America’s 250th birthday could have been — should have been — a celebration to end all celebrations. The nation’s biggest birthday yet could have been an opportunity for both commemoration and recommitment, a festival marking a quarter millennium of democracy and a challenge to envision a bolder, better, brighter America for the generations to come.
Instead, we got a canceled Vanilla Ice concert, a half-painted Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, and a massive UFC arena on the White House lawn.
It is no surprise that few Americans are excited about — or even paying attention to — a July 4 celebration that President Trump has taken every opportunity to rebrand into a party for himself.
Given his talk of a MAGA rally on the National Mall and marking the nation’s big day with his own face on a new $250 bill, Trump’s bottomless ego has made it impossible for anyone who isn’t a die-hard supporter to enjoy what should be a shared cultural moment.
Oh, well — maybe we’ll get it right for the tricentennial in 2076.
The nation’s bicentennial celebration in 1976 was not held under ideal circumstances, either. The country was only beginning to process the traumas of the Vietnam War. President Ford faced two assassination attempts in a single month. Efforts to desegregate Boston’s public schools led to protests and violent clashes. Yet even at our most divided, the American people of 1976 still believed that the triumph of American democracy was an event worth celebrating — not as Democrats or Republicans, but as one complicated and often conflicting culture.
The idea that we are one people striving toward the shared goal of a better future together is less popular today than at any point in modern history. The Fall 2025 Harvard Youth Poll found that only one-third of young people believe Americans with different political views actually want what is best for the country. Fewer Americans than ever trust their government — just 17 percent said they believe the government would “do what is right,” according to the Pew Research Center.
We increasingly view ourselves as surrounded by enemies and deceivers, lost in a media landscape that constantly tells us no one can be trusted. A report published in February by Johns Hopkins Stavros Niarchos Foundation-SNF Agora Institute found that nearly 60 percent of seniors and 47 percent of millennial and Gen Z voters believed “those who really ‘run’ the country are not known to the voters.” Nearly half of Americans over 30 think “much of our lives are being controlled by plots hatched in secret places.”
Trump built his political brand on feeding conspiracy theories that directed hate and suspicion toward everyone from scientists to public school teachers to nonprofit organizations, windmills, Pope Leo XIV and even his own political party. Now those conspiracy theories have gone mainstream, to the point where Americans no longer see themselves as one culture but two, locked in deadly combat for the future of their nation. It feels like an inauspicious time to throw a party.
Those partisan and ideological divisions are made even worse by Trump’s desire to turn America’s 250th birthday into a branded exercise in Trump-worship.
Past milestone celebrations have strenuously avoided the appearance of partisan meddling; an aborted effort by President Richard Nixon to put a Republican slant on the 1976 festivities became a minor scandal and ultimately led to the decentralized approach of that year’s nationwide party. But Trump has fewer moral scruples even than Nixon, and so this year’s celebrations already look more like a pep rally for the MAGA right than anything designed to appeal to the millions of Americans who are sick to death of both parties.
As we saw with the collapse of Trump’s Great American State Fair, few artists are interested in lending their talent to events that are clearly aimed only at the president’s fans. The botched event also showcases Trump’s own lack of interest in celebrating anyone besides himself. When it became clear that his event was in trouble, Trump didn’t change course and make the event better — he instead dismissed his own idea as “overpriced” and “boring” before demanding it be canceled.
In Trump’s mind, the public can have him center stage for the nation’s 250th birthday celebration or it can have nothing. It has always been obvious that Trump had a hokey and low-class vision for the semiquincentennial; his interest in celebrating the country and its people never ran much deeper than the chance to slap his name on a few branded events. What Trump doesn’t realize is that Americans would prefer nothing at all to another one of Trump’s self-glorifying publicity stunts. His record-low approval rating should make that painfully clear.
