Conservative radio host Clay Travis told Fox News that slavery was like plane crashes and shouldn’t be remembered by museums in the U.S.
During a Sunday panel discussion on Fox News, host Howard Kurtz noted that President Donald Trump had recently complained that the Smithsonian highlighted “how bad slavery was.”
“Clay, Donald Trump is very media savvy, and he had to know that using that phrase about slavery would spark an enormous backlash,” Kurtz explained to Travis.
“I think he’s right,” Travis replied. “Look, the Democrat Party is at historic lows in support because they focus almost exclusively on the things that America has done wrong. They focus on the floor, if you want to use a metaphor of the country as opposed to the ceiling.”
“What are our soaring aspirations and goals?” he continued. “Look, I took my son to the Smithsonian, I think the Air and Space Museum. They do a fabulous job of putting on the history of air and space. I didn’t see a single report inside the air and space museum about plane crashes and the thousands of people who have died in them.”
“That doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t a substantial part of history of space and exploration and plane travel.”
Travis suggested other museums should focus on “an aspirational story” instead of the history of enslaved people in the United States.
“And you leave, as I left with my sons, incredibly excited about the future,” he remarked. “I think that’s what President Trump wants the story of other Smithsonian [museums] to be like.”