Posted on July 9, 2026
Donald's Dud
How not to celebrate America
by
Daniel Clark
It should
have been easy. Most non-Democrats were
already going to celebrate America's 250th birthday. There was no need for the president or anyone
else in our government to put on any kind of production. All he needed to say was come to
Washington. Visit the White House. Go sightseeing. Take in a Nationals game. The celebrations would have taken care of
themselves.
Instead, President Trump has
managed to screw up the unscrewuppable. For starters, he couldn't leave lame enough
alone. Congress had already established
a nonprofit organization called America 250 to organize the festivities, but
Trump created his own competing entity called Freedom 250, and named himself
chairman of its Task Force 250 committee, which he sometimes called the Salute
to America 250 Task Force, just to be deliberately confusing. In contrast to the bipartisan America 250
committee, Task Force 250 was comprised of the president and vice president,
seven cabinet secretaries, and assorted other Trump-appointed bureaucrats.
The
partisan nature of this new organization made itself apparent at Rededicate
250, a mid-May religious revival held at the National Mall, and the first event
to be staged by Freedom 250. Granted,
it's only natural that Democrats would be absent from such a gathering, being of
the party that booed God at its 2012 convention. Moreover, they have probably realized by now
that Jesus Christ is a Jew, and is therefore politically undesirable as far as
they're concerned.
There also
should have been nothing surprising about the president addressing the gathering
in a recorded message, especially since he seems to believe he wrote the
Bible. At any rate, he didn't not
write the Bible any more than he didn't write The Art of the Deal, so
that's got to count for something. But
the list of speakers didn't need to also include the vice president, five
cabinet secretaries, the Director of National Intelligence, the Speaker of the
House, a prominent GOP senator, Trump's first-term HUD secretary and his chief
of protocol. There comes a point where
it is unclear whether these Republican political figures are endorsing the
Almighty, or trying to imply the reverse.
What was made perfectly clear, however, was that Freedom 250 was meant
to serve as a vehicle for promoting the Trump administration.
If you're
looking to put on some wholesome American family-friendly entertainment, the
first thing not to do is chase away Martina McBride. The rest of the real and faux musicians who
were expected to perform at the Great American State Fair concert series
(including the surviving member of Milli and/or Vanilli, and a bunch of guys
who are far too young to be the Commodores pretending to be the Commodores)
would have been expendable, except that there was no show without them. Before any of the acts had signed on to
perform at the event, they appeared on prematurely released promotional
materials. Realizing that they were
being shanghaied to make a tacit political endorsement, the performers all
withdrew, except for one (more on him later).
For about a day, they were castigated by conservative commentators, but
before long Trump completely validated their objections. In a Truth Social post, the president
announced that the musical acts would be replaced by himself, delivering one of
his usual speeches in what he characterized as a MAGA rally.
In the meantime, on Flag Day, which
is also Trump's birthday, he staged his UFC cage fighting card on the White
House lawn. Undignified as it may have
been, at least it was a competently orchestrated production. As national celebrations go, it was
nonetheless a failure, because it was inaccessible to the general public. The small, temporary venue was occupied by
VIPs only, while UFC enthusiasts congregated outside. Trump has since bragged about the supposedly
great ratings the fights got on CBS, not seeming to realize that they were only
available to a meager audience on the Paramount-plus subscription streaming
service.
When time
came for the MAGA rally, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy took to the
stage and derided the missing musicians as "libtards,"
even though most of their political leanings are unknown and possibly
nonexistent. If any of them were liberal
activists, they probably would have gone to an equally partisan Democrat event
and screeched along with Bette Midler, but they didn't. Even Vanilla Ice, the only one among them who
still intended to perform, tried to maintain the appearance of neutrality, saying
that he'd have participated all the same if he'd been asked by Joe Biden. "I'll go play for Putin, and I'll play in
Iran if you want," he explained. That's
telling 'em.
Hooray for America! Or its
enemies. Or something.
Trump's
less-than-inspirational "we were a dead country" speech was not without musical
accompaniment. He brought with him
83-year-old Lee Greenwood, who probably gave a better performance than some of
the absent acts would have, albeit for only about two minutes. The U.S. Marine Band also played there,
curiously obscured from the small crowd behind bulletproof glass. The impropriety of its presence at such a
baldly political event was clearly not taken into consideration. Given the size of the band and the
unlikelihood of political unanimity, some of those Marines must have been
performing against their will, not unlike the mumbling chorus of prisoners in The
Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
That
sparsely attended speech kicked off the Great American State Fair, which
featured small exhibits dedicated to all fifty states and six territories, most
of which had a last-minute middle school science fair project look about
them. The Oklahoma booth, for example,
featured an Oklahoma City Thunder basketball, a giant Route 66 sign, and big
cutouts of an oil derrick, a cowboy boot and a buffalo. Well worth the drive to D.C., if you happen
to be Clark Griswold.
A handful
of blue state governors declined to participate, but instead of being honest in
their objections to the partisan slant of the fair, they cited budget
constraints, absurdly suggesting that: (a) Democrats are frugal with taxpayer
money, and (b) no private funds could be raised to fill a tiny room with
knickknacks. The phoniness of
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro was exposed when, in one of this summer's
rare displays of nonpartisanship, Democrat Sen. John Fetterman cooperated with
Republican Dave McCormick to assemble one of the least lame of all the
exhibits, at no taxpayer expense.
In addition to the states, there
were also booths set up for cabinet departments, as if Independence Day were in
part a celebration of federal bureaucracy.
In a peculiar and not very joyous non sequitur, the booth for the
Defense Department was identified by a small banner that hung outside, which simply
said "WAR." Next to that was the
Treasury Department booth, which was primarily dedicated to encouraging people
to sign up their children for Trump Accounts, because nothing says American
independence like your government promising you a big bag of money that you'll
not have done a stinkin' thing to earn.
After
Vanilla Ice (remember him?) complained in TV interviews that Freedom 250 had
never gotten back to him about making an appearance, he was finally scheduled
to take the stage and perform his 1990 hit "Ice Ice
Baby" and perhaps not even he knew what else.
That is, until his concert was needlessly canceled due to impending
weather that never pended after all.
Unfortunately for him, this doesn't seem to be a good time to reschedule
his show in Tehran or Moscow.
The two
structures on the Mall that dominated the otherwise empty fairground were a
lonely-looking Ferris wheel that was beset by power outages on the opening day,
and a scaled-down replica of Trump's proposed Triumphal Arch, which immediately
inspired Spinal Tap "Stonehenge" references from observers. Hopefully, it's not a precise model of the
gigantic one the president intends to build, because before long it started
developing cracks and secreting a mysterious yellow goo.
Doubling
down on the unfun of it all, the fair designated not one but two "MAHA
Mondays," for those whose idea of festivity is a lecture entitled "Everyday
Health and Well Being" by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. At that
point, festival-goers must have been wondering what thrills were in store for
the rest of the week. With a little
luck, there might have been a Fun With Interior Secretary Doug Burgum Day. Obviously, MAHA Mondays were not a
celebration of America, but only the promotion of a Trump administration
initiative, and a damn obnoxious one at that.
Your benevolent government is going to make you healthy. It's a wonder Hillary Clinton and Michelle
Obama hadn't already come up with that one.
Oh, wait a minute. They did.
It looked like Freedom 250 finally
got one right with its Fourth of July extravaganza, but in the afternoon, the
parade was canceled because of the heat, and later when it stormed, some of the
flyovers had to be scrubbed. Of course,
those things were nobody's fault, unless you happen to be a Democrat, in which
case you were probably blaming our cars and air conditioners. At night, visitors to our nation's capital
were promised the bigliest, bestiest,
splodiest fireworks display of all time. You could tell it would be enjoyable because
the liberal picklepusses at The Washington Post disapproved, on the
basis that it would cause too much air pollution. Yes, WaPo, we're aware that when we
blow stuff up, it creates smoke. It'll
go away. Why don't you whine about the
sodium content of the hot dogs while you're at it, you America-hating, caterwauling
wussies?
So the
liberal media were depressed at the prospect, which meant it absolutely needed
to be done. But the president was supposed to speak beforehand, and the
whole schedule was pushed back later at night because of the weather. President Trump did keep his speech
mercifully brief, and he surprisingly only drifted off into partisan politics
and self-pity about a half dozen times.
In one digression, he promoted a Republican election reform bill called
the SAVE Act, which he insists is really called the SAVE America Act, which is
therefore what it is called by all of the embarrassing lickspittles with whom
he surrounds himself. In truth, the bill
is officially entitled the SAVE Act, the acronym standing for "Safeguard
American Voter Eligibility." That makes
the nonexistent SAVE America Act something akin to the American Dodgeball
Association of America. Whatever you call
it, it was an improper thing to bring up in what was supposed to be a national
celebration, especially since we can be pretty sure that none of the three
100-plus-year-old veterans who participated in the presentation were asked
whether they agreed with it.
In
addition to pitching a piece of partisan legislation, Trump took time in his
speech to rail against Communists, by which he meant Democrat congressional
candidates, so at least he scored a few points for accuracy. Had he been sincere in his anti-Communism,
though, he would not in the same speech have bragged about his policy toward
Venezuela, where he publicly rejected and humiliated the leader of the
opposition, preferring instead to work with the sitting Communist government.
The concept of American
exceptionalism is a recognition that our founding fathers invented an
exceptional nation, which recognizes God-given rights that must not be taken
away by mere men, and that the resulting freedom has produced unprecedented advancement
and prosperity. It is not that we, the
American people, are exceptional, which is how Trump seems to understand
it. "We will always be on top ... we will
always be the best ... we remain the finest people on the planet after 250 years." At least he's including other people in his
self-flattery, which might actually be considered humble, coming from him. Nevertheless, the point of Independence Day
was never that we should be celebrating ourselves. What does he think we are, an entire nation
of Penn State fans?
Still,
it's hard to go wrong in a speech that consists primarily of introducing war
heroes and astronauts, and what American doesn't love colorful explosions? Unfortunately, these events took place so
late at night that less than half of the already disappointing crowd was able
to stick around for them. Then again,
fortune had little to do with it, because things would have only begun about an
hour earlier even if the weather had cooperated. If all had gone according to plan, there
still would have been no fireworks until close to 11:00, meaning that lots of
tired families would still have turned away frustrated and disappointed. That's remarkably inconsiderate, especially
since Freedom 250 could have given itself all the leeway it wanted. There's no good reason why the president
could not have been scheduled to speak during prime time, with the fireworks to
follow just after sundown.
To the degree
to which outside-the-beltway Americans have relied on the inside-the-beltway
crowd for the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States, that
has been a mistake, because the hearts of the latter group just weren't in
it. The people on one side of the aisle
don't even like America, and on the other, they think Donald Trump is
America, and define patriotism as loyalty to Trump. So who left them in charge of our
celebrations anyway?
We don't
need federal approval to enjoy ourselves while showing appreciation for our
country. We don't even have to wait for
a particular date, or a round-numbered year in order to do it. You can go to Washington whenever you want,
and set your own itinerary. You can stay
in your hometown and have a get-together with family and friends. You can simply keep in mind how grateful you
are to be an American while enjoying a steak of the grill and a couple
beers. Thanks to the American-invented
miracle of the internet, you can even watch Milli if you want to. Or Vanilli.
Whichever.
The Shinbone: The Frontier of the Free Press