Trump Is Making the 250th Small

Most Americans seem to understand that the Fourth of July is about something bigger than ourselves. It is about celebrating our democracy and our role as citizens—as equals—in it. George Washington understood what that meant. In his last will and testament, he described himself as “a citizen of the United States, and lately president of the same.” He cherished being an American citizen—a title he and the other American revolutionaries helped to create—holding that status even more dear than the temporary honor of the presidency.If only Donald Trump understood any of this.Tonight, Trump made a brief appearance at the Great American State Fair in Washington, D.C., which was supposed to be a 250th birthday celebration for the greatest democracy in human history. He treated it instead as a kind of MAGA mini-rally.From the start, the event seemed, at least on television, to have something of a deflated air about it, perhaps because the entertainment lineup was thin. Multiple artists canceled their their participation once they realized that Trump would use the evening for a partisan spectacle rather than a civic celebration. Various musical and choral units of the U.S. armed forces picked up the slack, and some military jets, including a B2 bomber, flew over the crowd, which was nice.Then Trump delivered a short speech, and managed to bring everything down to his level. Which is to say, a presidential moment that could have been celebratory and grand became, like the character of the man himself, very small.After dashing off some boilerplate phrases about American history, Trump went for division, grievance, and self-congratulation. He trotted out the usual rally phrases: The United States was once a dead country, everyone was laughing at us, we’re the hottest country in the world, and so on. He took a reality-challenged victory lap on Iran—even as the Iranians, earlier today, told him to pound sand about nuclear inspections. He assured the American people that he would