Trump’s makes America's 250th birthday about...HIM

[0:00] One week from today, the United States of America will turn 250 years old. [0:04] And instead of one big nonpartisan commemoration, as the congressionally authorized commission had planned for, [0:12] President Trump is throwing his own celebration at the same time and making it, guess, all about him. [0:19] In a campaign style rally on the National Mall, the president headlined a kickoff to what he is calling the Great American State Fair. [0:27] Just one part of the 250th festivities. [0:31] And rather than using his remarks to celebrate the country's founding, he touted his political achievements and pressed the case that he's the one making America better. [0:39] Since the agreement, the stock market and your 401ks are skyrocketing upward and oil prices are plummeting downward today. [0:50] It hit a new low and the world is a much safer place. [0:54] We had to make that little journey to Iran to do what we did. [0:58] Very soon, you'll be at $2.50 a gallon for gasoline. [1:04] One week, Iran was essentially finished. [1:08] In one hour, Venezuela was finished. [1:11] And I guess we have other things in store, but we don't want to get carried away. [1:16] And there's a lot more where that came from. [1:20] Next week, Trump will celebrate America's birthday by giving a keynote speech at Mount Rushmore [1:25] and holding a rally at the Washington Monument on Independence Day. [1:28] Joining us now is presidential historian John Meacham. [1:32] He's also a New York Times bestselling author of the book American Struggle, Democracy, Dissent and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union. [1:38] John, thanks for being with us this morning. [1:41] So the president has stamped himself on U.S. passports, wants to be put on Mount Rushmore. [1:46] Everything about the 250th, he is making about himself. [1:51] Have you seen any parallel, any precedent for a president doing these things? [1:59] Not for a president, but for a monarch, absolutely. [2:03] One of the ironies of the season, there are two wonderful ones. [2:08] One has just passed. [2:09] One is about to unfold, as you're discussing. [2:11] One was that the king of England came to the United States to, with great subtlety, lecture us about democracy and checks on executive power when Charles III was here. [2:26] I commend his speech to the Congress as a remarkable bit of, I guess he would be a stepfather, wouldn't he? [2:35] I don't know quite where, how one would in a Brady Bunch speech. [2:41] There was a divorce. [2:43] Yeah, I mean, Kpart will help me on this. [2:46] It's like the Brady Bunch meets C-SPAN. [2:50] But somewhere in there, there is a familial relationship. [2:54] Really important speech. [2:56] And the other is, the reason the first week of July is the occasion on which we commemorate the nation's beginning is because of a very specific document. [3:11] It was a very specific document that articulated a lasting creed, imperfectly realized, but a mission statement. [3:21] And then most of the Declaration of Independence is a list of grievances against George III. [3:30] And much of it was about George III acting unilaterally, acting outside his constitutional bounds by not stopping bad things from happening. [3:43] And so, as Thomas Paine said in this season, we ask in America, where is the king? [3:52] The king is above, where the law is. [3:55] And I think it's important for us. [3:59] It's always, someone like me, this will stun you, thinks it's important for us to read these documents. [4:05] But it's really important now, right? [4:07] We're not messing around anymore. [4:09] This isn't fourth grade civics, right? [4:11] This is advanced, complicated, an advanced, complicated test of our civic understanding of who we truly have to be. [4:23] I want to read something for you, John, from The Guardian. [4:27] A milestone anniversary, like 250 years of independence, calls for the epic vision of a John F. Kennedy, the immaculate timing of Ronald Reagan, or the soaring oratory of a Barack Obama. [4:39] What it got instead on Wednesday was an 80-year-old convicted criminal who appeared in Home Alone 2 and seems hell-bent on dividing the country. [4:48] The president turned a national celebration and potential moment of unity into just another Trump campaign rally. [4:56] President Grant and I think President Ford both spoke at different, you know, a centennial and a bicentennial. [5:03] Without partisan fanfare, when you look at and think about how the founding fathers, 250 years ago, tussled and fought and figured out what this country was going to be like, [5:17] they envisioned trying to stop a monarch and making sure we didn't have a monarch. [5:22] But then at the same time, there does seem in a lot of places a lot of success for Donald Trump. [5:27] So as you take stock, a presidential historian, someone who loves this country and thinks deeply about this stuff, [5:33] as you take stock of where the country is on July 4th, how do you really think these, whether or not we have been prepared by these founding documents for someone like Donald Trump? [5:46] It's a great question, John. [5:48] And I don't often say that to you. [5:50] So that's a good one. [5:52] We're old friends. [5:55] I think it's a profound question because what it said and my answer is Donald Trump is the manifestation of a deeper moral problem in the country. [6:16] And our moral problem is that too many people have chosen division, and let's be honest, the fun of division. [6:33] The folks, the MAGA warriors, they find joy in the fight. [6:39] They find that having not a rival or an opponent, but an enemy, to be this elevating drama that invests every moment with importance. [6:52] Richard Hofstetter wrote about this, among others, long ago, that part of the paranoid style in American politics, to use Hofstetter's image, was about civilization is always at the brink. [7:06] We're always at the barricades. [7:08] If we always don't slay this particular foe, it will all end, and the elites and the hidden forces will take over. [7:16] And I think too many of us have fallen prey to that kind of thinking. [7:25] And it's not to say I'm guilty, often have been, of hyperbole and perhaps overreaction and all of that. [7:34] So this is a sinner, this is a saint coming from very much a sinner, and not somebody pretending to be morally superior. [7:44] Because I know how difficult, you know how difficult it is for a democracy to work on a moral level. [7:53] And why is that? [7:54] Because it requires the most counterintuitive of things. [7:58] It requires us to give as well as to take. [8:01] And it's a hell of a lot more fun to take than to give. [8:07] And I fear the great cultural legacy of President Trump will be that giving is for suckers, as he might put it, and taking is for winners. [8:19] And that's precisely the opposite of what the country has to be. [8:24] John, if we are looking through the calendar of events in the lead-up to July 4th, we're almost halfway through the agenda with the great American State Fair kickoff happening this week. [8:40] The Daily Beast wrote it up. [8:42] And I'm sure some of our viewers have seen pictures of the event that was staged on the mall. [8:50] Attendees who came from all over the country were met with Trumpy installations, empty booths, melted ice cream. [8:55] And for some reason, a cow named after First Lady Melania Trump. [8:59] It's sort of hard after the Nixon Five blew up New York City, not to have that be sort of my point of comparison for these events and the collective effervescence that resulted as after the Knicks won the NBA playoffs. [9:20] Because if that is sort of like the public picture we are thinking of, and you're looking back in history at other sort of seminal public moments of big gatherings, [9:32] what do you feel like is required of a leader to pull something like that off, to get people to actually turn out to this programming that the president has decided to put on? [9:44] Well, I think the central rhetorical task of a president in a moment like this is to talk about us and not him. [9:58] So we know that's not going to work. [10:01] Let's just move rapidly, rapidly past that. [10:05] It is to, you know, two of the greatest leaders of the 20th century, you know, in very interesting ways, both started as actors, Ronald Reagan and John Paul II. [10:22] Nobody remembers that, but very few people remember that. [10:25] But John Paul II, who stood against the Iron Curtain at a critical moment, had started out as an actor. [10:33] What do actors do? [10:34] Actors convince you of a story that you may not be able to see or experience, but that you can live. [10:51] And the task of a president in a moment of great commemoration, in a moment of great crisis, in moments of great celebration, [11:02] is to put that particular moment in that chapter, the chapter we're living in, in the great sweep and story of America. [11:15] And that's not about one person by definition. [11:22] It is about all of us. [11:25] The Constitution begins with the words, we the people. [11:30] And the we is the most critical.