Lt. Gov. Denny Heck announced that the Evergreen State is staying away from the event because of the high expense of taking part. U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, though, may have hit on the more compelling reason not to join in President Trump’s big show on the National Mall. If Trump is there, she said, the event will “turn into another unhinged partisan rant about his imagined grievances.”
A decade ago, Congress established America 250 as a bipartisan commission to plan celebrations for the 250th year of America’s independence. However, always insisting on playing the impresario, Trump created his own commission, dubbed Freedom 250, and he has withheld funding from the bipartisan organization.
The Trumpian shadings of the Great American State Fair caused most of the scheduled musical acts to drop out. Miffed and petulant, Trump then canceled the concert series altogether. Apparently, he plans to replace the music with a political rally featuring himself as the bloviating solo act — hence Sen. Murray’s prediction of another Trump screamfest.
Far from being an affront to the semiquincentennial celebration, Washington’s absence from Trump’s party is an act of independence worthy of the patriots of 1776.
Trump is trying to center the USA’s 250th birthday around himself, but Washingtonians do not have to feed into his tawdry narcissism. In the Pacific Northwest, we know American liberty is about us — all of us — and not about one man who would be king.
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