Trump's tawdry fourth
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June of 2026 will be remembered as a month of accumulating disgrace in the United States of America, a nation stumbling toward the commemoration of one of the most consequential anniversaries in the history of humanity, while led by the most vulgar and unworthy president in its history.
Every spectacle, every insult, every tawdry act of narcissism and desecration will build toward July 4th, when Donald Trump will once again hijack something sacred that has nothing to do with him, and turn it into another cheap celebration of self.
That’s what he does.
He diminishes everything he touches.
The White House stands now as the perfect symbol of it all.
Trump has wrecked it.
He has debased the People’s House with the aesthetic sensibilities of a pimp turned bankrupt casino operator and reality television performer, who confuses excess for greatness and spectacle for dignity.
It’s appalling.
Democrats should run on this image.
The wreckage of the White House is the wreckage of an idea.
It’s the vandalizing of a dream born in Philadelphia and carried forward through blood sacrifice at Gettysburg, Normandy, Selma and countless places where Americans struggled toward the realization of a revolutionary proposition: that all men are created equal, that rights come from God and not kings, and that liberty belongs to ordinary people, not strongmen.
When the American Revolution succeeded, the Marquis de Lafayette exclaimed with joy:
Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country.
What would Lafayette say now?
What would Washington think? Lincoln? Roosevelt? Eisenhower? Kennedy?
What would they make of a president who desecrates the office he holds, degrades the Constitution he swore to preserve, protect and defend, and surrounds himself with flatterers, extremists, opportunists and carnival barkers whose highest loyalty is not to the republic, but to the ego of one corrupted and degenerate man?
We’re living through an epoch of transgression against American liberty and constitutional government unequalled in modern American history. Donald Trump is faithless to his oath. He’s unmoored from reality, dignity, decency, integrity, honor or grace. He’s the lowest and worst of American presidents, a national cancer empowered by a movement animated by grievance, ignorance, spectacle and rage.
The court of Donald Trump resembles the court of Nero.
The weird, dishonest and sycophantic gather there. The angry and the disordered gather there. They cheer the destruction because destruction is the point.
Every day in June will bring another stunt, another absurdity, another spectacle. Cheap marketing nonsense. Schtick. Self-glorification. A parade of vulgarity meant to prepare the country for a grotesque Fourth of July celebration centered not on the country, but on the man who seeks to dominate it.
And looming over all of it will be the planned UFC spectacle on the desecrated grounds of the White House itself.
Think carefully about that.
A cage fight on the grounds of the People’s House.
Not during the collapse of Rome. Not in some dictatorship in decline. Here. In the United States of America.
It will be among the most sordid spectacles in the history of the presidency. Millions of Americans will look at it with revulsion and shame. The rest — the dwindling ranks of Trump’s dead-enders and fanatics — will cheer as the republic is degraded before their eyes.
The economy is cracking. The country is exhausted. Public indecency is rampant. Corruption is normalized. Cruelty is celebrated.
Every day this month Americans will be forced to reflect on what has been lost, and what future generations will inherit because of the cowardice, fanaticism and indifference of this generation.
Donald Trump has taken something from America that will never fully be recovered.
He has stolen national greatness by incinerating national goodness.
He has bent the arc of history toward cruelty and injustice.
He has repudiated the ideals of the American Revolution in both word and deed.
He has assaulted government of the people, by the people and for the people. He has sought repeatedly to incinerate the Constitution itself.
Donald Trump is the greatest threat to the American republic since the Confederacy.
The most dangerous days of Trumpism aren’t behind us — they lie ahead.
Get ready.
The diptych of the White House speaks volumes.
Another powerful pairing would be the Capitol Rotunda at a solemn moment, and during thee J6 insurrection.
Democrats should indeed run on these images. It's disappointing to me that the DNCC continue to prioritize fundraising with a barrage of anodyne emails, while failing to capture the public imagination with ideas.
The Atlantic just published a companion piece by David Frum, on the same topic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/05/trump-250-truth/687384/?
It’s taken a while, but it seems that the judiciary might be taking a stand. Not the DOJ but the plaintiffs themselves by getting disgusted enough to sue, and the judges who are brave enough to follow the law. It has taken too long, but at last we are standing up. Maybe this will be The Warning that will topple this regime.