Thread by @AndrewLSeidel

I am listening to the White House Conference on American History and it is batshit crazy. This is absolutely nuts.

A taste from Peter Wood on the protests: “Riots appear to be planned, staffed, scheduled for nights on end. These are not spontaneous, … but well staged … they run according to a well-rehearsed script. Who rights that script? The answer is obvious.” Then he blamed professors.

Quotes are not exact, sorry. Double check them all.

The moderator is Larry Arn, who runs Hillsdale College.
Read about it here: rightwingwatch.org/post/hillsdale…
(by @petemont)

HC gave Pence an honorary degree, and his speech was . . . inaccurate.
patheos.com/blogs/freethou…

I thought this was going to be about statues or promoting the revisionist, Christian nationalist version of America. But I think this is really just a swipe at the #1619Project.
It's an entirely white panel. Plus Ben Carson, a medical dr., to intro.

Authoritarianism kills irony.

Carson, referring to the Constitution, just said, “I believe that’s a divinely inspired document." It wasn't.

And now he's attacking the media and essentially threatening to remove the First Amendment protections from the press. On #ConstitutionDay2020

I'm very curious about why a few of the people on this panel, especially after looking up their co-panelists but more especially knowing they're getting in to bed with Trump, signed on to this.

A big focus has been Bill McClay's textbook which he
now admits didn’t go through any normal textbook editing. Didn’t run it through "any committees, ... stakeholders" “it was just me up in my attic...I didn’t have research assistants….I just felt passionately about it….”

That's totally cool with me for a book. Many books are like that. But one has to wonder if textbooks are different for a reason.....

Here was the panel. Woman on left was a student, neither woman asked a question during the discussion. Carson was just there to introduce event. It's in the National Archives Rotunda. In front of the Declaration and Constitution.

Trump is now picking up on the theme of this panel in one of the worst, most soporific history lectures of all time.

@ddale8 is on it:

https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1306669846973865985

Trump ends this address with "God bless America."

Fun historical fact. The presidential tradition of ending speeches with that phrase dates to Nixon's first address about Watergate, one of the worst pre-Trump scandals. I detail this in The Founding Myth:
a.co/d/a59fCqy