Trump's Giant Obsessions and America's 250th Birthday
By Mort Kondracke
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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.
https://www.postalley.org/2026/07/03/trumps-giant-obsessions-and-americas-250th-birthday/