RetroFed
Trump hijacked US’s 250 anniversary to serve ‘political ideology and pet projects’, congressional report says
MicroWavehttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/02/trump-hijacked-250-anniversary
House Democratic subcommittee report outlines web of alleged corruption, wire fraud and pay-to-play schemes
Donald Trump staged a hostile takeover of the US’s 250th anniversary celebration to enrich political allies, harvest voter data and promote Christian nationalist ideology, according to a congressional investigation released on Thursday.
The interim report, “From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People Out of Their 250th Birthday”, outlines a web of alleged corruption, wire fraud and pay-to-play schemes orchestrated through a shadow corporation embedded within the National Park Foundation (NPF).
The document was produced by Democratic staff of the House of Representatives’ natural resources committee’s oversight and investigations subcommittee. It has not been officially adopted by the committee.
“Under President Donald Trump, this anniversary has been hijacked and perverted into a hotbed of corruption and self-enrichment,” it states, contending that the machinery built for a national commemoration was converted “into an apparatus for raising and spending money in service of the President’s ego, political ideology, and pet projects.”
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And they wonder why nobody gives a fuck this year…
I have fireworks…but not setting them off on the fourth this year…saving them for the day the big-beautiful-obituary hits the newsstands…
Neighbors are gonna be PISSED.
They should be pissed. The whole country should be pissed. I was around for the 200th, and it was a celebration of all of us. This is a disgusting multi-day rally for one guy, and not a very impressive one, unless you count the grift. Truly amazing, the biggest grift.
Republicans ruin everything. No wonder they are balls-deep on King Merdes. Everything he touches turns to shit.
This could have been one of the coolest July 4th in quite some time. Instead, diaper daddy has to get his grubby mitts on it….
I’ve been watching the crowds (or lack therof) for the “Freedom 250” bullshit in DC and laughing my everloving ass off.. What a fucking joke…
First off, it’s like 1,000 degrees out right now, NO ONE is going to spend all day at the national mall sweating their balls off for a lame ‘state fair’
(It’s my understanding that State Fairs are usually in the fall, because they were originally intended to celebrate the harvest (or the end of it to be specific)
Also the mosquitoes and gnats and those biting flies that the East has can be annoying AF. At least in the late fall, as long as you don’t have an overly warm year, most of that is done with.
I cannot imagine hanging out in DC in 100 degree weather in July. Being stuck in a bullshit fair like this on top of it? 🤮
At least you don’t have to wait in line.
I never understood American patriotism outside of celebrating Sherman’s based war crime strategy, and parts of WW2.
On a related note, we need a federal holiday specifically recognizing Sherman’s patriotic and glorious March to the Sea.
I kind of understand patriotism…what I don’t understand is how, in the US, the people who are the “most patriotic” are the ones that usually hate everything about the government…
Nah patriotism in the US is a facade for white Christian colonizer nationalism.
Fuck them all.
They treat patriotism as a contest and most of their personality.
Yeah, they usually confuse nationalistic performative bullshit for patriotism. Don’t let them steal real patriotism from everyone else.
Just because they plaster the flag (and the flag of racists and traitorous losers, too, WTF?!) all over everything and talk about Jesus and the Constitution …. does not a patriot make.
president dipshit needs to be paying for this whole failed event out-of-pocket (HIS not ours). taxpayers should not be paying even one cent towards a politically motivated and themed multi-day ‘rally’.
When he’s out, we need to confiscate his entire fortune, for fines, reparations, repayments, repairs, and general remediation for everything he’s wrecked. It will take his entire net worth to fix everything he fucked up.
It’s okay, he won’t need it, he’ll be in prison for life (if he’s lucky), and his Demonspawn whelps won’t have to worry about inheriting anything because they’ll be spending their entire lives in prison as well, with their entire fortunes confiscated as well.
Yeah, no shit.
And almost anyone with two brain cells could have predicted the world’s most well-known malignant narcissist was going to do so, of course.
“if it doesn’t benefit me personally, then what’s it for?”
I was in high school for the Bicentennial, and I wondered if I’d live to see 250, and really looked forward to it.
Now it’s here, and I have literally zero interest in it. The original concept, which they had been working on since 2016, sounded great, but then Trump hijacked it, stole nearly all the money, and left about 2% of the budget to try to put on some excuse for a celebration.
Fuck these MAGAs, they destroy everything they go near, mostly by stealing all the money. Even if they left the money, and did their very best, they’d still fuck it up, because MAGAs have hillbilly taste, and are virtuosically incompetent.
Remember, Trump is a symptom of a deeper and older problem. Maybe we should take this anniversary and reflect on the various ways we’ve screwed up. The 200th was different, as we did have lots of the same issues festering, but there was a feeling of hope to better ourselves. Now we know that was delusional and we should have done some serious housecleaning instead of being so gullible.
Of course, Fascism 101.
America 250 could have and should have been a once in a lifetime event for everyone to enjoy. Instead we get the donny experience of ruining everything and making it about himself.
Isn’t this why he can’t nonprofit in New York anymore? I don’t know how anyone could have seen this coming.
“How is this day different from any other day?”
An insightful four questions.
i can’t believe he acted completely in character!
And his supporters are mad at Taylor Swift for having a big celebration on a holiday weekend in the place where people have big celebrations
I can’t believe it! To think, someone would transform a hyper-nationalist spectacle full of historical revisionism and militant jingoism into an exercise in political ideology?!
July 4th is supposed to be about things we can all agree on, like the Founding Fathers being Saints and F-35s being the apex aerial combat machine and Liberal Democracy being the perfect political system and England being a loser country full of knobs. We’re supposed to slap one another on the back and proclaim in one voice “This is the best country in the world, no cap!”
It’s not about politics. Who would be so vulgar as to make the signing of the Declaration of Independence political?!
Thank goodness we have the apolitical organization known as the checks notes minority caucus of the national legislature to look into this.