Ten years ago this month, videos of well-established and well-respected historians were first posted to a Facebook page titled “Historians on Donald Trump.” As explained in the page description, these videos were by historians who felt compelled to “share their perspectives on why Donald Trump's campaign is so troubling.” The idea was from historian David McCullough, two-time Pulitzer winner for his biographies of President Harry S. Truman and President John Adams, who reached out to documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. Soon, they were asking historians they were acquainted with for a simple favor: “share a short video message or brief written thoughts, from a historical perspective, on what distinguishes Trump’s campaign.”

Making these videos was, for many of these academic historians, an unprecedented decision. Historians often contextualize the present through the lens of the past, sure, but especially at the time, most didn’t make it a habit to weigh in publicly on contemporary politics or presidential elections — or predict what the future might hold. That was more for the Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov types. As McCullough, who died in 2022, told The New York Times in a 2016 interview about the creation of the page, “I’ve always said, ‘My specialty is dead politicians.’ In that way, I could sidestep the question without getting myself involved. But this time around, I don't feel that way anymore." It’s worth noting that, as the Times pointed out, McCullough was raised in a Republican household and, although registered independent, had supported Republican politicians in the past.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve rewatched all of these videos. With ten years of hindsight, they felt different even if the words were the same. There has since been a Trump presidency, a Trump loss and refusal to concede, a Biden presidency, and the beginning of Trump’s very different second term. Then, of course, there is everything has transpired during these years, which most of us needn’t any refresher.

This means I rewatched these during a time when President Trump and his administration have accelerated their attacks on historians and historical organizations — including the Smithsonian. This isn’t new. Such criticism existed during his first term after all. But this recent wave of attacks have increased since the March 2025 executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” and his August 2025 post on TruthSocial where he called the Smithsonian Institute and other museums “WOKE”:

Now, a year after this post, that attacks on the institutions continue. In early July, the White House released a report calling Smithsonian’s historians — such as Lonnie Bunch and Anthea M. Hartig — “radical activists” who “cannot be trusted to tell America’s story honestly.” Here are a few other recent headlines:

And so on. And so on.

Within this context, it makes these 2016 videos even more interesting and historically relevant. These historians words will be important for future historians and scholars, twenty, fifty, or one hundred years down to line to help contextualize the initial election of Donald Trump and the years that followed. My idea to transcribe some of what they said was, to be honest, more for me initially, as I process and retain information better if I read it — but then I considered that the transcribed text may prove valuable for others too.

Most of these videos were filmed in home offices or at dining room tables. There’s no sheen of professional cameras or microphones. The first of these uploaded was a video by Albert Camarillo, Emeritus Professor of History at Stanford University and former President of the Organization of American Historians (OAH), on July 5, 2016. “I can say unequivocally that this man has created a schism in society with his rhetoric and with his campaign,” said Camarillo.

“Donald Trump has taken us back at least two generations by creating discord, by spewing hate speech, and by tapping into pockets of Americans who now feel at liberty to say racist, homophobic, and other kinds of hurtful speech because they hear it from candidate Trump,” he continued. “He is a danger to our civil society. He's a danger, I would argue, to 21st century American democracy and a diverse society. … Is this the kind of man we want as president?”

The next video was posted right after with Evan Thomas III, journalist, historian, professor, and author of the New York Times bestselling “Being Nixon: A Man Divided.” Sometimes, he said, people ask him if Donald Trump is like Richard Nixon.

“Yes, they are alike in some ways,” Thomas said. “Nixon knew how to exploit the hopes and fears of outsiders who felt left behind by the establishment. Trump is very adept at exploiting these same fears.” He noted that Nixon’s term, the Silent Majority, also was aimed at people who felt they didn’t recognize the United States anymore and had become too politically correct.

“[They] are not wrong that people feel these resentments,” Thomas added. “But there are some important differences between Trump and Nixon. Nixon knew a lot. … Trump doesn’t seem to know that much or to care to know that much. Nixon read a lot of history. It's not clear that Trump reads much of anything or cares about much of anything besides the fortunes of Donald Trump.”

(Note: Thomas couldn’t have known that ten years later, Trump’s Vice President JD Vance would say it was “crazy” that the Watergate scandal took down Nixon’s presidency and that “the deep state took down Richard Nixon” in the same way they wanted to take down President Trump in his first term).

Over the following days, many more videos by respected historians continued being uploaded. The most widely shared one though was posted on July 12, 2016 from David McCullough himself. McCullough, the footage somewhat blurry, but his voice immediately familiar to anyone who has listened to his audiobooks or followed his work over the years, began: “Like so many others, I keep asking myself, how in the world can it be that the Republican Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln, is on the verge of nominating the likes of Donald Trump for president of the United States?”

McCullough continued, “What has the Republican Party come to that at such an unsettling time as this with so very much at stake, with so many momentous, complex problems to be addressed ... Why would we ever choose to entrust our highest office and our future to someone so clearly unsuited for the job, someone who's never held public office, never served his country in any fashion?"

McCullough noted President Dwight D. Eisenhower as someone who “so admirably served his country his entire career.” He explained how Eisenhower outlined the four qualities by which we can measure our leaders: character, ability, responsibility, and experience.

“Donald Trump fails to qualify on all four accounts,” said McCullough. "We're, on the whole, let's not forget, a good country and a good people with good intentions. … Inspired by Theodore Roosevelt, we built the Panama Canal. Led by President Harry Truman, we created the Marshall Plan. President John Kennedy called on us to go to the Moon and we went to the Moon. Under the leadership of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, we ended the Cold War.”

A few hours later, the page uploaded a video from historian Ron Chernow, well-known for his biographies on Alexander Hamilton (the inspiration behind the blockbuster Broadway musical), George Washington (which earned him a Pulitzer), and Ulysses S. Grant.

"We've all been horrified by the many shocking statements this man has made," began Chernow. "But no less frightening have been the omissions. … I'm disturbed by the words missing from the Trump campaign: liberty and justice, freedom and tolerance. I'm disturbed by the emotions missing from the campaign: kindness and compassion, empathy and understanding. I'm disturbed by the human graces that are missing: irony and wit, nuance and subtlety.”

Chernow continued by pointing out the campaign’s “absence of any sense of American history” as well as their “glorification of money and power and might,” which he said had “disturbing historical parallels.”

"For the first time in my life,” Chernow said, “I'm actually afraid that we Americans can forget who we are as a people and succumb to historical amnesia.” Then, a warning: “Make no mistake about it, when the past is scrubbed clean and American history becomes a blank slate, Donald Trump, or any other demagogue, can come along and write upon it whatever the hell he wants... and that disturbs me most of all. Please, please, please, folks. Don't let it happen here."

Alexander Hamilton, the subject of Chernow’s most famous work, warned of demagoguery in the very first Federalist paper: “History will teach us that ... of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.”

Two days later, the page posted a video by historian and professor Virginia Scharff, who calling the prospect of a Trump presidency “terrifying” and that it was “time to reject demagoguery.” She added, “[Trump’s] campaign would not exist were he not so very good at tapping into the deep wells of intolerance that spring from a lack of knowledge about our past, our present, and even the possibilities of our future.”

The videos continued over the following days including one by former president of the Organization of American Historians and the Southern Historical Association Nell Irvin Painter whose works include biographies of abolitionist Sojourner Truth and labor leader Hosea Hudson.

“[Trump] borrows from white supremacists,” she stated plainly. “Donald Trump is attune to the white backlash against a Black man in power. Trump is unprecedented because Obama is unprecedented. Without Barack Obama as president there would be no Donald Trump as presidential nominee.” It’s important to note that Painter said this over a year before the Charlottesville, Virginia rally that included the neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, Klansmen, as well as other loud and proud white supremacists and white nationalists. Trump would receive significant criticism for saying there were “very fine people” on both sides of the protests.

Painter continued by pushing back against the narrative that Trump’s rise in politics has nothing to do with race but with real economic concerns that ordinary Americans had. "Well then, I ask…,” Painter continued, “Why do they elect representatives who govern against the economic interests of working people?"

Dozens more videos were posted to the Facebook page that summer (which I may continue to transcribe and discuss if there’s interest). Following Trump’s electoral win in November, historians continued to speak up and to write. They appeared on news programs and podcasts in, what seemed to me, record numbers. They penned essays (see historian Heather Cox Ricardson’s Substack, created during President Trump’s first term which has grown to nearly 3 million subscribers). They took to Twitter, like historian Joanne Freeman, scholar of early American politics and author of The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress, who made the case for why studying history is important.

“We’ve seen the assertion of ‘alternative facts’ – meaning, essentially, a denial of actual facts,” she tweeted. “Studying history responsibility does some handy things. It compels you to confront and consider ugly realities as part of a bigger picture. Studying history compels you to investigate, evaluate, compare, and analyze evidence to help you piece together ACTUAL facts. And in teaching people to evaluate evidence in search of facts, it trains them to logically analyze and interpret news for themselves. … [F]or those insisting that studying the humanities has no value, we are getting daily examples of how the study of history offers practical tools for understanding not only the past, but the present.”

It may be difficult to believe, but the 2016 election is already in many of our high school history textbooks. It’s part of American History survey classes on college campuses. To see what historians said before the election is important in a different way than seeing what was said after — and as time passes, it will be increasingly important that politics and politicians don’t shape our historical memory of the years, but that historians continue to honestly, rigorously, and without interference dive deep into our past to help us understand and contextual the present and move into a better future.

As David McCullough concluded in his 2016 video, “There is no reason why, under the right leadership, we can't continue on that way [as a good country and a good people with good intentions]. It's up to all of us — all of us, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, young and old."