Everyone piles on after Donald Trump’s Fourth of July stunt goes off a cliff

| 12:20 am EDT July 5, 2019
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Donald Trump seemed to think that if he hijacked the nation’s Fourth of July celebration and turned it into a narcissistic celebration of himself, he could convince himself that his failing presidency isn’t actually falling to pieces, and that his toxic level of unpopularity isn’t really a thing. But the event merely ended up being a meek, inept crapfest.

It wasn’t just that Trump flubbed his prepared speech so badly, he gave away that he thinks the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 were the same thing, and that America somehow had airports during them both. It’s that Trump simply came across as even more of a laugh-out-loud pathetic buffoon than ever. He thought he was getting an authoritarian display of military power, but he merely ended up with a few tanks parked off to the side. He thought he was going to boost his infinitesimally small reelection chances, but instead he predictably failed to win over a single new person.

What Trump did accomplish, however unwittingly, was to provide mainstream Americans with a whole lot of new punchlines about him. The airport debacle alone spawned an endless series of memes across social media. And if anything, Trump’s ongoing ignorance about Frederick Douglass is sparking a renaissance of appreciation for what Douglass accomplished. Whatever Trump thought he was getting out of this Fourth of July debacle, this wasn’t it.

Donald Trump’s social media handlers seemed to give this away when they stayed up half the night, long after Trump had surely passed out, using his official account to retweet every bit of praise that any of his sycophants had to offer about the event. This is what happens when you know something isn’t playing well for you, and you’re hoping desperately to shift the narrative in real time. By The time Trump’s account was reduced to retweeting the notoriously troubled Randy Quaid around midnight, it was clear the whole thing had gone off a cliff.