband the Commission and delete its report. Left-liberals as a group would rather have Americans view their country the way they do — with disgust and contempt. If this leads to reduced patriotism and eventually to national weakness and upheaval, that’s a feature, not a bug, in the minds of many left-liberals.

It’s not surprising, therefore, that the Washington Post, a left-liberal organ, has a frontpage story today attacking Trump for establishing the 1776 Commission as an antidote to the 1619 Project. The Post sniffs:

The little-noticed story of how Trump personally commissioned this initiative in his final months as president shows his instinct for spotting and stoking a simmering culture war issue, the same approach that has shaped his political comeback in the years since he left office.

The Post offers no meaningful evidence that Trump created the commission to “stoke a simmering culture war issue,” rather than in good faith, out of the same disgust so many of us felt with the slandering of America by the 1619 Project. Instead, the Post begs the question of Trump’s motive by assuming an answer — that Trump was acting in bad faith for political gain.

The Post notes that the Commission was created in an election year. In addition, according to the Post, “during most of his presidency, Trump had showed little interest in education.”

But the timeline of events undermines the Post’s claim that Trump’s motive was primarily political. The 1619 Project wasn’t published until August 2019. It didn’t take hold for some months thereafter. In fact, as the Post says, it wasn’t until “the start of summer 2020,” after the mistreatment and death of George Floyd, that the 1619 Project’s distorted view of American history “was ascendant.”

Until around then, the need for the 1776 Commission would not have been apparent to a busy American president.

In addition to question begging, the Post indulges in its usual tactic of blaming cultural warfare on conservatives. In reality, the cultural battle in question here was “stoked” by the left’s embrace of a badly distorted account of American history intended to cast our country in the worst light possible.

Those of us who denounced the slander of our country didn’t do it to stoke a cultural war or to create a campaign issue. We did it because we love our country and prefer truth to fiction. There’s no reason to believe that this was not at a big part of what motivated Trump.

The Post chooses not to explore Joe Biden’s motives for disbanding the Commission. Did he believe the 1619 Project’s dark view of American history? Probably, albeit without much conviction (the way Biden holds beliefs about almost every issue) . Did he want to make the race mongers on the left happy? That’s my guess.

The Post makes much of a phone call from Trump to then-Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in which, according to DeVos, Trump mooted the idea of banning the teaching of the 1619 Project in America’s classrooms. As DeVos tells the story, she “reminded him that the United States does not have a national curriculum” and that “the federal government can’t ban the 1619 Project.”

This is true as far as it goes. However, the federal government might well be able to bar its funds from being used to teach that Project. The Post notes that Sen. Tom Cotton proposed such legislation in 2020.

In any case, what stands out to me from DeVos’ self-serving story is that Trump acceded to her warning. This places him in marked contrast to Barack Obama and Joe Biden who issued hugely consequential executive orders they lacked the power to impose. Obama knew he lacked the power. Who knows what Biden knew?

The Post won’t admit it, but Trump, despite his threats and bluster, was more respectful of the limits on his power as president than both his predecessor and his successor. Whether this would be true in a second Trump administration is another question.