On Wednesday, the Trump regime kicked off celebrations of America’s 250th birthday with a dismal event in Washington DC in which the president did his familiar rating and raving, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy railed against “libtards.”
The Bulwark @thebulwark.com
Sean Duffy: "We have to give a big round applause for our military band and singers — way better than those libtards that cancelled on us."
Instead of bringing people together to celebrate the laudable things about America, the sad spectacle reminded us of how MAGA is an affront to the very values our nation was founded upon.
To gain some expert insight on what America’s Founding Fathers would have to say about the current president, we connected with Dr. Joanne Freeman, professor of history at Yale University, who we spoke with last year about the Declaration of Independence’s warning for would-be autocrats like Trump.
“It’s a pretty terrifying time to be a political historian,” Freeman told us in our latest conversation.
“The people who were framing and founding the government believed that what made this government different from a monarchy was the degree to which it was grounded in public opinion,” she added. “But now, the president is openly profiting off the office while destroying and misusing the physical White House as though he owns it, even though it belongs to us. I am angry, because what we’re watching right now isn’t what a president is supposed to be.“
A transcript of Freeman’s chat with Public Notice contributor Thor Benson, lightly edited for clarity, follows. If you’d like to read all of it and aren’t already a paid subscriber, please consider becoming one. This newsletter (and my work in general) is entirely funded by readers, and paid subscribers are the only reason I’m able to keep everything we publish Monday through Friday free for everyone.
