I’ve been feeling down about the upcoming 250 Independence Day celebrations. I honestly love the 4th of July normally, having spent many holidays down on The Mall for the music and fireworks, or just in my backyard here, watching the local and community sky rockets. I know full well that the country has missed the mark in so many ways, but I also know that there is still stuff to be proud of.
Unfortunately this big celebration is now under the purview of President Grievance and it was only a matter of time before it started stinking. My first introduction to this sad sack carnival was via these images “Freedom 250” released for their “Great American State Fair”:
Huh? The blueprint for the 250th birthday of the US, after 10 years of planning, was a bunch of white tents on The Mall, a mini-version of Trump’s phallic issues, and a Ferris wheel. Oh and a bunch of obviously and ONLY white people. Nothing else. What were the closed-in tents for? It’s beastly hot in DC in July and whatever was going to happen was going to be in a series of saunas?
Then the group released the poster for the concerts. It immediately seemed weird to me that the biggest US-centered event in recent memory could only attract Martina McBride as its biggest name. And that it included Milli Vanilli, especially as one of its members is deceased. And then the artists began withdrawing from the concert. So I did some reading and as it turns out Freedom 250 isn’t the group that Congress chartered back in 2016.
The group that Congress charted was America 250, and it is headed up by a bipartisan team meant to organize nonpartisan events for the birthday. But if you look at the image announcing the concert, it’s being put on by Freedom 250, which is an entirely different organization. Turns out Freedom 250 is run out of the Trump White House and is President Grievance’s mechanism for grifting millions of dollars off the birthday celebrations. Think I’m exaggerating? I’m not:
Congress in 2025 allocated $150 million for the Department of the Interior to distribute, as it saw fit, to celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary.
The agency allocated $50 million of that to America250, and $100 million to Freedom 250, according to a source familiar with the transaction. To date, America250 has received only $25 million, less than it had expected to receive by this time, according to the source.
Freedom 250 has so far spent $10 million retrofitting six tractor-trailer trucks with mobile history exhibits created in partnership with Hillsdale College, a private conservative Christian school, and PragerU, a conservative media organization. It allocated more than $270,000 to Event Strategies Inc., the group that planned the Jan. 6 rally held on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C.
Yep. Trump stole at least $100 million of the $150 million allocated for the nonpartisan for his own slush fund. And when the musical artists found out that they were lied to about which group was putting on the show, they opted not to have anything to do with the fascist debacle.
The president handled it with his usual grace:
Bigger than Elvis?! Elvis who? This one?:
Or maybe this one?:
Oh, what’s that? We don’t know him? He goes to a different high school? Oh, ok.
I am also compelled to point out this fact: in that Elvis is deceased, yes, it’s possible that Trump could outdraw him on July 4th.
And then Trump doubled down:
Now it was always going to end up as a President Grievance harangue fest once Freedom 250 took it over. But it seems to have caught MAGAts flat-footed, and the cope is strong with them:
I, on the other hand, am enjoying it all immensely. Burn it all down and I’ll watch the lovely flames.
I’ll leave you with this:
