MSNBC’s freakout over the Trump Administration’s plans for the Smithsonian Institute continued on Wednesday’s All In as Professor Eddie Glaude Jr. asserted that the nation is in the midst of a “Second Lost Cause” movement that seeks to justify “the reassertion of white supremacy.”
Guest host Antonia Hylton began by trying to wax poetic about the Smithsonian, “That description there, in the reporting, of the way this administration seeks to transform the Smithsonian, a place that millions of people visit, students go to, to study, to find themselves in the world, to work on life-changing research projects. They want to bend it to the way Trump views our nation’s history.”
She then opened up the floor to Glaude, “I see something seething in you right now. I’m just going to let you speak.”
Glaude began by proclaiming, “Indeed. I mean, we’re in a Second Lost Cause. And according to Trump’s own rules, to even describe it as such is to disparage Americans past and living.”
Seeking to define his terms, Glaude continued:
Well, what do I mean by we’re in a Second Lost Cause? This is that moment after the collapse of Reconstruction, of the murder of reconstruction, where you have forces literally trying to retell the story of the period, right? Talking about slave– trying to redescribe slavery, redescribe the role of the South. Recharacterize the role of the North in, in other words, to fit a– find a history that could justify, right, the reassertion of white supremacy in the South after the devastation of the Civil War. So, what we have here is a moment, a movement, I would call it an evangelical approach, a MAGA evangelical approach to American civil religion.
One imagines that throughout his career as a professor, Glaude has had to tell his students to cite their sources. He might want to apply the same standard to himself because there’s zero evidence the Smithsonian is about to become a shrine to Confederate dead-enders and white supremacists. The administration’s move is likely just an insurance against the mindset that produced the 2020 “Aspects and Assumptions of Whiteness in the United States” guidelines that came out of the African American History and Culture museum and said that hard work, property rights, and rational thinking, among other things, are part of “white culture.”
Here is a transcript for the August 13 show:
MSNBC All In With Chris Hayes
8/13/2025
8:43 PM ET
ANTONIA HYLTON: That description there, in the reporting, of the way this administration seeks to transform the Smithsonian, a place that millions of people visit, students go to, to study, to find themselves in the world, to work on life-changing research projects. They want to bend it to the way Trump views our nation’s history. I see something seething in you right now. I’m just going to let you speak.
EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Indeed. I mean, we’re in a Second Lost Cause. And according to Trump’s own rules, to even describe it as such is to disparage Americans past and living. Well, what do I mean by we’re in a Second Lost Cause? This is that moment after the collapse of Reconstruction, of the murder of reconstruction, where you have forces literally trying to retell the story of the period, right? Talking about slave– trying to redescribe slavery, redescribe the role of the South. Recharacterize the role of the North in, in other words, to fit a– find a history that could justify, right, the reassertion of white supremacy in the South after the devastation of the Civil War. So, what we have here is a moment, a movement, I would call it an evangelical approach, a MAGA evangelical approach to American civil religion.
