This is an adapted excerpt from the July 6 episode of “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

As we headed toward America’s 250th anniversary, there was a lot of looking back at what we had done for previous big-number anniversaries of the country’s founding.

There was a lot of looking back, for example, at all the groovy ways we celebrated the country’s bicentennial, its 200th anniversary, in 1976. And if you look back at the press that year, you’ll find that 50 years ago, they were also looking back at previous big celebrations, like the 100-year celebration — the centennial — in 1876, when we had a big world’s fair in Philadelphia.

We haven’t always done a great job at these celebrations. In 1926, for example, they tried to give the Ku Klux Klan a permit for a “klonvocation,” a big KKK parade, at the sesquicentennial, before someone finally thought better of the idea.

Now we just had our big celebration. When future Americans look back at this year’s anniversary, what will they be able to say we did? 

On Saturday, President Donald Trump marked the occasion with a speech in Washington, where his followers reportedly argued with the Secret Service and police, refusing orders to evacuate the area due to a lightning storm. One supporter told a New York Times reporter they didn’t want to leave because they thought it was “liberals in the weather service” conspiring against them.

The president also threw a fair, his underwhelming 16-day Great American State Fair, which is set to come to a close on July 10. Last week, a group of dancers performing on the National Mall was nearly struck by a big, gold piece of the stage falling down.

There was also a military flyover of the National Mall. But was that kind of … everything? Was that all the federal government of the United States was capable of doing? For its 250th birthday?

For the kind of leader we have in the White House now, this anniversary was always going to be too much about the country and not enough about him. So really the only things he even tried to do for the anniversary were about him.

Here’s a federal government that spent the 250th anniversary of its founding rolling out a passport with Trump’s face on it, a Trump commemorative gold coin and Trump-signed $100 bills. It also wants to put Trump’s portrait on a $250 bill.  

At Trump’s state fair, attendees were met with what looked like a staple-gunned wooden model of the arch he wants to build for himself in the nation’s capital. 

The president also paid a visit to Mount Rushmore, after years of suggesting that his face be added to the monument. 

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Soboroff: America at 250 is an unfinished story

July 4, 2026 / 07:42

None of these things are even about the country, let alone for it. 

In 49 years and 362 days from now (if and when we hit our 300th anniversary), the way this government marked the country’s 250th anniversary will be looked back on as feckless and failed, a truly laughable effort by the cult of personality for a would-be dictator who is more unpopular than just about any other president in the history of the presidency — but who is nevertheless trying to turn the country into Trumpistan.

The one real national story we can happily tell about this anniversary will be that, by a coincidence of the calendar, one of the really great things happening all over the country on this 250th birthday was that people from all over the world came to the United States to celebrate the World Cup. 

It was something Trump hadn’t really acknowledged at all — and maybe didn’t even know was happening, because it wasn’t about him. That was until Sunday, when we learned that Trump had decided to foul that up, too. He has admitted he called FIFA President Gianni Infantino about a U.S. player who was given a one-game suspension. (That suspension was later lifted, a decision Infantino said had nothing to do with Trump’s call.)

So now, the triumph of good vibes unfolding from the World Cup despite everything else our government is screwing up under Trump instead became an instant global outrage about Trump corrupting the World Cup.

It should be noted that Trump commemorated the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding this weekend by posting a racist, fake image of former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama in a fake Air Force One that was covered in graffiti. As The Associated Press delicately noted, “The use of graffiti is a coded message to remind people of crime and urban decay and has been used in racist messaging against Black people in the past.” The AP also pointed out that this latest post came after “another racist post by President Trump that showed the couple as primates in a jungle.”

Happy 250th anniversary, America. How far we’ve come.

That said, we are not our government. The country is a heck of a lot more than whoever’s botching things and disgracing themselves in the White House.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, the local chapter of Indivisible marked Independence Day by using their bodies to spell out “2547,”  as in, use the 25th Amendment to declare Trump unfit and incompetent and remove him from office. They did that in Tulsa’s 96-degree heat.

It felt that hot in Minneapolis on Independence Day, as people held a mock funeral in the streets to commemorate those who have died in Trump’s immigrant prisons since he’s been back in office.

Even though the president and his top campaign donor, Elon Musk, looted all the money Congress set aside for small towns and local communities to mark the 250th anniversary, people are still doing cool stuff all over the country to mark the occasion.

Remember, this celebration goes all year long. The anniversary we just celebrated was for the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which took place on July 4, 1776. But the Declaration was not actually read out loud to the people until 6 p.m. on July 8, 1776.

At 6 p.m. ET on July 8 this week, people all over the country are going to simultaneously read the words of the declaration to commemorate the first time that we the people heard it.

So, despite Trump’s attempts to make this all about him, this anniversary is really for all of us to celebrate the way we see fit. The way we’ll want to be proud of, and the way we’ll want our generation to be remembered 50 years from now, 100 years from now and, God willing, 250 more years down the road.

Allison Detzel contributed.

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