Eugene Robinson: Trump tried to make Independence Day all about him. He ended up looking small.
President Trump chose the wrong backdrop for his attempt to make Independence Day all about himself. Standing beneath the majestic statue of Abraham Lincoln, occupying a space where great orators have stood, Trump looked and sounded quite small.
He gave a triumphalist speech, of course. “Our nation is stronger today than it ever was. It is its strongest now,” Trump claimed. He went on to give extended salutes to each of the nation’s armed services, punctuated by flyovers by Coast Guard, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Army aircraft and the singing of the corresponding anthems. Anyone who came to see an elaborate military pageant did not go home disappointed.
Trump declared that “we are one people chasing one dream and one magnificent destiny,” but that misses the point. We are, in fact, a nation, bound together not by blood but by our creeds, our institutions and our laws. Trump treats the law like an inconvenience, an annoyance.
Missing, as Trump spoke in Lincoln’s shadow, was any sense of humility as a vital aspect of American greatness. But you might have guessed that.
Since he visited French President Emmanuel Macron two years ago and witnessed the Bastille Day parade in Paris, Trump has wanted a big military extravaganza of his own. On Thursday, he got one — and, predictably, he put himself smack at the center of it.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/trump-tried-to-make-independence-day-all-about-him-he-ended-up-looking-small/ar-AADRMi7?li=BBnb7Kz
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