Trump says he's fired [Woke...] National Portrait Gallery director amid Washington arts scene takeover

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/30/trump-portrait-gallery-
smithsonian-00377156

President Donald Trump said he was sacking the longtime director of the 
Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, Kim Sajet, on Friday, ending the 
12-year tenure of the first woman to serve as the gallery’s director.

“Upon the request and recommendation of many people, I am herby (sic) 
terminating the employment of Kim Sajet as Director of the National 
Portrait Gallery. She is a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter 
of DEI, which is totally inappropriate for her position. Her replacement 
will be named shortly. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump 
wrote in a Truth Social post Friday afternoon.

It is not immediately clear if the president can dismiss the gallery’s 
director. The National Portrait Gallery, which was founded by Congress in 
1962, operates under the purview of the Smithsonian Institution. According 
to its website, the Smithsonian is funded through a mix of public and 
private money, with federal funding making up 62 percent of its backing.

The museum houses over 23,000 works of art, most famously a collection of 
presidential portraits, called “America’s Presidents,” displayed in an 
exhibit that is a tourist magnet in downtown Washington.

A White House spokesperson responded to a request for comment with a list 
of articles purporting to show Sajet’s connection to Democrats and 
progressivism, and did not immediately respond to a follow-up question on 
the president’s authority to fire her. The gallery did not immediately 
respond to a request for comment.

The move comes after the president dispatched Vice President JD Vance to 
“remove improper ideology” from Smithsonian museums, education centers and 
other entities, tasking his second-in-command with erasing all “divisive 
narratives,” including about the history of systemic racism in America, in 
a March 27 executive order.

Central to Trump’s directive was the instruction to remove all “race-
centered ideologies” — which the administration has slammed as an effort 
to “rewrite history” and marginalize white people — and anything 
recognizing the achievements of trans people as part of the yet-to-be-
built American Women’s History Museum, which is all part of the 
president’s push to eradicate evidence of progressive ideas from 
Washington.

Prior to her appointment as the gallery’s director, Sajet served as 
president and CEO of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, vice 
president and deputy director of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and 
director of corporate relations at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Sajet, who was first tapped to lead the gallery in 2013, is just the 
latest casualty of Trump’s effort to reshape the arts in Washington.

The president in February purged the board of trustees at the Kennedy 
Center — the city’s premier theater and cultural center — and proclaimed 
himself the organization’s new chair, while denouncing it for having 
“become too woke.”

Shortly thereafter, Trump tapped longtime loyalist Richard Grenell as 
interim executive director of the institution and added a slate of 
conservative allies to its board — including multiple Fox News 
personalities — ushering in a new era of sweeping change for the city’s 
iconic cultural center.


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November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump.  We look 
forward to America being great again.

We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that 
stupid people won't be offended.

Every day is an IQ test. Some pass, some, not so much.

Thank you for cleaning up the disasters of the 2008-2017, 2020-2024 Obama 
/ Biden / Harris fiascos, President Trump.

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the 
The World According To Garp.  Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood 
queer liberal democrat donors.