https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/trumps-july-4-an-endorsement-of-cruelty.html?fbclid=IwAR18tOnsJ-V6mbINNH0L-kDGjK600cs_BiMb81t8Ku7r_szyIyVQnfQGJIk
"The president, who stakes his legitimacy on demonizing the majority of the country that doesn’t support him, is putting tanks on America’s streets on its most patriotic holiday in an effort to yoke love of country to love of himself. Presidents have not historically played an active role in Independence Day celebrations on the National Mall; most people thought using America’s symbols to burnish the reputation of one of its public servants was inadvisable. For that servant to spend public money and reward his donors with special access is illegal. The last time the president tried to turn a holiday into a militaristic display with himself as drum major, the $92 million price tag provoked public outrage and sank the effort. This time, the administration is refusing to say what Trump’s circus of vanity will cost. We do know bits and pieces. For instance: The administration is diverting $2.5 million from America’s underfunded national parks—entrance fees that families paid—to an event to which the president’s re-election campaign and political allies get special VIP passes. Draping the event in star-spangled streamers won’t disguise the fact that Donald Trump is turning the anniversary of the nation’s founding into one more tawdry campaign event, or that his “Salute to America” is a salute to himself. And note: He is doing so after posing with not one but three autocrats in gleeful photo-ops. He is doing so after a trip whose most prominent American representative was his daughter, a woman whose company just obtained five valuable Chinese trademarks thanks to her father’s negotiations with China. While the president bragged about his daughter’s beauty, the country reeled in grief at a photograph of a drowned father and his toddler daughter. While Trump posed with authoritarian leaders who murder their political enemies, Americans saw footage of camps where migrants, asylum-seekers, and children are sleeping on concrete floors, sick and trapped."
