A new Associated Press analysis of President Donald Trump’s many methods for destroying records raises the remarkable possibility that the Trump administration could “leave less for the nation’s historical record than nearly any before it.” It’s a useful lens for understanding how Trump conceals information to evade accountability and undermine democracy.
As the AP notes, there are many different ways that Trump is making it impossible to track what his administration is doing:
The Trump administration is scrubbing thousands of government websites of history, legal records and data it finds disagreeable. It has sought to expand the executive branch’s power to shield from public view the government-slashing efforts of Elon Musk’s team and other key administration initiatives. Officials have used apps such as Signal that can auto-delete messages containing sensitive information rather than retaining them for recordkeeping. And they have shaken up the National Archives leadership and even ordered the rewriting of history on display at the Smithsonian Institution.
This all comes as HuffPost recently estimated that the White House has declined to release transcripts for about 80% of the president’s speeches and interactions with the press so far.
And Trump’s first term involved many extraordinary attacks on recordkeeping, including reportedly routinely discarding papers in the White House fireplace, deriding his staff for taking notes and tearing up documents into tiny pieces. Trump also improperly stored classified material at Mar-a-Lago after he left office.
As The Associated Press observes, the president is legally required to “keep up the historical record.” But retention laws are difficult to enforce, which means that a lot of compliance with them effectively relies on the honor system.
Trump’s view of honor systems, of course, is that they are for suckers. And he knows that he stands to benefit from keeping the public in the dark and avoiding mechanisms for accountability.
MSNBC: Trump is making an unprecedented effort to scrub the historical record
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