A White House-backed video series produced with Hillsdale College attempts to recast America's founding as a purely Christian nationalist endeavor, dismissing the deep influence of the Enlightenment. Narrated by Mark David Hall, an advisory member of Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, the video uses debunked myths and selective history to argue against the separation of church and state. This revisionism matters because it leverages the nation’s upcoming 250th anniversary to promote sectarian division and justify the political agendas of an exclusive religious minority.
**THE GREAT HISTORY BAMBOOZLE!**
**WHITE HOUSE CELLULOID ACCUSED OF SELLING "BUNK" TO THE PUBLIC!**
*Hillsdale Scholars and Washington Big-Wigs Twist the Truth of the Founders! Jefferson’s Razor and Washington’s Knees Exposed in Sensational Exposé!*
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**WASHINGTON, D.C.** — Hold onto your straw boaters, folks, because the high-hat press agents in the government offices are spinning a yarn so wild it’d make a carnival barker blush!
In a brazen attempt to hijack America’s upcoming 250th jubilee and turn it into a partisan parade for the most scandal-plagued administration in the history of the Republic, the White House has teamed up with the eggheads at Hillsdale College. Together, they are peddling a line of historical hokum masquerading as the honest-to-goodness truth.
They’ve cooked up a thirteen-minute moving-picture reel titled, *“The Story of America: The Faith of Our Founders.”* It’s a real tear-jerker of a fairy tale, narrated by one Professor Mark David Hall—a slick-talking academic from Regent University who double-hats on the President’s "Religious Liberty Commission." Your intrepid reporter sat through this celluloid bunkum so you wouldn't have to lose your Sunday afternoon!
### THE ENLIGHTENMENT HIGH-HAT!
Right out of the gate, Professor Hall pulls a fast one. He sneers at the writers who dare suggest our Founding Fathers owed a single dime to the Enlightenment. Now, real-deal historians have known since the days of the quill that our Founders drank deep from the well of Enlightenment reason. But Hall and his "Great Again" crowd don’t care for the facts; they’re strictly "information-shy."
Oh, he throws in a couple of dusty quotes to look legitimate, but his real game is to convince the rubes that Washington and company were a bunch of holier-than-thou churchwardens rather than book-smart gentlemen of intellect. And as for the separation of church and state? Hall claims that’s all wet! He’d have you believe the First Amendment was drawn up just to ensure that conservative churchmen would assume their natural right to run the whole shebang.
### JEFFERSON’S RAZOR AND THE DEIST "INFIDELS"
To hear Hall tell it, the Founders spent all their time nose-deep in the Scripture. He brags that they quoted the Bible more than any other book. But wait a minute! By that cockeyed logic, Thomas Paine’s notorious tract, *The Age of Reason*, must be a work of holy devotion! Paine quoted scripture left and right, but only to roar that *"it is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder."* That’s not piety, folks—that’s a knockout punch!
Then Hall shines his spotlight on Elias Boudinot, the Mint Director who quit his post in 1805 to start the American Bible Society. But he conveniently forgets to mention Boudinot’s boss, Thomas Jefferson! While Boudinot was printing Bibles, Jefferson was sitting in the Executive Mansion with a razor blade, slicing out all the miracles and supernatural hokum from the New Testament. Jefferson wrote to John Adams that finding the moral truths in the Bible was like locating *"diamonds in a dunghill."*
Furthermore, Ben Franklin, George Washington, and Ethan Allen were known in their day as "infidels" and "deists." Yet Hall brushes them off like ash on a lapel, claiming "deism" only applied to a handful of fellas.
### THE VALLEY FORGE FLAPJACK
The baloney reaches a fever pitch when Hall tackles the Old Dominion. He points to George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, which says religion must be guided by *"reason and conviction, not by force."* Somehow, Hall twists this into proof that Mason wanted the church running the state! But Mason was an Enlightenment rationalist to his core. He wanted *reason*, not revelation, to rule the day.
The grand finale of this celluloid sham is an old engraving of George Washington kneeling in the snow at Valley Forge. But don’t buy that wooden nickel! Just a few years back, in 1918, the Valley Forge Park Commission ran a fine-tooth comb through thousands of letters and diaries from Washington's staff. Their verdict? Not a single shred of truth to the legend. In fact, Washington was infamous among the clergy of his day for flatly refusing to kneel during church services!
### THE 2025 SYNDICATE AND THE BIG RACKET
Why the big lie? Look no further than the "Religious Liberty Commission," established by executive decree for the futuristic year of 2025. It’s a stacked deck of conservative crusaders who helped put the Chief Executive in office.
The Chairman of this outfit wants a federal telephone line that barks an automated message: *"There is no separation of church and state!"* Another member wanted a presidential medal for a baker who wouldn't bake a cake for a gay couple.
They talk a good game about religious persecution, but their real racket is lining the pockets of faith-based outfits with public dough and giving their pals a license to discriminate under a holy excuse. Hall pretends he's a man of the people fighting the big-university elites, but he’s drawing a paycheck from Regent University—a joint bankrolled by ultra-wealthy fat cats.
### OUT OF MANY, NONE?
Instead of celebrating *E Pluribus Unum*—"Out of many, one"—for our 250th anniversary, this White House flick is selling division. Even at the founding, America was a grand melting pot of different faiths.
What the government is offering now, through these propaganda reels and daily backroom deals, is a chance for an aggrieved minority to hate their neighbors over a fairytale version of an America that never was. It's a gold-brick scheme, folks, and we aren't buying!