Smithsonian Director Said She Has Zero Regrets After Getting Caught Smearing Ben Franklin With No Proof

The Smithsonian already stood accused of turning America's history museum into a woke propaganda machine.

Then one exhibit about Ben Franklin walked into a House hearing and detonated everything.

What the Smithsonian said about him left even the room speechless.

The Exhibit That Turned Franklin Into a Suspect

A Heritage Foundation researcher stood in front of the House Oversight Committee and pulled the pin.

He told lawmakers about a Smithsonian display called The Electric Dr. Franklin.

The exhibit ran at the National Museum of American History from 2021 to 2025.

Its subtitle asked visitors to consider "Enslaved People in Franklin's Research."

The museum's own text admits it has no proof this ever happened.

"Indentured servants and enslaved people in his household could also have been used," the exhibit states, before admitting the museum may never know if that's true.

That is not history.

That is a smear dressed up in a museum placard.

Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez asked lawmakers why anyone would smear a Founding Father like Franklin over something so bizarre and unprovable.

Franklin spent his final years as president of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery.

He personally petitioned Congress to end slavery in America.

Your tax dollars paid for a Smithsonian exhibit that quietly floated the opposite story with nothing to back it up.

The Line That Should End Her Career

Museum director Anthea Hartig sat through the whole thing without blinking.

Rep. Brian Jack asked her directly if she had any regrets about the exhibits on her watch.

Hartig called herself proud of her tenure and conceded only that any large institution makes mistakes.

Then she delivered the line that should end her career.

"But I don't have any regrets."

Jack pressed her to name a single mistake.

She brushed it off, telling him factual errors are simply part of the job.

That is the entire defense.

Not an apology.

Not a correction.

Just a bureaucrat shrugging off a smear against one of the men who built this country.

This came days after Rep. Brandon Gill grilled Hartig over an exhibit claiming politeness is a pillar of white supremacy culture.

It came weeks after a 162-page House report titled "Saving America's Story" accused museum leadership of "ideological capture."

Hartig insists the report doesn't fairly capture the museum's full body of work.

Her own exhibit calling Franklin a possible torturer says otherwise.

The Smithsonian's Long Pattern of Rewriting History

The Franklin smear did not happen in a vacuum.

The same museum built an exhibit arguing Mickey Mouse carries "vestiges of blackface."

The same museum recast Thanksgiving as a day of national grief instead of a celebration of America's founding.

The same museum commissioned a Statue of Liberty holding tomatoes instead of a torch.

Every single time, the pattern is identical.

Take a founding symbol, twist it into a confession of American guilt, and dare anyone in a suit and tie to stop you.

For four years, taxpayers funded a display insinuating Ben Franklin tortured enslaved people with electricity.

Nobody at the Smithsonian pulled it down.

Nobody apologized when Gonzalez read it out loud on Capitol Hill.

Hartig cannot be fired by Trump because Smithsonian bylaws put that power with the Institution's own Secretary, not the White House.

Republicans do have leverage left.

Vice President JD Vance sits as an ex officio Regent on the Smithsonian Board.

Congress controls the purse strings that keep the lights on at that museum.

If Hartig won't clean up the mess she just defended under oath, Congress should threaten to cut the check.

A museum that can't tell the difference between history and slander does not deserve a billion taxpayer dollars a year.

Sources:

• Bob Hoge, "House Republicans Expose Smithsonian's Electrifying Allegation Against Ben Franklin," RedState, July 23, 2026.
• Fox News Staff, "Smithsonian director expresses no regrets after Ben Franklin exhibit controversy," Fox News, July 23, 2026.
• Amy Curtis, "Did the Smithsonian Really Say This About Benjamin Franklin?," Townhall, July 24, 2026.
• House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, "Hearing Wrap Up: Smithsonian National Museum of American History's Radical Agenda to Reshape the Past," July 22, 2026.