On Wednesday, the media’s favorite presidential historian, Jon Meacham, joined Walter Isaacson on PBS’s Amanpour and Company to resurrect his allegation that the Trump administration is “failing” the soldiers who served at places like Omaha Beach and Gettysburg as well as the men and women of the nation’s various civil rights movements.
Isaacson put the ball on the tee when he declared, “And in both those books, you talk about history now in a polarized era being a battlefield itself, a source of contention. We even see it with the administration taking some of the plaques down on the old Philadelphia house where General Washington lived that talk about slavery. Tell us about history as a matter of contention now.”
Jon Meacham went on PBS on Wednesday to resurrect his Trump vs. spirit of Omaha Beach antics, "by attempting to control historical narratives by pushing aside the uncomfortable elements of our history to make it more heroic, you're failing, it seems to me, to keep faith with the… pic.twitter.com/zhBemisqbY
— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) February 21, 2026
It should be noted that the plaques are back after a federal judge issued a bizarre ruling ordering the Interior Department to return them. The Interior Department, for its part, lamented that “updated interpretive materials providing a fuller account of the history of slavery at Independence Hall would have been installed in the coming days” if the judge hadn’t gotten in the way.
As it was, Meacham began, “Well, the mechanics of memory matter. I'm sitting here arguing that an understanding of the story of liberal democracy from the late 18th century through the freedom movements of the 20th century is an empowering, elevating narrative. There are those who would like to argue that that history is different, that there were—that are alternative narratives like alternative facts—a term from the first term—that is more valuable.”
After denouncing the White House’s Presidential Walk of Fame, Meacham continued, “So, it's not about us, it's not about we the people, it's about him. And by controlling, by attempting to control historical narratives by pushing aside the uncomfortable elements of our history to make it more heroic, you're failing, it seems to me, to keep faith with the people who fought and bled and died for the country.”
Those people include, “The men who hit Omaha Beach, the soldiers at Gettysburg, the folks on the Pettus Bridge, the women at Seneca Falls, the women who were force-fed in the suffrage movement, they were confronting wrong and urging us to make it right. If we remove the wrongs from our narrative, then we are failing to honor the work they did and failing to find inspiration for our own era.”
It’s ironic. Previously when Meacham had invoked this list, including Gettysburg, the number one news story in the country was Minnesota liberals thinking federal law doesn’t apply to them. Meacham can try to wax poetic all he wants, but he does not own the legacy of the men and women he mentioned.
Here is a transcript for the February 18 show:
PBS Amanpour and Company
2/18/2026
WALTER ISAACSON: And in both those books, you talk about history now in a polarized era being a battlefield itself, a source of contention. We even see it with the administration taking some of the plaques down on the old Philadelphia house where General Washington lived that talk about slavery. Tell us about history as a matter of contention now.
JON MEACHAM: Well, the mechanics of memory matter. I'm sitting here arguing that an understanding of the story of liberal democracy from the late 18th century through the freedom movements of the 20th century is an empowering, elevating narrative. There are those who would like to argue that that history is different, that there were—that are alternative narratives like alternative facts—a term from the first term—that is more valuable.
And you're also seeing with the plaques that President Trump put up in the White House, this kind of, again, kingly, kind of autocratic history, a narcissistic history. If you read the plaques that are now up in the colonnade of the West Wing, it's all about every other American president and their relationship to President Trump, right?
So, it's not about us, it's not about we the people, it's about him. And by controlling, by attempting to control historical narratives by pushing aside the uncomfortable elements of our history to make it more heroic, you're failing, it seems to me, to keep faith with the people who fought and bled and died for the country.
The men who hit Omaha Beach, the soldiers at Gettysburg, the folks on the Pettus Bridge, the women at Seneca Falls, the women who were force-fed in the suffrage movement, they were confronting wrong and urging us to make it right. If we remove the wrongs from our narrative, then we are failing to honor the work they did and failing to find inspiration for our own era.
