Donald Trump has been unofficially (but reliably) diagnosed as a pathological narcissist. And now his egomania is consuming the July 4 holiday and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. What should have been a national celebration of American history and values has been converted into an naked branding exercise—the product being Donald Trump.
The semi-quincentennial was always and deservedly going to be “big.” But under Trump “big” has taken on an all too familiar set of meanings: “biggest,” expensive, self-referential and paid for by taxpayers despite constant promises of private funding. The July 4 holiday has become a stage set for a man who appears convinced that America’s founding was merely a prelude to his own arrival.
Congress a decade ago created the America 250 Commission to manage the anniversary celebrations, but Trump cast it aside and created his own Freedom 250 organization made up of his supporters, ensuring he’d be the star of the show. This anniversary will stand in stark contrast to the bicentennial anniversary 50 years ago, which President Gerald Ford took pains to be bipartisan and apolitical. The result, as CNN reported this week, was a gigantic celebration on the National Mall (the Park Police estimated its attendees at 1 million). Ford was moved in his memoir, “A Time to Heal,” to say “rarely in the history of the world have so many people turned out so spontaneously to express the love they felt for their country.”
As part of the 1976 Bicentennial observances an estimated 6 million gathered to watch a massive flotilla of international tall ships sail through New York Harbor.
Trump made a rally-style speech on the Mall late last month when a musical group pulled out of his Great American State Fair. Attendance was tiny, causing him to be livid behind the scenes and producing angst in the White House about attendance at the July 4 celebration. Trump pays close attention to crowd sizes as a measure of his popularity. He wants the July 4 program to be “a celebration people will talk about for centuries.”
Plans were that visitors could arrive as early as 1pm, but because of excessive heat, the start time has been moved back to 5 pm. Revelers are limited in what they can bring: no coolers, folding chairs, lawn chairs or camp chairs, aerosols including spray sunscreen, balls and frisbees, any metal or glass containers and backpacks. (Clear plastic bags and plastic water bottles are allowed, government ID cards are required.)
From 5pm to sunset, military flyovers will occur every hour. Then begins an “opening program” followed at 7 pm by Freedom 250’s Salute to America program featuring 300 military band members and Lee Greenwood singing “God Bless the USA.” Gates were to close at 6 pm, so attendees will have to sit (blankets presumably are allowed) in 100+ degree heat for hours to see the program, concluding with what Trump promises will be “a very long speech” at 9:45 pm and the “greatest fireworks show in history.”
Indeed, with more than 850,000 rockets scheduled to be fired, the show was designed to set a new Guinness world record, formerly held by the Philippines’ 809,000 fired in 2016. This year’s display is roughly 40 to 50 times larger than previous DC fireworks shows, which usually shoot off 10,000 to 20,000 projectiles and is 10 times larger than Macy’s Fourth of July show in New York City, which normally fires off 60,000 to 80,000 rockets. This is just one example of Trump’s tendency for gigantism.
There are a few problems with the extravaganza, though: the fireworks won’t start until 10:30 to 11 pm and finish close to midnight, well past most children’s bedtimes. Trump himself may not be able to stay awake.
What the July 4 events will cost is not clear, but it’s a lot. Legally, Freedom 250 is a subsidiary of a nonprofit called the National Parks Foundation, which received $68 million from the Interior Department to fund July 4 events. The department tapped national parks allotments to pay that money, but that’s not the total expense, including jet fuel and other operating costs for the six hours of military flyovers or the fireworks extravaganza, estimated to cost anywhere from $50 to $1,000 per shell. $50 per shell comes to $42.5 million. $1,000 would be $850 million. Then there’s the fee to be paid to Event Strategies Inc, a firm with close ties to Trump that is managing much of the July 4 events. The firm organized the Jan. 6, 2021 rally that preceded the violent march on the US Capitol and Trump’s 2015 announcement of his 2016 candidacy.
The July 4 pageant’s vanity gigantism and Trump’s self promotion are of a piece with many other displays in his second term: the triumphal arch (lampooned as Arc de Trump) across the Potomac from the Lincoln Memorial and, at 250 feet from its base to the tip of the Lady Liberty at the top, more than twice its size. And cost $100 million to build.
Construction of Trump’s White House ballroom, costing $800 million to $1billion, was launched stealthily. Trump promised no part of the White House complex would be touched, then abruptly the East Wing was demolished—without approval from several authorities claiming their permission rights were ignored.
Trump is consumed with ire that the Lincoln Reflecting Pool stays algae green despite the government’s spending $16 million to make it “flag” blue. He has taken to blaming vandals, though biologists put the blame on heat and stagnation.
In addition to vanity building projects, Trump has a giant picture of himself peering down from the Justice Department onto Pennsylvania Avenue. His image is also on US passports and a $250 bill. And he is the first president to have his signature on US currency.
In their new best-seller, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan recount a conversation with Trump in which he asserted that he had more power than some of the most fearsome despots in history, who killed people by the thousands, tens and hundreds of thousands and millions: Alexander the Great, the Caesars, William the Conqueror, Genghis Khan, Atilla the Hun, Tamerlane, Napoleon, Hitler, Mao and Stalin. He rattled the names off with relish and said, “these leaders maintained power through fear. Who would ever do a thing like that, right?” Each of those leaders had power that was local. His is global, he said.
That’s the bottom line for an egomaniacal authoritarian. The only good news is that Trump is not a mass murderer.
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