This is an adapted excerpt from the June 24 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”

If you saw any of President Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair on Wednesday evening, you might have thought you were watching one of the president’s rallies.

While the 16-day event was billed as a free, nonpartisan celebration of America’s 250th birthday, with no ulterior motives and with nobody benefiting aside from Americans, that was clearly not the case.

Wednesday’s festivities were produced, at least in part, by Event Strategies Inc., the production company behind Trump’s rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021. It’s also the same company that The New York Times reported has received millions of dollars’ worth of no-bid contracts since the president retook office.

But Event Strategies is just one of the many companies that the Times reported have received millions in no-bid contracts from the Trump administration related to the country’s 250th birthday. The White House argues that because the July 4 deadline is looming, they didn’t have time to go through the whole bidding process.

Now, for anyone out there thinking, “Well, doesn’t it make sense for the government to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday?” You are absolutely correct. The country should be celebrating. That is why a decade ago, Congress created a nonpartisan nonprofit called “America 250” to help plan and produce a celebration.

But that is not the group behind events like the Great American State Fair. You see, the Trump administration decided to make its own group, and instead of America 250, this group is confusingly called Freedom 250.

It is Freedom 250 that just so happened to hire the firm from Trump’s Jan. 6 Ellipse rally. It is Freedom 250 that decided the academic institutions to partner with for this celebration of American history should include the right-wing media outlet PragerU, which, despite its name, is not a university.

And all of these pro-Trump, pro-MAGA festivities are costing quite a lot of money. Some of that money is coming from private donors. As the Times reported, Freedom 250 got some of its funds by offering perks to private sponsors. For half a million bucks, sponsors could get their logo featured at Freedom 250 events. For a million bucks, sponsors could get access to Trump himself.

But, of course, a lot of these festivities are being paid for with your tax dollars. 

The nonprofit watchdog groups The Revolving Door Project and Public Citizen have tracked nearly $103 million worth of public contracts and grants from the White House to what the groups described as “a network of politicized entities under the control of Trump administration officials and political allies.”

And they’re doing so all under the guise of America’s 250th birthday.

Allison Detzel contributed.

The post Following the money behind Trump’s Freedom 250 celebrations appeared first on MS NOW.

Author: Source Author

From MS Now.