Like some demonic trickster of folklore, Trump moves through the world robbing it of speech. The question about the Smithsonian’s capitulation left even our docent, a well-informed man, at a loss for words. He couldn’t address that, he said, but he could tell us a great deal about the desk in the Oval Office that Trump is leaning on: It is called the Resolute Desk because it was made from the oak timbers of the H.M.S. Resolute, a British Arctic-exploration ship.