Donald Trump has already enriched himself by at least $2 billion in the less than two years since he returned to the White House. So, you’d think he could at least keep his predatory hands off July 4th celebrations, especially when it’s our country’s 250th birthday. But no.
A new report from Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee reveals how Trump and his cronies set up the official holiday celebrations as an opportunity to grab more money for themselves – and never mind the law. This, as most Americans greet the holiday faced with higher prices, thanks to Trump’s war and tariffs, and loss of health insurance and other government services, sacrificed for the sake of billionaires’ tax cuts.
The report is filled with “blistering accusations against Trump-aligned officials for their management and machinations around the events,” as journalist Scott MacFarlane described it. “The report alleges Trump’s allies outflanked and supplanted the initial Congressionally-approved America 250th operation, to install their own Trump-favored and sycophantic event.”
He got that right. “Under President Donald Trump, this anniversary has been hijacked and perverted into a hotbed of corruption and self-enrichment,” the report’s Executive Summary states. The report “documents how the machinery built for a national commemoration was converted, deliberately and over a period of months, into an apparatus for raising and spending money in service of the President’s ego, political ideology, and pet projects.”
The White House first tried to corrupt America250 for its own purposes, the report says, “demanding spectacles focused on promoting President Trump rather than the country while forcing partisan content, campaign-style fundraisers, and favored contractors onto an organization Congress designed to serve the whole country, not one party or president.” When America250 pushed back, Trump’s White House created its own entity to replace it, Freedom 250 LLC.
The report describes the Trumpy Freedom 250 as “a shadow organization capable of infiltrating the celebrations and injecting America’s 250th with Trump’s extreme, partisan agenda.” In doing so, it hoodwinked donors and participants into thinking they were supporting the non-partisan America250.
“Freedom 250 may have conducted wire fraud by luring unsuspecting donors who intended to support the congressionally chartered foundation and giving them Freedom 250 bank information instead,” the report states. “Presidential access was sold to those willing to pay for it.”
In return, Trump’s organization injected Christian nationalist ideology into the events and handed a contract to the organization that was responsible for planning Trump’s Jan. 6 events, the ones that led to the insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol. “Loose logo licensing let Freedom 250 brand deeply racist merchandise under the government’s banner,” too.
The Trump gang helped themselves to taxpayer money, too. “Taxpayer dollars were funneled to the President’s preferred contractors. Americans’ private, personal information has been harvested by Trump’s allies for political purposes,” the report continues, and set up what was supposed to be a celebration for all into a vehicle for “the ultra-wealthy and politically connected to take advantage of the American people.”
In an interview with MacFarlane, Rep. Jared Huffman, ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee, described Trump’s Freedom 250 as a “feeding frenzy for Trump’s inner circle.” They “mix[ed] in taxpayer dollars and sketchy private donations, in a way that was totally shielded from public scrutiny,” he said.
The 41-page report is filled with sickening details of how Trump and his buddies have turned what should be a happy occasion for everybody into an event to enrich themselves at the expense of others. Yet the Democrats call it an “interim” report, hinting that more Trump corruption is yet to be revealed.
In fact, the final finding in the report calls Freedom 250 “a replicable blueprint for corruption” and “not a one-time abuse.” Its practice “has spread throughout the administration,” it notes.
But there’s something especially infuriating about it happening under the guise of celebrating the birth and history of America.
It proves there is nothing too sacred for Donald Trump to sully and destroy for the sake of self-dealing and self-enrichment.
