“You talk too much, and it’s too bad of you.”
That quote from Raymond Chandler Goodbye For A Long Time is a good summary of the fiasco that Donald Trump has made of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
You might have thought that presiding over such a ceremony would be an easy feat for Trump. He is a showman, after all. He loves parades and extravaganzas. It was all a simple setup, a gimme, a chance for an unpopular second-term president to reinvent himself as the leader of the American people. The only thing he had to do was—for once in his life—not act like a madman.
He couldn’t do that.
As things progress, we will remember the story of America’s greatest monument as follows:
- One hundred: large factories definition in Philadelphia.
- Two hundred: a tall ship lot in the port of New York.
- Two hundred and fifty: Trump flops in Washington, DC
Trump knows he has canceled the anniversary. He says so himself. Last night, he has been published the following accusations of his own program on his Social Truth platform:
We should have a big MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN RALLY, for 250, instead of having overpriced singers, who nobody wants to hear, whose music is boring, and yet who do nothing but complain. Cancel it, just as I canceled my involvement in the failure and insecurity of being at the Kennedy Center, because a Very Controversial Federal Judge, said that I should not be allowed to use my time and money to MAKE THE CENTER GREAT AGAIN, in fact, bigger than ever! It would also be nice to see the Republican/Democrat coalition come back to life. The Kennedy Center is broken, unsafe, and damaged for $, and has been for years! Judge Cooper also said that the highly prestigious Board of the Center was not authorized to add the name “TRUMP” despite the fact that hundreds of millions of dollars of my time and money would be needed for a successful rebirth. So now, the Kennedy Center will collapse, structurally and financially. Judge Cooper and his wife, Amy Jeffress (obfuscation anyone?), should be ashamed of themselves. Judge Cooper, like many other Corrupt Judges on my cases, should be impeached. DO IT IN GREAT AMERICA AGAIN! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Translated into plain English, the president was complaining that seven of the nine acts scheduled to headline the 4-weekend music program were canceled within 48 hours of each other because they realized the event was degenerating into a personal salute to Trump. His proposed solution? Replace the canceled actions with Trump’s rally speech! A speech that will focus on Trump’s anger that a judge prevented him from naming the Kennedy Center after him!
On July 4, 1776, Congress announced not only the severance of political ties between the 13 British colonies and their former homeland, but also the end of the imperial government in the United States. For 150 years before 1776, the American colonies were ruled by a succession of queens and kings. The names of those kings were written on the map of the United States: Virginia, Jamestown, Charleston, Annapolis, Georgia, and on countless King and Queen Streets. Then, for one skinthe new nation rejected its political nature, declaring that “all men are created equal.” No matter what the words meant, although much hypocrisy was attended by the slaves, they promised a republican future to the people of the country.
The man who took on the task of organizing the 250th commemoration of those words instead decided to make the day a royal celebration for himself: seeking to put his face on coins and coins, displaying his image on billboards in downtown Washington, and. planning a schedule the main event of the celebration – a televised jousting – for his birthday on June 14. Jousting may seem like a wild way to honor Thomas Jefferson’s great manifesto. But many Americans will enjoy it, and with an event like this, there is room for a variety of activities. There is no chance, however, of elevating the presidency created by the revolution of 1776 into a cult of personality. Trump’s push to turn July 4, 2026, into a national Trump Day has instead ushered in a rebellious update of the “Spirit of ’76.”
Americans alive in 1776 shared and read Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense.” The pamphlet denounced, 250 years before the event, the claims of Trump’s version of America 250: Governments and kings, Paine. he wrote“it was the most effective invention that the devil ever introduced for the promotion of idolatry.” The pagans paid divine honors to their dead kings, and Christendom has perfected that plan by doing the same to the living.
Trump’s efforts to turn the half-century into Trump Day left no time, budget or effort for the actual purpose of the celebration. As its own celebration is deteriorating, a gap has opened between the scheduled list of events and the true purpose and meaning of the celebration of July 4, 2026. This important date will not be recognized by any appropriate national memory. The Reflecting Pool will be painted a deep blue and overpaid non-tender contractor. The statues on the Memorial Bridge will be decorated very strict with another contractor who does not overbid. There is a project to erect an Albert Speer-style triumphal arch overlooking the Potomac. But Trump has failed to deliver the victories the arch could remember — and if the Iran war has stalled, so have the arch’s plans. it’s stuck. Most symbolically, the White House is surrounded by a stop-start the construction site where the East Wing used to stand. Trump shook government favor-seekers with enough money to start work at the polls, but not enough to finish. Now the taxpayer is asked to pay the balance. A federal judge has ordered a shutdown pending a vote in Congress, and Trump has reduced most of his members in the House and Senate to the point where it appears. it cannot pass money bill. If he loses control of any house in November, construction is unlikely to resume. Instead of the Trump Ballroom, the most visible feature of the Trump White House in 2026 is the Trump den.
The biggest Fourth of July speech was in the hands in 1852, on the 76th anniversary of American independence, by Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York. In the opening paragraphs of the speech, Douglass observed with horror: “The reformer’s eye is struck by the rays of anger, which point to tragic times.” Yet even if Douglass foresaw the coming Civil War and lamented the nation’s faults, he still expressed hope that “the higher lessons of wisdom, of justice and truth, will yet give direction to its destiny.” Trump has made a sad mess of what should have been a glorious moment. But the time-honored nation still retains the power of recovery and renewal praised by Douglass. As we contemplate the game of Trump Day, we can turn our thoughts to what could be for America in 300.
We as individuals may or may not live to see it, but we may believe it all the same. We can believe in it all the more fervently with this experience of living in a chapter of American history that firmly betrays the hopes of the Founders and tests the legacy of the Founders.
