America’s 250th birthday hits differently with Trump in the White House

It wasn’t always like this. I’m old enough to remember the Bicentennial celebration back in 1976. After being struck by the trifecta of the the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War and Watergate, it felt as if the country was moving forward.

I lived in the Nation’s Capitol, the epicenter of America’s Bicentennial celebration. Practically everything had a Bicentennial theme. Even the fire hydrants were painted red, white and blue. I spent much of that hot humid summer attending free bicentennial-themed events such as the Smithsonian Institution’s Festival of America Folklife and the July 4th fireworks display.

At our house in Brookland in Northeast D.C., my parents hosted their annual backyard BBQ with the usual southern favorites. My dad, a Korean War veteran, proudly hung the American flag from our front porch. Patriotism wasn’t code for MAGA back then. Political affiliation didn’t matter as much. Americans celebrated the nation’s 200th birthday together.

Those were happy times.

I shudder to think about what this year’s celebration of America’s 250th anniversary in Washington, D.C., will be like with President Donald Trump living in the White House.

It’s so like him to have created Freedom 250 instead of allowing America250, which had been created by Congress an entire decade earlier, to go it alone.

But that’s how it is with him. Trump is going to trump. That’s why he’s furious about having his name ordered removed from the Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts.

It’s also why his scowling face appears on commemorative U.S. passports, national park service passes, and gold coins made specially for the 250th anniversary.

It’s not enough for him to have large banners featuring his image hanging from various government office buildings— he’d love if he could get his mean mug on $250 bills as well.

Trump wants to make America’s 250th birthday party about him too.

Take what happened after musical artists started dropping out of a series of concerts after learning that it wouldn’t be the nonpartisan event that they expected. The president went on Truth Social and trashed the performers and also floated the idea of hosting a giant MAGA rally instead — featuring none other than himself.

“We should have a giant 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,” Trump posted, adding “Cancel it.”

Cue the fireworks! Finally, the president and I agree on something. He’s right about canceling the musical performances. But in my opinion, he didn’t go far enough. Trump should cancel all of the Freedom 250 events, which have been billed as nonpartisan but were actually organized by a group formed by Trump.

At this great age, America deserves better than a president who has installed a massive red, white and blue cage on the South Lawn of the White House for a UFC fight on June 14, the day of his 80th birthday .

It’s problematic enough that America’s founding fathers were too sexist and racist to include equal rights for women, African Americans and Native Americans in the Constitution, but fast forward to today and we have the griftiest of grifters in the Oval Office.

Trump has finagled it so that the I.R.S. is “forever barred and precluded” from auditing Trump, his sons and the Trump organization’s taxes prior to May 2026 as part of a deal to settle his $10 billion suit against the Internal Revenue Service.

And if the courts don’t permanently block it, Trump intends to create a $1.776 billon slush fund using taxpayer money that could be used to compensate rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 among other things.

Meanwhile, migrants are being systematically rounded up, denied basic human rights and packed into squalid detention centers such as Delaney Hall in Newark, N.J. and America is engaged in an intractable and unprovoked war with Iran that has sent gas prices and the cost of living skyrocketing for all of us.

Trump is focused on the wrong things: his daily stock trades, building a $400 million ballroom at the White House, rehabbing the Reflecting Pool, erecting a giant arch in Washington, D.C., and adding a promenade onto the Lincoln Memorial.

Instead of helping heal the country’s divisions and bring Americans together, the president does whatever is best for him.

His leadership has put America in a sunken place, and that’s nothing to celebrate.