Agape

"DO YOU THINK OBUMA [sic] OR SLEEPY JOE BIDEN COULD HAVE DONE IT?"

On the 250th birthday of the United States, America deserved a president who stood before the nation with humility, honoring the generations who sacrificed to build it. Instead, even on one of the most significant anniversaries in our country’s history, Donald Trump made the celebration revolve around Donald Trump.

Hours before he took the stage, he told Fox News’ Bret Baier that he would deliver the speech no matter what. Baier warned him there might not be anyone left in the audience after the weather evacuations. Trump’s response: “I don’t care. It’s America 250. If they can storm the beaches on D-Day, I can deliver a speech and we can keep this program going.” He compared reading a teleprompter behind bulletproof glass to the men who ran into machine gun fire on the beaches of Normandy. And he said it while a 107-year-old D-Day veteran who commanded landing craft on that beach was waiting to stand beside him on the same stage.

Even earlier in the day, Trump’s America was on full display in a different and more dangerous way. While so many of us were celebrating its 250th birthday, with days at the beach, family cookouts, parades, and coming together for parties all over the country, roughly 400 masked men marched through the streets of the nation’s capital carrying Confederate flags and chanting “Reclaim America.” They wore matching uniforms of navy blue shirts, khaki pants, and white face coverings to hide their identities. They carried shields and drums and marched in military formation through Capitol Hill neighborhoods, past Union Station, and toward the U.S. Capitol. They called for the removal of immigrants. A Georgetown Law professor posted on social media: “What kind of fascist hellscape is happening on Pennsylvania Ave at the Eastern Market Metro stop?” And then they boarded the Metro and left, disappearing back into the suburbs.

They are a white nationalist, white supremacist organization founded after the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, where a white nationalist drove his car into a crowd of people and killed a woman named Heather Heyer. They call themselves Patriot Front. The Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, and George Washington University’s Program on Extremism all classify them as a hate group. Their logo is modeled after the fasces, the bundled sticks and axe that served as the symbol of Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party in Italy. Their manifesto says “democracy has failed this once great nation” and calls for a “hard reset” to return to the traditions of their forefathers, whom they identify exclusively as European settlers. Leaked internal documents obtained by USA Today show they have more than 540 members across 49 states, have roughly doubled in size every year, and their leader, a 27-year-old from Texas named Thomas Rousseau, set a recruitment goal of 600 members by July 4, 2026, specifically timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary. Today’s march was the culmination of that goal. A former counterterrorism official from the Department of Homeland Security even went so far as to say: “The fact that they feel empowered to engage in public demonstrations during Independence Day provides a stark illustration of the issues this country is dealing with at this time as it relates to white supremacy.”

One photograph from Reuters has been circulating all day. It shows a Black woman sitting alone on the D.C. Metro, surrounded by masked Patriot Front members filling the train car around her. It is a photograph that captures two competing visions of America: one rooted in intimidation and racial supremacy, the other in the simple courage of existing without surrendering to fear. It is difficult to imagine a more haunting image to emerge from America’s 250th birthday. This is Donald Trump’s America.

The fact that they covered their faces shows the cowardice in their movement. They hide their faces because they know what they are doing is wrong. They know it goes against everything this country was built on. They know that if their neighbors, employers, and their families saw them marching through the streets carrying Confederate flags and demanding a white ethnostate, there would be consequences. So they cover their faces. The founders of this country signed the Declaration of Independence with their real names, knowing it could cost them their lives. That is what courage in service of a belief looks like. Fascist movements have always hidden behind anonymity to do their ugliest work. The Klan wore hoods for the same reason. The cowardice is not incidental to the ideology. It stands in direct contrast to every single one of us who is out here every day, using our real names, showing our real faces, and saying what we believe regardless of the cost.

That is the America Donald Trump is building. Not the one he described in his speech. Not the America of courage, sacrifice, and shared purpose that he borrowed from the mouths of better men to fill 38 minutes behind glass.

And those masked men did not come out of nowhere. They are the product of years of rhetoric that teaches Americans to fear one another, divide themselves into enemies and patriots, and believe that only certain people truly belong here. Tonight, Donald Trump stood on that stage and declared, “We are one people. We are one family. With one flag.” He praised America as “the greatest force for peace and justice on earth.” He spoke of “the enduring victory of the American spirit.” He even said, “Across the generations, Americans have fought, bled, and died... to expand those rights to citizens of every race, religion, color, and creed.” Those are beautiful words. But words are measured against actions, not applause.

He never condemned these anti-American thugs. He never acknowledged that one of the country’s most prominent white supremacist organizations chose the 250th birthday of the United States as the culmination of a years-long recruitment campaign. His silence was his approval.

And then there was the contradiction that was impossible to ignore. During the same speech, Trump warned that communism is “like a cancer” and said, “You’ve got to cut it out. You’ve got to cut it out fast.” He repeatedly cast political opponents and fellow Americans he disagrees with as communists and existential threats to the country. He has spent years teaching his supporters that their fellow citizens are enemies, so it should come as no surprise that extremist movements feel emboldened enough to march openly through the nation’s capital. Those masked men did not appear overnight. They are the product of his political climate that has been cultivated for over a decade.

Throughout his speech, on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Trump told the crowd that the document says “we are all made in the image of one Almighty God.” But that is not what the Declaration of Independence says. It says we are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” He was quoting Genesis, not the Declaration, and either he does not know the difference or he does not care. He followed it by saying, “And a communist will never say that. That’s for sure.”

What the country desperately needed on this birthday was a president who could stand before the nation and acknowledge the sacrifices of the people who carried us these 250 years. Acknowledge the shortcomings and failures alongside the triumphs. And promise to keep trying to deliver on the promise of what could be the greatest nation the world has ever known. You could tell the speechwriter tried to work in something that could be delivered as a unifying vision while still working in Trump’s conspiracy theories and manufactured enemies. Because even on the 250th birthday of our country, this administration could not stop itself. It could not let the nation or the dream of better days have one single moment without making it about him.

What Donald Trump does not understand, and perhaps never will, is that America survived 250 years because of Americans. Every trial, every moment that could have broken us, did not break us. We survived political assassinations. We survived September 11th. We confronted fascism abroad and communism during the Cold War. We survived a Civil War where brothers fought brothers and families were torn apart. And we have carried the weight of our original sins ever since. Enslaving human beings and subjecting them to unimaginable cruelty. Stealing land from Native peoples, breaking treaty after treaty. Forcing Japanese Americans into internment camps, where they lost their homes, their businesses, and their dignity simply because of who they were. The long struggle for civil rights. The fight for LGBTQIA+ equality. The unfinished work of equal rights for women, still not fully reflected in our Constitution.

Every one of those chapters left a wound on this country that has never fully healed. But in every one of those chapters, the American spirit was not found in the powerful. It was found in the people who were treated the worst. The enslaved people who built this country with their hands and their blood. Native communities who survived genocide and still preserved their cultures, their languages, and their dignity. Japanese American families who walked out of internment camps and rebuilt their lives in a nation that had betrayed them. Immigrants who crossed oceans knowing they might never survive the journey, but believing the hope of a better life for their children was stronger than their fear. The workers who organized. The women who marched. The Black Americans who faced fire hoses, police dogs, and lynch mobs in pursuit of equal justice. The LGBTQIA+ community that refused to disappear despite decades of persecution. Those are the people who carried this country for 250 years. Not the man behind the bulletproof glass. Not the men hiding behind masks.

Donald Trump is right about one thing. We do have the best of the best in this country. We always have. They are the people willing to cross oceans knowing the journey might kill them. The people willing to cross deserts and rivers knowing they may never make it. The people willing to leave behind everything they have ever known because they believed, even against overwhelming odds, that this place was worth the risk. That is the American spirit. It always has been.

The United States is the land of opportunity. Not because we have always lived up to that promise, but because generation after generation has fought to bring us closer to it. We have never been a perfect nation. We have never been fair to everyone. Even 250 years later, we are still trying to finish work that should have been completed long ago. But the promise has always been there. And if enough of us refuse to surrender it, if enough of us stand up, speak out, organize, vote, and insist that America belongs to all of us, not just the powerful or the privileged, then we can become the country we have always been striving to be.

On our country’s 250th birthday, Donald Trump’s goal was not simply to celebrate America. It was to consolidate power. Not like a president entrusted by the people, but like a monarch who believes the nation exists to serve him. Not representing ordinary Americans, but the billionaire Epstein class that sees democracy as an obstacle to wealth, power, and permanent control.

Tonight, he stood before the country and once again pointed his followers toward their fellow Americans instead of our real challenges. That is the language authoritarian movements have always depended on. First convince people their neighbors are enemies. Then convince them extraordinary measures are justified to eliminate those enemies.

He has already shown us who he intends to target. Scientists and doctors who dedicate their lives to protecting public health. Journalists and commentators who refuse to repeat government propaganda. Teachers, researchers, public servants, immigrants, and anyone who continues speaking the truth when the truth becomes inconvenient to those in power. He has targeted people with disabilities and members of our neurodivergent communities, people whose perspectives, talents, and innovations have strengthened this country in ways history rarely gives them credit for. He has targeted immigrants, the very people whose courage and determination have renewed America generation after generation.

Ultimately, though, this isn’t about any one group. It never is. It is about all of us. Because the first freedom our founders protected was the freedom to speak without fear of the government. Without that freedom, there is no meaningful democracy. Without people willing to expose corruption, challenge injustice, and defend the Constitution, there is no America worthy of celebrating.

And that is why, on the 250th birthday of a nation built by generations of ordinary people, Donald Trump stood on the National Mall and spoke as though he alone embodied America. But he does not.

We are not the only ones who said that today. Four former presidents released statements on the 250th, and they all carried the same message: democracy is not finished, and every generation has to fight for it. Barack Obama wrote, “America is a constant work in progress. Every generation must take up the unfinished work of the last and carry it further.” Bill Clinton released the sharpest statement of the day, writing that “the people in charge have unleashed masked agents on American communities to seize people from their homes, workplaces, and the street,” that they have “started an unconstitutional war on a whim, with no clear objectives or exit strategy,” and that they have “weaponized government to settle personal scores, prosecute enemies, stamp out free speech, and made the federal government a new profit center for themselves and their allies.” He called it what it is: “Their New Deal is socialism for the super-rich.” And then he reminded us what the founders actually meant when they wrote the words “more perfect union.” “They knew America would never be perfect but could always be better,” Clinton wrote. “That’s what they meant by ‘more perfect.’ We’ve done that by being courageous enough to acknowledge our flaws.”

And Timothy Snyder, the historian who wrote “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century,” assembled dozens of voices, Sarah Jessica Parker, Mark Ruffalo, Joan Baez, Margaret Atwood, Ted Danson, Eric Holder, Billy Porter, Sheryl Lee Ralph, and many more, to read the book’s 20 lessons for resisting authoritarianism in a video released today as direct counterprogramming to Trump’s celebration. Snyder wrote that those who lead the official celebration “represent every threat to liberty that the founders named: arbitrary rule, indifference to law, undue accumulation of wealth, corruption of the government to attain that wealth, collusion with foreign powers to attain power.” And the video ended with these words from Sarah Jessica Parker: “The lesson of America is not that freedom was given. It is that freedom was defended. Again and again. By people who refused to give up on one another. The next 250 years begin now. What happens next is not inevitable. It depends on us.”

Donald Trump wants us to believe that America’s 250th birthday is the beginning of his golden age. But the golden age he is building is not for us. It is for his enablers. It is for the men in masks. It is for the people who want to concentrate power so completely that the rest of us never get a say again. The real golden ages of America have always been the ones we build together. The promise of this country was never that it would be perfect. The promise was that it would keep trying. And we will never stop trying. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,