The president has blended patriotic spectacle with campaign-style politics, reshaping a civic milestone around his leadership and worldview.
Read more Trump pardons a major donor and violators of the Clean Air Act
For all the power he has flexed over the past year and a half, President Donald Trump could not control the scorching, dangerous, record-shattering weather in the nation’s capital for the 250th anniversary of America’s independence.
But nearly every other aspect of the celebration in Washington bore Trump’s imprint, as decisions he made transformed an official commemoration of American history into another polarizing moment in American politics.
“Has anyone ever seen a Happy Dumocrat?” the president wrote of his opposing political party on social media Saturday morning in his first July Fourth greeting of the day, ahead of an evening speech by the Washington Monument. Weeks earlier, Trump had abruptly announced that he would also serve as the headlining act of a rally kicking off the two-week Great American State Fair on the National Mall, calling himself “the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime.”
“Only Great Patriots invited” Trump wrote of the launch of a fair that was, in theory, open to all, later billing the kickoff to the 250th anniversary festivities as a “Trump rally.”
Milestone anniversaries like the semiquincentennial present rare moments of shared civic ritual, occasions when presidents are widely expected to place themselves within the sweep of the American story, rather than at the center of it. This year’s celebration, instead, reflects both Trump’s vision of America, and America’s divisions over Trump.
As Americans sweltered through a dangerous heat wave, with Washington’s heat indexes reaching 115 degrees, Trump said he planned to “make a really long speech … just to show that I can do anything.” Organizers for Trump’s speech instructed those attending not to arrive too early to limit their time outside.
And the National Mall fair itself, long touted as a showcase for American greatness and national unity, instead became a Rorschach test. Trump supporters praised the event’s patriotic atmosphere and military flyovers.
His critics, meanwhile, pointed to images of sparse crowds, a mock-up of Trump’s proposed triumphal arch on the grounds and administration officials touting their accomplishments as evidence that the president’s personal involvement had undercut what might otherwise have been a broader civic celebration.
With just months to spare before the occasion, Trump had pushed aside America 250, the long-standing bipartisan commission tasked a decade ago with planning anniversary festivities, replacing it with his own group of political allies, Freedom 250. His advisers argued the move was necessary because the commission had become bogged down by bureaucracy.
But as Trump’s chosen planning organization became increasingly seen as a partisan entity, vendors and performers alike ultimately pulled out of the fair, which has struggled to draw large crowds for much of its first week.
Besides supplanting the bipartisan commission, Trump has increasingly put his imprint on other aspects of this year’s commemoration. His face appears on a commemorative gold coin marking the anniversary and on limited-edition “patriot passports.” Administration officials have pushed for a $250 bill bearing his portrait, and Trump this week posted an image of a $100 bill featuring his autograph — marking the first time a sitting president’s signature has been featured on U.S. currency.
Read more ‘Trump accounts’ of $1,000 now available for babies
The decision to have Trump speak late Saturday also reshaped a long-standing July Fourth tradition. Security restrictions prevented attendees from bringing coolers or arriving throughout the evening, and the speech was set to delay the fireworks until after 10:30 p.m. Trump billed it as the “largest fireworks show in history” as he urged Americans to attend. “If you like Airplanes and Fireworks and President Trump, be there!” he wrote.
On the eve of Independence Day eve, speaking at Mount Rushmore, he celebrated American achievement but also chastised Congress, including his own party, for not fully bending to his will. He portrayed the country as under siege by a “communist menace” — an apparent reference to a rise in self-described democratic socialists within the Democratic Party — and vowed to “vanquish communism quickly.”
As he has throughout the anniversary celebration, Trump cast himself as central to the story he wants the country to tell about itself: that America was diminished before him, revived by him and is now celebrating its founding through his restoration — a promised “Golden Age.” At Mount Rushmore, he told the crowd that he “saved, almost single-handedly,” the Second Amendment and that he was going to “give our country its identity back.”
Republican President Gerald Ford took a different approach during the nation’s bicentennial celebration in 1976, even as he was running for reelection in the aftermath of Watergate and the Vietnam War. In his remarks, Ford made no mention of the campaign, the Democratic front-runner Jimmy Carter, or his GOP primary challenger, Ronald Reagan.
Ford’s only reference to electoral politics came as a broader reflection on self-determination: “This November the American people will, under the Constitution, again give their consent to be governed,” he said, outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia. “This free and secret act should be a reaffirmation by every eligible American of the mutual pledges made 200 years ago by John Hancock and the others whose untrembling signatures we can still make out.”
But comparisons with past presidents are complicated by the fact that patriotism itself has become more polarized, said Tevi Troy, a presidential historian and senior fellow at the Reagan Institute.
“There’s a feeling out there that Republicans are more patriotic than Democrats, or that the patriotism gap can differ depending on which party is in the White House,” Troy said. “While Trump does things in terms of partisanship that you can safely say are unprecedented, he is also president in a more divided time.”
A recent Gallup poll found that national pride has fallen to its lowest point since the organization began asking in 2001 how proud respondents were to be an American. Just 33 percent reported being “extremely proud,” down eight percentage points from a year ago and 37 points since a high in 2003. The partisan gap there is wide, with Republicans reporting much higher American pride as Democrats, and independents have hit record lows for their respective groups, Gallup found.
John Pitney, a former national Republican official who now teaches political science at Claremont McKenna College, said Trump is diverging from the tradition of presidents who have used moments of national triumph and tragedy to speak as Americans first, not as partisans.
“I remember Reagan at Normandy in 1984 — the 40th anniversary of D-Day, surrounded by people who were veterans of that war,” Pitney said. “There is a reason why that speech is still remembered. It wasn’t about him.”
Read more Chourio’s scratch hit in 11th breaks tie, Brewers top Diamondbacks 7-4
