President Donald Trump has big plans for America’s 250th birthday celebration, which gets underway this month. Some are anodyne: a state fair on the National Mall, for example, and what will reportedly be a record-breaking fireworks display.
Others, though, are focused a little bit more on Trump than America: There will also be a UFC cage match on the South Lawn of the White House (on the president’s birthday), and a planned “Freedom 250” concert has already morphed into a full-blown Trump rally. And the whole thing is being presided over by not one but two groups: America250, Congress’s decade-old initiative to celebrate the country, and Freedom 250, which is the Trump administration’s very own.
So, should Americans still be excited about the big party? Today, Explained asked Semafor editor-in-chief Ben Smith, who explains how America’s bisesquicentennial party got so political. He also talks with Today, Explained co-host Noel King about the dueling groups behind the celebrations, how the Freedom 250 concert fell apart, and what else is planned for the anniversary.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
What do you think President Trump is trying to say with this celebration?
I think President Trump is trying to celebrate America as he sees it, which is not totally separate from celebrating himself.
Do you believe that what President Trump is up to is justified?
Most Americans think it’s a good idea to celebrate big national anniversaries.
There’s a congressional body called the Semi-Sesquicentennial Commission. It’s been around for years, preparing to put up flags at football games, and have a ball drop in Times Square, and do cheerfully generic celebrations of America’s 250th anniversary. The Trump administration thought that was kind of sleepy and didn’t have the kind of flair for spectacle that Donald Trump likes. They wanted more glam, and more fireworks, and more cage matches on the White House lawn.
When I was talking to people at these two rival semi-sesquicentennial committees, they are mostly staffed by people who were trying hard, at least for a while, to get along and not have the 250th birthday of America descend into the partisan mayhem that every other thing in America descends into.
Are they competitive now? Are they still working together?
They’ve always been competitive and eyeing each other with a bit of mutual disdain. Because the Republicans control Congress, and because Trump basically controls the Republican Party, two-thirds of the money Congress allocated went to the White House branch, not to the congressional branch.
The congressional bipartisan [committee] got $50 million to play with and raised a bunch of outside money, and so they were kind of grudgingly satisfied. In fact, there had been a plan to explore darker elements of America’s past, which, when Trump won, they dropped, because the White House doesn’t like doing that.
Much has been made of the concert series. Can you talk us through where that all began and where we are right now?
There was an idea that came out of the White House-led arm that I think is kind of a fun idea: a Great American State Fair, to have the spirit of state fairs — which are, in fact, genuinely delightful American institutions — on the Mall in Washington. And as part of that, there would be big concerts with beloved artists.
Artists in general, most of them have learned lessons about staying away from politics. [And] Donald Trump is very unpopular right now, which I think has made it particularly hard for him to get any mainstream, popular artists to appear. So what they wound up with was a lineup of lesser artists of the ’90s and the early 2000s: C+C Music Factory: Young MC of the great hit “Bust A Move;” and Vanilla Ice.
I’m a child of the ’80s. I would’ve enjoyed this, but it was kind of an embarrassing lineup to begin with. And then when Young MC realized that he had been, in his view, snookered into doing the pro-Trump version rather than the bipartisan version, he dropped out.
Usually, when you book an artist for something like this, you don’t see this happen, because everybody signs the contract — they realize what they’re signing onto. But these guys are also sensitive to social media and, apparently, did not want any kind of association with the White House or Donald Trump.
And so, only Vanilla Ice is left.
What else is planned? There’s the UFC fight drawing a lot of attention. Any of the initial state fair elements preserved? Do we get a big Ferris wheel?
There will be carnival elements. I’m not sure if there’re going to be giant pigs and cows, but that’s always a fun state fair feature. But mostly, there’s just going to be Donald Trump.
I mean, it’s the most classic cycle of American politics: Trump says, “I want to put on a big bipartisan spectacle,” and it leans a little more partisan than Democrats and these artists are comfortable with, and they drop out, and Trump says, “Well, fine. I’m just going to turn this into a hyper-partisan rally for myself.” Democrats say, “Well, you were always going to do that anyway.” And he says, “No, you forced me into it.” And it’s kind of worse than doing nothing in the end, if the goals were bringing Americans together to celebrate the birthday.
I do think the White House detects an opportunity to accuse Democrats of not being patriotic enough and of selling out America’s birthday celebration. And I think some Democrats are mildly worried that the party will be somehow cast as unpatriotic. But as this thing continues to spiral, I think most Americans likely will just see it as the latest Washington hyper-partisan antics.
This could have been fun, let’s be honest.
I mean, it could still be fun. You don’t know until you go.
It could still be fun. Are you going to go?
If I can, yeah. I live up in New York, so I’ll have to make the trip down.
I’m already predicting — and I could be wrong — that the partisan nature of it will make it less fun than it could have been if we had all agreed to get along.
Maybe less fun for you, more fun for others. It’s actually one of the features of Trump rallies that I think his opponents miss is that they’re very fun for the people who go.
That’s a very good point. So I was going to ask whether Donald Trump actually cares about the people attending, and I think what I’m hearing you say is if they’re his supporters, yeah, he does care that they have a good time.
Yeah, I think he wants to throw a big party for his supporters and not for the “haters and losers.”
What do we know about the fireworks?
Trump loves spectacle. He’s talking about building a massive triumphal arch, although honestly, I’m not sure which triumph it intends to commemorate. If he’s going to have a firework show, it’ll be the biggest firework show in history. Hide your dogs.
