TEMPER TANTRUM - Trump to hold rally after artists BAIL on his “Freedom 250” concert

[0:00] With America's 250th anniversary just weeks away, President Trump's efforts to get celebrities to [0:06] attend his big celebration are collapsing. In just the last hour, President Trump floated the idea [0:12] of canceling the event altogether and instead turning it into a political rally. Trump writing [0:17] online, quote, we should have a giant make America great again rally for 250 instead of having [0:24] overpriced singers who nobody wants to hear, whose music is boring and yet who do nothing but [0:30] complain. This follows a slew of performers who backed out claiming they were misled about the [0:35] political associations surrounding the concert. Eddie Gallagher Jr. is back with us. So, Eddie, [0:43] Donald Trump had a vision that he wanted this 250th celebration that coincided with his birthday [0:50] to be and it's falling apart. What do you make of that? Well, I think, you know, there's obviously [0:57] a kind of cultural backlash that he's lost popular culture in a way we could all just kind of revel [1:02] in Jimmy Kimmel, making fun of him. That's a good thing. But there's a sense in which he's trying to [1:07] tell a particular kind of story of the country. You know, whether it's the $1776 billion slush fund, [1:13] whether it's the $250 bill, whether it's his image on the passport to commemorate the 250th, [1:20] there's an attempt to yoke the celebration of the country to him, to make this indistinguishable. [1:28] And that's really all about, in my view, imagining the country in a specific sort of way where certain [1:33] people play minor bit parts and other folk, his folk, are centered in the story of the country. [1:40] So, I mean, it's also pretty self-protective. If you don't want to come to my birthday party, [1:46] you're skipping out on. But not even that. It's, you're not going to America's birthday party. [1:52] I mean, I think it's a little on the nose to have something called, what is it? Freedom 250 collapse. [1:58] You got the freedom to leave. [2:00] Hold on. Show that graphic again. Flow ride is still going. [2:04] Okay. [2:05] Let's be very clear. Vanilla ice and flow ride are absolutely still going. [2:09] It's a, it's, it's a metaphor for something. And that's something is something I don't really [2:14] want to carry to its logical conclusion. Um, there it is. [2:19] It's a freedom. It's a freedom. It's a freedom. There it is. [2:20] It's a nice, lovely, bipartisan event where American icons, it just doesn't have to be this way. [2:27] Why can't we have nice things? [2:30] Every milestone anniversary, I argue this in the book, every milestone anniversary for the country, [2:34] whether it's the centennial, whether it's the sesquicentennial, 150th or the bicentennial, [2:40] the country has to tell a story about its founding, a story about itself, [2:43] but it's happening in the moment of extraordinary contradiction. [2:47] The vexations of the nation are in full view. 1876, reconstructions collapsing, [2:53] violent coups across the South, Koufax in Louisiana, Vicksburg, South Carolina, Hamburg, [2:59] South Carolina. People are dying as Democrats, former Confederates are taking over government. [3:04] In 1926, this is the decade of the Klan. That year, the Klan, deep roast, hooded sheets, [3:11] marching down Washington, D.C., claiming the Immigration Act of 1924 as one of its crowning [3:17] achievements, an Immigration Act that this, today, people are trying to go back to. [3:22] 1976, I wore red, white, and blue pants. I was eight years old. [3:27] You have to do it this year, too. [3:29] No, no, no. But think about it. We're longing for consensus in 1976. Watergate, Vietnam, [3:36] Black Power. In these moments, the contradiction of the country, that it wants to be a beacon, [3:42] imagine itself as a beacon of freedom and as a white republic, is in full view. Today, [3:49] Trump and his minions are trying to imagine the country in a particular sort of way, [3:53] and it's not working. [3:55] Well, so how do you think historians of the future, the equivalent of you, not that you have any [4:00] equivalent out there, but... [4:01] Not that you will live forever, obviously. [4:03] You will live forever, whatever. The next generation, the next generation. [4:07] How will they recall this moment? How would the sequel to this book get written about this moment, [4:13] 25 years from now? [4:14] What we do. I said on this show before that we're in a second lost cause. And when we think about the [4:20] collapse of Reconstruction, there are two facets. Of course, there's redemption. That's the violence, [4:26] the disenfranchisement of Black folk. But then there's the epistemic violence, the violence on [4:31] what we know, how we see, the knowledge, the story we tell. And so Du Bois writes Black Reconstruction [4:37] in 1935 in order to challenge a particular story. Well, what Trump and America 250 or Freedom 250, [4:44] what they're going to try to do is to tell a story of the country that emphasizes a particular [4:50] understanding of America as white. Immigration is part of... The immigration policy is a part of that. [4:57] The disenfranchisement of Black folk, a part of that. All of this. So what they're going to look [5:01] up, look back, is what choice did we make in the face of this attempt to seize the story of America? [5:08] It occurs to me that we are being taped. And so if anybody is digging up this footage [5:13] in the future, I just want them to know. It is exactly as stupid as it looks. [5:20] I mean... [5:20] Obligatory is on the record. [5:22] Yeah, for my grandkids, this is the camera, it was exactly this dumb. [5:27] Yeah. [5:27] And I think one of the things that's sort of almost bizarrely refreshing, Eddie, [5:32] about seeing all the people pulling out of this thing, it's this reminder that in D.C. in Congress, [5:38] you've done a whole show about the fear that Republicans still have towards this president, [5:43] you have people out who are seemingly unencumbered by the political pressure, [5:48] just saying, yeah, this is also something that we don't want to be a part of at all. [5:52] Yeah. But at the same time, we have Delaney Hall. At the same time, we have redistricting across the [5:58] South. At the same time, we have all the trains are running that's undermining our democracy. [6:04] Let's be clear. It's dumb, but it's us. [6:07] Yes. [6:08] What's so fascinating and shocking, I try to show this in the book, are the repetitions. [6:12] If you look in 1926, Hiram Wesley Evans, the grand wizard of the KKK, [6:19] writes a piece in the North American Review, and what he's arguing sounds exactly like MAGA. [6:25] MAGA, 1926. So even though we see these cracks and fragments in MAGA now, right, we need to [6:34] understand the repetition is clear. We already, just really quickly, Texas, Cornyn got his behind, [6:41] handed to him. Cassidy came in third. Indiana, we saw it. So even though we see the fracture of the [6:48] coalition, we still have something really, really troublesome at the heart of the country [6:54] that's driving the madness that consumes us. [6:57] Right. It's that line about history repeating and also rhyming. [7:00] Oh, that's Twain. [7:00] In this case, Eddie Glaude, the music is horrific on a bunch of different levels, I suppose. [7:07] Thank you for everything, Professor.