The Eric Metaxas Show - Roger Kimball on the Smithsonian’s Influence on Culture and the Trump Era

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

Roger Kimball of The New Criterion explores how art shapes culture in America, the influence of the Smithsonian, and why the Trump Era matters in this discourse.

Welcome to the Eric Metaxis show. Did you ever see the movie The Blobs starring Steve McQueen? The blood-curdling threat of the blob. Well, way back when Eric had a small part in that film, but they had to cut his scene because the blob was supposed to eat him. But he kept spitting him out. Oh, the whole thing was just a disaster. Anyway, here's the guy who's not always that easy to digest.

Eric the Texas! Hey there, folks, we interrupt a regular, programming to bring you our weekly Supercentennial update. Before we go to our next guest, I want to do an update really on the term supercentennial is the term that I've invented when we say it's the 250th anniversary

of the birth of America. The 200th is the bicentennial, the 250th. We're calling it the supercentennial. and we're trying to get President Trump to adopt that term so everybody can get excited and celebrate the Super Centennial. But when you first came up with it, Eric, Chris Seim's here. You had a feverish excitement about it. It's sort of like you had this big idea that came. I like to think it came to you in a dream.

And you kind of looked around both shoulders to make sure no one was listening. You didn't want anyone to steal it. And you said, here we are. Here it is. Super Centennial. Do you like it? What do you think? You think Trump will get behind it?

And I said, I think it sounds great. I think, well, you were there when I pitched it to the two people in the White House that are doing 150th celebration, whatever. They loved it. They did. They said they're going to pitch it to the president. He's been a little busy. So, but. Yeah, what is he been doing?

Every week, I, I basically, yeah, check in on it. Centennial update. And I thought part of these updates can be. be, you know, as I keep saying just about every day, I'm working on a book about the American Revolution. And it is so fascinating for me, the process of writing a book because you learn so much. And what I just did was I just wrote the chapter about the Battle of Brooklyn, also called the Battle of Long Island. It's basically the battle for New York. And so I just want to explain that in the short time we have, you know, in this segment or whatever.

But this is so amazing. It's just to me so amazing. Again, the backstory is in 1775 and 1776. The British are bottled up after Lexington and Concord, after the Battle of Bunker Hill. The British troops, there's like less than 4,000 of them. They're bottled up in Boston. Finally, because of Henry Knox, they get the guns. They put these. huge cannon up in Dorchester Heights, the British realize it's over, and they're allowed to leave. They say, we won't burn the city, we'll just leave, deal, deal, okay, they leave. Washington knows, everybody knows, they're going to now attack New York. So he and everyone else goes from Boston to New York, and there is no way to defend New York.

And this is part of the story, right? they get to New York, and the Congress has told them, John Adams and company have told them, New York is the gate to New England. It is the key to the colonies. We must defend New York at all costs. The problem is George Washington sends General Charles Lee down there to build fortifications and to create a plan on how to defend New York. And Charles Lee kind of rings his hands and freaks out, there's no way to defend New York. Why? It's very simple. New York is, even to say surrounded by water, doesn't do it justice. New York is effectively Staten Island, Long Island, Manhattan Island, three islands, tons of

peninsulas. Everywhere you look is water, water, water, water. If you look on a map, it's just nothing but water. New York City was at the base of Manhattan, what's down by Wall Street now. And any military man would look at it and say, if we had a Navy, we could defend this. The British have the biggest, greatest Navy in the world. Anytime water is involved, we lose, they win. So there's no way to defend New York.

But Washington's given this, you know, mandate, defend New York at all costs. It's the key. So what do they do? They build endless fortification. I don't have time to go into it, but it is insane. They build fortifications everywhere all along Brooklyn Heights in the battery, which is, again, down by Wall Street, but, you know, at the tip of Long Island, they build, they put cannon everywhere.

I mean, they do everything you can do, and it's not going to be sufficient, and they know it. And then the bottom line is that Washington doesn't even know where the British are going to strike. He doesn't really have a spy network yet that's developed. So he doesn't know, are they going to attack in Manhattan? Or are they going to attack the Brooklyn side? They're going to attack the Long Island side. He doesn't know. So he divides his army, which you're supposed to never do.

All this crazy stuff. Cut to the chase. the, well, before I cut to the chase, I just want to say, so the British are now bringing their ships and their troops over the horizon and they are mooring off of Staten Island north of Sandy Hook. And they're coming, the ships are coming every single day. This is through July until there are 400 ships. 400 ships carrying at the end of it all 32,000 troops. It's just utterly overwhelming. I mean, there's so much more to the story.

But anyway, to cut to the chase, at the end of August, they land a bunch of the troops on, well, we say Long Island. It's Brooklyn, right? And they've got their ships and they're pounding the shore with the cannons. And what few Americans are there skiddle pretty quick, they land thousands of troops on the Brooklyn shore. And this is on the southern part of Brooklyn. And the Americans have decided they've kind of decided that they're going to defend what's called the Gwan Heights. There's a ridge line that runs across Brooklyn. It's, I don't know, six miles long.

And there are four passes that go through the Gwan Heights. They have troops defending basically three of them. The fourth one, Jamaica Pass, is so far away. They're not really worried about that. I think they have five militiamen on horses patrolling that theoretically. So the British start attacking, but what they've decided to do brilliantly under General Howe, I guess this was suggested by General Clinton to General Howe, that we're going to do, we're going to take 5,000 troops and we're going to attack on the left side.

We're going to take another thousand, how many, however thousand an attack in the center. But that's just a faint. That is just to distract, to suck Washington. Washington's troops to fight us there. While that's going on, we're going to march 9,000 troops all the way out east to the Jamaica Pass, to the fourth pass that is not defended. We're going to sneak in there. We're going to sneak over there and then come behind the Americans. We're going to outflank the Americans. We're going to give them a heart attack. That's exactly what happened. So the Americans are fighting. They're coming up from Brooklyn Heights. Again, if you're looking on a map, it's all clear.

But at some point, at about 9 a.m., these cannons go off. They turn around. They're like, uh-oh, we're surrounded. So the Americans are routed. They're routed. They eventually retreat to to Brooklyn Heights, to all these fortifications. And what happens then, we don't have time. But it is the miracle of the war. Somehow against every odd, the details are fascinating. I'll maybe share them next week. The details are unbelievable. They are able insanely to retreat with 9,000 troops across the East River.

It just makes no sense. It is an insane miracle, which allows them to fight another day. The British are stunned. And anyway, that's the super centennial segment for the week. It'll all be in the book whenever that comes out. Thanks for listening. A major retail chain just canceled a massive order, leaving My Pillo with an overstock of the classic My Pills, and this is your gain.

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my pillow for only 1798 only while supplies last. Hey, the folks, welcome back. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Right now I get to talk to Roger Kimball. Roger, welcome back. Thank you, Eric. It's great to be back. I feel like I'm at the end of the novel Ulysses there for a moment.

Yes, yes, yes. I don't read modernist trash. But I know what you mean. Yeah. River run past even Adams. I was just going to say that. I was just going to quote Finnegan's wake and you're quoting Ulysses. How crazy.

Yes. There you are. Plump. Stately plump, Buck Mulligan. That's how it begins. Buck Mulligan. Mulligan.

It's a big guess. And ladies and gentlemen, if you're tempted to read Ulysses, just, skip it. Skip it. Now, you're, Roger, you're one of those people who probably could convince me Ulysses is worth reading because you're, but I need, and I need folks like you in my life, because I am right as near at all, you know, anything minus, especially Joyce. I mean, Finnegan's Wake, what do we? Yeah, but no, Finnegan's Wake really is a, a perverse literary experiment that has an audience of one, James Joyce.

Well, I mean, it's a little bit like John Cage's music. It's not music. Yes. Well, it's self-indulgent. But now you make me think more highly of John Cage, because at least his four minutes and 33 seconds was four minutes and 33 seconds of silence. Yeah. Whereas Fingens Wake is very long. Yes.

But the thing is you can just not read Finnegan's Wake, whereas you might find yourself stuck having to listen to four and a half minutes of silence. Yes. I once made the mistake of going to a John Cage concert at Wesleyan University. Oh, well, I could have told you, but. Yeah, well, no, I was very young and stupid, and, you know, it's Wesleyan. So, but we've, we've gotten far afield from the news, Roger. Yes, we have. We have.

I love talking to you. Okay, so let's, I mean, in some ways, it's more fun to talk about the horrors of modernism. Actually, listen, we can. I do want to talk to you about Obama's library. Okay. Speaking of architectural excretions, you know, the thing of who was, I think it was Churchill, what Senator who says that we shape our buildings and then they shape us. I mean, this, this monstrosity is, it's an insult to the American people almost on the level

with the Obama presidency, which was also an insult to the American people. But this will have with us for many years, presumably. Well, we have to, well, we should explain that, you know, modern architecture, architecture has fallen on hard times. And I think that who was it who said, maybe you'll remember, but somebody was talking about all of these modernists skyscrapers or buildings that they all had some kind of sculpture. They said like a, like a turt, leaving a turd.

I don't know if you, are you familiar with this quote? No, it sounds like it could have been Prince Charles or one of his speechwriters like Colin Aaron Amory or something. But yeah, the thing about architecture is this is something that Emmanuel Kant, the German philosopher, not a philosopher. I'm a particular fan of, but he was right about this. this particular thing, that architecture, it is an art, but it's peculiar because it has a foot both in the aesthetic realm and in the civic realm, which most art does not, really.

And a painting is as a painting. You know, it doesn't affect the larger civic realm. But architecture does, and therefore it needs to be judged partly by aesthetic standards, which, for example, Obama's library fails ostentatiously. But it also has to be judged by its effect on its community, according to which Obama's library fails miserably as well. But you're quite right. 20th century modernist architecture has,

it's a tiny little tributary off the main current of architecture that has turned out to go pretty much nowhere. And the big mistake was abandoning the traditional measure for architecture, which was the human body. So it's no accident, as our Marxist friends like to say, that someone like Albert Speer, Hitler's favorite architect, he would build these grandiose pseudo-neo-classical structures. which would dwarf the individual rather than they didn't seem grand or stately.

They seemed intimidating to put the individual in his tiny little place. That is the opposite, for example, of what, say, Greek architecture or Roman architecture at its best did, which didn't flatter people, but it was able to articulate a sense of stateliness. and somehow articulate and embody the aspirations of the culture, which very little modernist architecture, I think, manages to do. Beautiful architecture ennobles us. Yes. And ugly architecture somehow diminishes us.

That's right. And, of course, the worst example is brutalist architecture. I think of the city hall. of Boston. I remember in the 80s when I lived in Boston. And whenever I would walk it, walk near it, I felt like a character in a Copka novel. Exactly right. In a Kafka novel. Yeah, well, the same thing, for example, in New Haven, Nepal Rudolph's School of Art and Architecture at Yale is a brutalist building. It's just sort of corrugated, concrete, uh,

sided monstrosity. And Rudolph was, they tried to blow it up in the, the student activists in the, in the 70s. And, you know, they set of fires there and so on and it survived. He was very happy about that. He thought, you know, this will even survive a nuclear bomb, he said, but probably wouldn't survive that. But, but it's, it's, he just like the cockroaches, Roger. Just like the cockroaches. Yeah.

But, you know, it's interesting. You say beautiful. It is interesting, isn't it? That the beautiful is no longer the term, the favored term, by which we judge art, including architecture. And this is something that happened really quite a long time ago. But first of all, it was the interesting. We wanted art to be interesting. We thought that to ask it, to demand it of it, that it be beautiful would be somehow old-fashioned and insufficiently enlightened and so on.

And that gradually mutated into terms like transgressive. We wanted art to be transgressive and challenging and so on. And it is a long essay could be written about tracing that itinerary. that sort of that downward path from the beautiful through the interesting to the transgressive. It is a trip both aesthetic depravity and moral obtuseness, I think. Well, it's interesting that the idea, I mean, look, I'm sure many essays have been written on this. I think many of them probably have been published in your magazine, The New Criterion. I mean, this is, it's the story of the last century or so.

And I think that the idea was ultimately, you know, when you talk about how brutalist architecture or even Albert Spears architecture to a lesser degree, but how it diminishes a person and how other architecture ennobles a person, something happened, as we know, where artists began to buy into what we now can't help but think of as a culturally Marxist worldview that has to wag its finger at the bourgeois. That's basically, you know, it's kind of like a struggle session. And it has to tell you, you know, bourgeois, housewife. you know, something, you know, about your comfortable life and how you can't possibly be. And I mean, look, you could look at the short stories of the New Yorker. You know, short stories used to be entertainment.

And then at some point, they began to sneer at the people who were reading them. And that's really the modern art, that it sneers at the people. Somehow it's supposed to make you feel bad about yourself or it's supposed to point out some uncomfortable truth or something like that. Right. If you think about it, it's kind of funny. We're going to go to a break here, folks. But I'm talking to Roger Kimball.

You should read the new criterion. Roger, the new criterion is a magnificent publication. I really and truly think it's the only thing that I receive in print in the mail that I really want to receive and read. There's so much good stuff in there. When we come back, folks talking to Roger, Kimball. Right. Overnight. We were headline news.

Crazy days and reckless nights. Limousine. Folks, welcome back talking to Roger Kimball. Okay, Roger. We're talking about a lot of stuff here. What else? Right. Well, just before the break, you mentioned the new criterion and very flattering terms.

And I just want to signal my feeling of admiration. for your perspicacity and your good judgment about the new criteria. But, you know, you were talking about how what has happened to art, to culture, how, you know, stories and, you know, a bourgeois publication like the New Yorker have over a course of many years have become just part of the factory of disillusionment, part of the factory of, you know, making people, feel badly about themselves and about their culture. And one irony in all this, of course, is that the posture of being transgressive and

challenging and super avant-garde has itself become a kind of rote exercise. So people who indulge in this, they have constructed our new salon, just like the salon taste that the early modernists were reacting against. So this post-avant-garde culture has itself become stale and repetitive and boring. And it's still repellent, but it's no longer new. And it reminds me of what Donald Trump is just beginning to do now to a major node of cultural aspiration and cultural, what would you call it, transmission, namely the Smithsonian Institution, all the beautiful people that inhabit the academy and the precincts of so-called

elite culture in our museums and so on are up in arms, because Donald Trump has had the temerity to say, you know what, I think we ought to take a look at what. this Smithsonian, which gets two-thirds of its budget from the taxpayers, they are charged with preserving and transmitting the historical sediment of our culture. What are they doing? Well, gradually over the course of the last few decades, informed by the radicalism of the 60s, they have become an anti-American and anti-traditional value.

enterprise. And this is a huge thing. They have many museums. They have their tentacles out in 37, I think, states, research institutions, and so on. Much of the, of what many American people think about this country is informed by the Smithsonian. And what do they teach us? They teach us, for example, that Benjamin Franklin, the thing you've got to remember about Benjamin Franklin is that he had slaves. Well, that's in one. an exhibition that's on right now. They, they, they, the dismiss, and then it just goes, the whole, there's a whole menu of things that they're, they're teaching. The basic idea is that the history of the United States is basically tantamount to a history of oppression. So, for example, Maureen Dowd, an editorial writer for the New York Times for a long time now, published an essay yesterday called something like,

Trump's slavish stupidity. And her point was that she likes the Smithsonian. She remembers going to the Smithsonian when she was a girl and she saw Dorothy's little red slippers from the Wizard of Oz. And she saw all kinds of neat things. And how could Donald Trump be attacking the Smithsonian? Well, that's very, that's a, a mechon attitude toward what you. Trump is trying to do. He's not against the Smithsonian as the nation's attic, as she put it. And she says, well, Trump is trying to get rid of the whole history of slavery and so on.

That's not true either. What he wants to do is he says, the history of the United States does not equal the history of slavery. Actually, before you go on, I have to say, and it's only because I'm writing a book on on the American Revolution that I would know this, Benjamin Franklin ended up becoming one of the earliest advocates for the abolition of slavery, ladies and gentlemen. Because I wrote a book on William Wilberforce called Amazing Grace, I know that Wilberforce in Paris in 1785, I think, or 1785, or 17. 1784, Wilberforce met with Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin, this is before Wilberforce himself took on the abolition of the slave trade. But that's what's so interesting here is that the left, and it is demonic. It's Satan, the accuser. They always bring up the negative thing, a thing to make you feel bad. They never tell you the rest of the story that this man changed his views and became one of the greatest advocates for the abolition of the slave trade. And frankly, I am learning, as I do my research for the book, how dramatically George Washington's views changed about black people.

Incredible transformation over time. I mean, he was patently racist in 1775 when he goes up to Boston and sees all these black troops among the continental army that he's been bequeathed. And by the end of the war and by the end of his life, he has a dramatically different view inviting the black poet Phyllis Wheatley to meet with him. Astonishing transformation. But the Smithsonian doesn't want you to hear that part of the story because it's too positive. We'll be right back talking to Roger Kimball. Welcome about talking to Roger Kimball of the new criteria on Roger, before we continue on Trump. and the

solution. In the latest issue of the new Criterion, there is an article. I forget the author, but it is about the New Yorker magazine, which a long time ago was worth reading. But the New Yorker magazine has come out with, you know,

like a hundred years of New Yorker fiction. Right. And I thought to myself, this is something with which I'm reasonably familiar this subject because I used to aspire to be a fiction writer and I used to aspire to be a fiction writer for the New Yorker. And the article in the new criterion, I just thought, there is not a magazine in America,

apart from the new criterion, that could find someone to write an article like this. It was such an amazing thing for me to read that article. I believe that was by Bruce Bauer, who is an extraordinary writer, very, very talented guys written for the new criterion for, actually from almost the beginning. But he lives in like Norville,

or someplace like that now. But he's a very talented guy, and that was a great article. Yeah. Yeah. That's from our June issue. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing article.

Yeah. Just amazing. Anyway, so we're talking about Donald Trump. Let me just ask you, because this is for people, myself included, who aren't really clear how these things work. How is it that a president can, you know, by Dick Tot, say to the Smithsonian, hey, we want you to do X? How does that work?

And why do they have to do it? I'm thrilled, by the way, that he's doing it. Thrilled. But how is it that that works? Well, of course, he's not really doing that. Last March, he had an executive order that said, it's time to return, I believe the phrase was, truth and sanity to certain major American cultural institutions,

including the Smithsonian. And he mentioned some stupid exhibition they had that was trashing American history. Then what happened just a week or two ago was that there was a letter signed by Trump's head of domestic policy, Russell Voight and one other person, writing to the director of the Smithsonian Institute saying, we would like to conduct an internal review of your exhibitions, your curatorial policies, and every public-facing aspect of this vast empire that is the Smithsonian Institution, all the museums, all the historical repositories, and so on.

And then they had a long list of things that they were concerned about. The idea was to bring the Smithsonian in the... sync with the positive vision that Donald Trump has articulated in the authority that he wields as President of the United States. And so it's not a Dictod. And this is a review, a kind of audit, if you will, of the, of the Smithsonian. And I think it's going to have an incredible effect, because he's sending a message not only to the Smithsonian, but to other institutions, just as he's sending a message to the Ivy League, to the Harvards and Columbias and Princeton's and so on of our educational establishment, listen, if you don't follow the law and get rid of the

racist practice of diversity, equity, and inclusion, if you don't do that, we're going to cut your federal funds, and we're going to find you. And Harvard's case is going to be half a billion dollars, even for so rich an institution, that's a fairly large sum of money. But you know, Eric, what does impress me about Trump over the last, well, from January 20th on, really, but just taking last week as an example, he never stops. He's like the energizer bunny. It's, you know, one moment he's in Alaska talking of Vladimir Putin, trying to get him to help. and the war in Ukraine, you know, where there's a million casualties, a million people have been killed or wounded in that conflict. Now, Putin was the one who invaded, so, you know, he's got to do

something. But the other side's got to do something, too. On Monday, that was on a Friday, and on Monday, he assembled the leaders of, you know, various Western European countries and the head of NATO and the head of the European Union. They all lined up outside his office. They sort of looked like school children outside the principal's office awaiting detention in a picture that I saw. And, you know, now nothing came out of that particular meeting, but the point is he is trying as hard as he can every day to bring peace to the world.

Then, you know, a day or two later it was the Smithsonian. Then, you know, it's every day it's something else. Last week, the CBO told us that his tariffs are projected to cut the deficit by $4 trillion over the course of the next several years. That's amazing. We were told that tariffs would tank the economy and so on. Well, the stock market ended up 840 points or something higher on Friday. It's just one thing after the next. Today, he suggested that ABC and CBS,

a couple days ago that ABC and CBS maybe should have their licenses revoked because they're partisan, they're biased. 97% of what they say about him, he says, is negative. Well, that doesn't sound accurate, does it? So, you know, could he do it?

I don't know. But if I were running ABC or CBS, I might take that seriously because we have seen that Trump is a man of action, not just a man of work. That's what's so delightful is that he's throwing his weight around. People are freaking out. And it's entertaining because it really is like you've had criminals terrorizing your neighborhood.

And somebody moves in next door who's like a former, you know, Navy seal and he's got guns. Right. And they're scared. Right. And you think, well, I'm really, really. really, really glad that they're scared. They should be scared. They have been doing wicked things, and they better think twice because they don't know. He's crazy enough. He might come after them. And so I have to say that that's what's so delightful about, and other presidents have done this.

I mean, to some extent, you know, Reagan was like that. The other side didn't know what he was going to do. He's crazy. He's a cowboy. That's good to keep them on their toes. And so to have the Ivy League, to have these media institutions a little frightened, a little knocked sideways, that's fantastic. I mean, I think it's, and I just love the fact that he plays with that, that he says, yeah, I might be coming into Chicago next week. He's the best, world's best troller. When we come back, we will explore this and other things with Roger Kimball. Don't go away. Welcome back talking to Roger Kimball.

Well, Roger, okay, Trump, what did Trump do in D.C.? In other words, he was perfectly within his rights to revoke this home rule thing, right? So he just made a decision and did it, correct? Well, yeah. So somebody who worked for Doge was viciously attacked, you know, got a concussion. He said, okay, that's it. We're going to federalize Washington, D.C. I hope this leads to the revocation of the home rule that Washington has been

suffering under since 1973. So, I mean, the reason they call Washington a swamp is it's not just because it's physically built on a swamp. It's because it is a 98% Democratic redoubt. And that has to change. It's supposed to be neutral territory. No, the reason that Thomas Jefferson wanted Washington to be where it was is that it's close, it was close to Virginia.

But also he said, well, this is not. not southern, it's not northern, it'll be in between, and it won't be, it won't be one side or the other, and that's the way it should be, but the home rule has exacerbated this, this one-party rule in Washington. So it's extraordinary. I've talked to several of my friends in Washington who said that the change was like overnight, all of a sudden, this young woman I know, she feels comfortable walking, walking from her apartment to her office now. She didn't used to, and she used to always take an Uber. Now she feels like she can do that.

It's again, this is one, what he's doing in Washington, what he's claiming he's going to do in Chicago and other cities is amazing. And it's part and parcel of his cultural ambitions writ large. And this distinguishes Donald Trump from other great presidents like Ronald Reagan. Reagan was great. He ended the Cold War without firing a shot. He jumped started this incredible accumulation of wealth that we are still benefiting from today. But he never really took on the cultural establishment.

Trump has. It's not just the Smithsonian. It's everything. It's the Department of Education. I happen to see Linda McMahon this weekend at a party. And she said, you know, my goal is to fire myself. We're going to dismantle the Department of Education, but on the way, we're going to return education to the states who will be in a better position to do it. It's not because Trump is anti-education.

It's because he's pro-education. He's anti-teachers union, which is itself anti-education. And he's been able to do all this. It's just a remarkable what he's done. He's the peace president. He's the education president. He's the prosperity president. all rolled into one. And it's just to watch him operate, the man's energy is extraordinary. I think he's

79. And he's he acts like he's a, he's a, he's a 25-year-old athlete. It's quite extraordinary. Well, he is, he's a gift to this country, because I think to myself, what he is, you know, and this is what our elected representatives are supposed to do. They're supposed to work hard for us. And he is. He's working hard for us. And he's using his genius. and his energy and his experience for us. We benefit. It's not Trump Inc. benefits. We benefit.

It's an amazing thing. It's an amazing thing. You're right. You're right. We're very lucky. Yeah. Oh, no. Listen, and we know it ain't luck.

It's God's blessing. We don't deserve it. It is we're living through something miraculous. It is, of course, we're in a war. And so we have to keep fighting. We have to keep praying for the country and the president because it is a war. And there are people every single day doing anything they can to stop Trump from doing the wonderful things he is. But I think the enemy's on the run.

Roger, it's just a delight to speak with you. Got to have you back again soon, as I say it every time, because you're just fun to talk to. Thanks for coming on. Yes, I really enjoy it. Have a great day.