STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The government has begun celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States. For several nights over the New Year holiday, a very tall, very thin video played on the sides of the Washington Monument...
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR #1: America.
INSKEEP: ...Giving a version of American history.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR #1: Our nation began not as an idea invented in the minds of men, but as a land discovered.
INSKEEP: The video began with Columbus' three ships sailing in 1492 across the ocean blue.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR #1: He sailed for glory, for gain and for God.
INSKEEP: The images lit up all four sides of the monument. A swift walk through American history, concluding with a look towards space.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR #1: And imagine the wonders waiting among the stars. And perhaps someday, our descendants will plant the American flag on distant worlds.
INSKEEP: This showing caught the attention of people on social media, some of whom loved it, and also a historian who asked, what's missing? Jill Lepore is author of an acclaimed history of the United States. She had heard about this video before we called, and we asked her to review it.
JILL LEPORE: You can maybe summarize it thusly. Columbus navigates by the stars. His light turns into Paul Revere's spark that sets off the American Revolution. That spark endures. A new flame becomes Edison's light bulb. And then very quickly, we're off to Mars, powered by the brilliant, shimmering illumination of artificial intelligence.
INSKEEP: What's left out?
LEPORE: Well, everything is left out in the sense that it's really a bunch of inventions that are about American power and America's destiny. There's no Civil War. There's no slavery. There's no Civil Rights Movement. There's no Martin Luther King.
INSKEEP: The text mentions the Declaration of Independence. It name-checks the likes of Ben Franklin and other inventors, but there's scant talk of immigration or immigrants. Native Americans are not mentioned, although one image appears to show Sacagawea, who guided Lewis and Clark on their explorations. There's a whole section on westward expansion.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR #1: Families and adventurers...
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR #1: ...Farmers...
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR #1: ...Cowboys, miners...
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR #1: ...Missionaries, each one driven by the timeless yearning to build a future by the grace of God and with their own two hands.
INSKEEP: This video is a product of Freedom 250, an organization guided by the Trump administration. We asked the White House for more information, and they referred us to Kyle Barrett, a contractor on the project.
KYLE BARRETT: The big idea was, let's celebrate. Let's make sure that this is nonpartisan. And let's give Americans something to be, you know, cheerful and joyful about and ultimately something to have us, you know, thinking in a more positive light going into this next year.
INSKEEP: Barrett said his company was first contacted in December. In just 2 1/2 weeks, they managed an extraordinary technical feat, using 40 different projectors to cast images on all four sides of the monument.
BARRETT: They're very unique projectors. They only had, I think, 37 in the United States. So we had every single version of this particular projector in the country and had to fly in three from Belgium just to make sure everything matched.
INSKEEP: As for the text, Barrett says he was not the primary author.
I've also talked with historians who had questions, who were like, why no Civil War?
BARRETT: Exactly. I mean, even from my perspective, you know, I - as an outside vendor, I was kind of internally wondering about some moments. But they weren't really open with why we weren't showing, for example, MLK and/or, you know, the Gettysburg Address. I'm sure they had their reasons. But what I was appreciative of the fact is that they never once - you know, we never even heard the name Trump throughout this whole process.
INSKEEP: We reached the person Barrett identified as the creative director, who ultimately wasn't available to talk on the record. Obviously, an 18-minute video could not include everything. Still, historian Jill Lepore takes note of the assertion that the nation began not as an idea.
LEPORE: Because, of course, the country was founded on an idea, right? So first of all, you have to ask yourself, like, what is being disavowed? And I was struggling with that a little bit because it's a wonderful thing that is a source of great pride to Americans that the country is founded on the idea - on these principles that we have a right to govern ourselves.
INSKEEP: In a speech last year, Vice President Vance argued that America was, quote, "not just an idea" but, quote, "a particular place with a particular people and a particular set of beliefs." Other administration figures have been pressing the Smithsonian Institution to present what they view as a more positive story of American history. Jill Lepore is asking what this Washington Monument project suggests about government plans for the rest of the year.
LEPORE: It doesn't augur well for the capacity of this commission around the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding to bring Americans together around examining the story of the American past.
INSKEEP: This video makes me think of a video that used to play in the Disney Hall of Presidents in Florida, which is of a similar length and has some of the same elements in it. Ben Franklin appears. The moon shot appears. And it's old-fashioned and patriotic and chokes me up and everything else.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR #2: April 12, 1861, Fort Sumter.
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INSKEEP: But it also includes debate and conflict and Andrew Jackson, Trump's favorite president, and Abraham Lincoln and slavery and a civil war and disagreement and debate. That's all in there in a similar length of time in a patriotic video.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR #2: But the fundamental philosophy of freedom, the belief in the rights of the individual and the dignity of man, remained unaltered.
LEPORE: Stripping that out does not make the story better. It makes the story wrong, but it also makes the story worse. I mean, I would - I am such a sucker for this stuff. You know, I wouldn't say that's true of every American historian. But, like, I love this country, and I find its nation's past achingly, hauntingly beautiful, terrifying, exasperating, heartbreaking, tragic, inspiring. But it kind of has to be all those things to have any shot at being real.
INSKEEP: Jill Lepore is an author of a history of the United States. She had a look at the patriotic video that played on the Washington Monument as the United States begins its 250th year.
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