Trump got his crowd and his fireworks, and peddled his fiction

WASHINGTON POST

The setting for President Trump’s early Fourth of July celebration was magnificent, as the Black Hills of South Dakota tend to be. The scene was also full of painful history, willful ignorance and deliberate fearmongering.

Friday night, in an amphitheater in the shadow of Mount Rushmore, a military band played smooth jazz on snare drums and trumpets as the country sank under the rising number of coronavirus infections. Thousands of unmasked guests, awaiting the arrival of the president, sat shoulder-to-shoulder in black folding chairs tethered together in a kind of coronavirus chain of denial. The VIPs would, of course, be seated separately onstage — not six feet apart but not amid the storm of exhalations, coughs, vociferous cheers and sneezes. And just to add to the upside-down, inside-out madness of the mass gathering, Ivanka Trump, the president’s adviser and daughter, tweeted a reminder to be safe over the holiday weekend by social distancing and wearing a mask. Her nearest and dearest did not listen to the plea.

Mount Rushmore is painfully complex — much like America itself. The faces of four revered but profoundly flawed presidents were carved into the stone by a talented sculptor who sympathized with the Ku Klux Klan. The majestic monument — a testament to human tenacity — scars land considered sacred by Native Americans.

But the president is not a man of complexity and nuance. He is a man who sees things in gloriously righteous white and suspicious, dangerous black. For him, Mount Rushmore is not complicated. It’s telegenic. His was not an open-armed celebration of American independence and the country’s raucous striving to fulfill its promise. The president had orchestrated a rally — a place where he could wade into a warm embrace of approval.

And oh, how he glowed. He wore a dark suit and red tie. An American flag pin was tacked to his lapel. His skin was dewy in the summer heat. His smile was broad. Trump looked so pleased.

He stepped to the microphone and settled into his speech, which warned his Americans that other Americans were a threat to the country. “Our country is witnessing a merciless campaign to erase our history,” Trump warned. “One of their political weapons is cancel culture. … This is the very definition of totalitarianism.”

“This attack on our liberty, our magnificent liberty, must be stopped,” the president said.

He promised to save the monuments, to defend the monuments, to put the full weight of the federal government into protecting giant hunks of stone and bronze. And why not? It’s so much easier to cordon off a statue, to surround it with police officers, than it is to come to terms with the blood and the glory, the cruelty and goodwill that built this country and that haunts it.

He delivered a dark speech ahead of Independence Day in which he sought to exploit the nation’s racial and social divisions and rally supporters around a law-and-order message that has become a cornerstone of his reelection campaign. Trump focused most of his address before a crowd of several thousand in South Dakota on what he described as a grave threat to the nation from liberals and angry mobs — a “left-wing cultural revolution” that aims to rewrite U.S. history and erase its heritage amid the racial justice protests that have roiled cities for weeks.

“The radical ideology attacking our country advances under the banner of social justice. But in truth, it would demolish both justice and society,” Trump said. “It would transform justice into an instrument of division and vengeance and turn our free society into a place of repression, domination and exclusion. They want to silence us, but we will not be silenced.” Trump, who recently signed an executive order aimed at punishing those who destroy monuments on federal property, referred to “violent mayhem” in the streets, even though many of the mass demonstrations have been largely peaceful. He warned that “angry mobs” were unleashing “a wave of violent crime” 

He will defend the Second Amendment and never defund the police. The crowd chanted “USA, USA.” The crowd demanded “four more years.” The president did not discuss the coronavirus, which has killed more than 126,000 Americans. The crowd did not seem to care.

Trump left the microphone with a promise to the crowd that the best is yet to come. Then the sky over the mountain exploded in a rainbow of lights, a shower of fire and spiraling flames. The spectacle was beautiful, as fireworks tend to be. When the show ended, a cloud of smoke remained. The audience was gazing at the heavens. And then the president was gone.