Trump’s Gremlins Snuck into George Washington’s House at 2am & Whitewashed Slavery

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, a crew of Trump’s elves crept into George Washington’s house, tore a slavery memorial off the wall, and left a whiter, “friendlier” version of history in its place. Like racist shoemaker elves, cobbling together lies instead of loafers.The site is the President’s House in Philadelphia, where Washington ran the country in the 1790s. The city built the memorial to honor nine enslaved people, Washington kept inside the house itself, cooking and serving for him while he ran a nation built on liberty. Philly handed the memorial over to the Park Service in 2010 and they decided it now had to go because Trump signed an order telling federal sites to quit “disparaging Americans” and start celebrating the country’s greatness.They swapped the panels in the dark while the whole city was packed for an All-Star Game thrown for America’s 250th birthday, the big tough America First government skulking around a slavery memorial like a raccoon in your trash. If you’re proud of your work, you do it in broad daylight. You only do it at 2 a.m. because some part of you already knows it’s a lie.Down came the panel titled “The Dirty Business of Slavery.” Up went one called “Celebrating Independence Throughout the Years.” They walked into a slavery memorial and hung a cruise brochure. They also hauled off the map of the slave trade routes and the timeline of slavery, because you can’t throw an independence party with the receipts on the wall.Then they rewrote Washington himself. The new panel says he “navigated a nation deeply divided over slavery.” He didn’t navigate it, he profited from it. In 1786 he wrote, “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition” of slavery. Bold words from a man who cycled his nine household slaves down to Virginia every few months so they’d never hit the six month mark Pennsylvania established that would have required them to be set free. He put it in writing that slavery should end, but personally made sure his enslaved remained chained.And it wasn’t only the people he owned. He signed the Fugitive Slave Act, the 1793 law that let slaveholders hunt down people who escaped and punished anyone who helped them. The panel notes it passed by a veto-proof majority, like that’s a defense. He was the president. He could have refused. He could have made a statement. He signed.Erasing nine enslaved people to flatter the man who owned them is the real disparagement. It tells you exactly who Trump counts as an American, and who he doesn’t. The nine didn’t make his list. Neither does anyone descended from them.Michael Coard, the Philadelphia attorney who spent years getting this memorial built, calls it the Ministry of Truth, the office in Orwell’s 1984 that deleted facts and printed prettier ones.They tried this once already. Ripped the panels out this winter, a judge ordered them restored, and an appeals court ruled the city lost its say when it handed the site over to the park service. Not that erasing history is legal. Just that the city can’t stop it.Philadelphia’s asking for another hearing, so this isn’t over. But while the lawyers argue, let me read the nine they keep trying to delete. Oney Judge. Hercules. Austin. Christopher Sheels. Giles. Paris. Moll. Joe. Richmond. Say them in daylight, loud, because Donald Trump is a scared little man who does his bravest work at 2 a.m. with the lights off.Sources:https://whyy.org/articles/presidents-house-slavery-trump-exhibit-philadelphia-replaced/https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/presidents-house-slavery-exhibits-changed-20260715.htmlhttps://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/george-washington-and-slavery Get full access to The Rogue Voice aka Linsay Rousseau at linsayrousseau.substack.com/subscribe