Before one of the Trump-backed “Freedom Trucks” rolls into the Ohio State Fair at the end of the month, state leaders should demand that the roving 18-wheeler museum, created by right-wing propagandists, includes a disclaimer about bias.
Ohio Republicans should underscore their affinity with the president’s campaign to call out “improper ideology”— coloring America’s origin story with politically biased interpretations that cannot be trusted.
Trump has repeatedly railed against “overly ideological” presentations at the Smithsonian Institution, especially the National Museum of American History, to federally funded historical sites and national park programs, exhibits, signs, brochures.
The White House insists on “restoring truth and sanity” to the way “American history is presented and taught.”
Trump issued an executive order last year to bring “objective facts” back to that storytelling which he claims have been replaced “with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.”
Ohio’s GOP overlords must show their fealty to the EO that decrees museums “should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination.”
They can start by acknowledging the ideological indoctrination rolling into the state fair on July 26. Transparency is always in the public interest.
Such notice would at least inform thousands of unsuspecting fairgoers that these so-called Freedom Trucks heavily promote a Christian conservative narrative of American history to school visitors with ahistorical Christian Nationalist fiction.
Citizens will learn that America was uniquely founded on biblical principles and divine law. Historians dispute that slant as flat out wrong.
The built-in bias of the gargantuan museum trucks is unsurprising considering who Trump’s Freedom 250 project tapped to create the interactive displays featured in the six mobile exhibitions crisscrossing the country.
PragerU, a far-right media organization that churns out misleading and inaccurate edutainment videos, produced the slick, digital interactives showcased in the tractor-trailers coming to select cities and states all year.
Hillsdale College, a right-wing conservative Christian college in Michigan (that also helped craft Project 2025) wrote the historical narratives that guests will read nationwide.
Many of those people won’t know (without the aforementioned disclaimer) that the traveling “Founders Museum,” pulling up in a semi to an event near you, is distinctly aligned with the political and religious right’s view of American history.
But the focus of the trucked in production is on white men and Christianity.
For the most part, this multimedia expo steers clear of slavery, injustice, and oppression. The marginalized get only a glancing notice.
In this sanitized version of the birth of a nation, pivotal patriotic moments of the American Revolution are highlighted while the roles and historic struggle of enslaved people, Native Americans, and women are downplayed.
This immersive experience, paid for with over $14 million in taxpayer money, avoids any portrayal of America’s past or present in a negative light.
The digital romp through the revolution is largely a one-sided, feel-good, pro-American version of history with a pronounced Christian overlay.
It omits complex historical truths but gives prominence to letters on religious freedom, the faith of the Founders and religious artifacts.
It intentionally presents a skewed tribute to American greatness with passing attention to the few wrinkles in history that were ironed out in time.
The walls of the truck musems overflow with texts, QR codes, AI avatars of founding fathers and other historical figures, that all bang the drum for American exceptionalism.
The spectacle is packaged to attract mass appeal, like propaganda about America’s “golden age” was marketed to put a positive sheen on costly tariffs and a reckless Middle East war.
The roadshow starts with AI-generated videos of George Washington claiming that “our rights are a gift from God” — a statement the first president is not documented as saying — and John Adams mouthing the words of right-wing influencer Ben Shapiro almost verbatim: “Facts do not care about our feelings.”
One section in the PragerU extravaganza, called Voices of Liberty, features triumphal accounts from everyday Americans that appear to be fake.
If those narratives are manufactured, said the head of the American Historical Association, “it tells us that their approach to history is a politicized invention designed to make political arguments.”
The last thing visitors see before exiting the trucks is a video of the twice-impeached, attempted coup plotter himself thanking PragerU (for delivering a partisan vehicle to brainwash the masses) and gushing about America as “the greatest force for freedom, justice, equality and prosperity in the history of the world.”
A nearby board quotes Trump’s State of the Union address last year heralding the dawn of the “golden age” and pumping Americans to “get ready for an incredible future” (of sticker shock price hikes tied to destructive trade wars and a massive military campaign to affect foreign regime change and neutralize a potential nuclear threat — which accomplished neither).
As local communities and states get wise to the AI-generated fiction passing as historic fact — that multiple historians pan as inaccurate — many are cancelling Freedom Truck appearances after blowback from residents who complain the exhibit uses patriotism as a disguise to push white Christian nationalism mixed with Trump self-promotion.
At least 11 states have declined to participate.
Ohio has already hosted one tractor-trailer museum in Chillicothe and will do so again at the state fair in Columbus.
A transparent disclaimer would serve Ohioans. But don’t expect it. Because not all distorted narratives “driven by ideology rather than truth” are improper depictions of history, according to Trump’s EO.
Only those that represent America’s story in full, not the extremely curated right-wing make-believe designed to indoctrinate.
This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.
