Jeffrey Blehar writes for National Review Online about last weekend’s White House spectacle.
This week we’re headed on down to that million-dollar bash, performing from inside a hastily erected Octagon to celebrate the grandest folly of them all, the Big Beautiful Birthday of the Carnival’s eternal muse, President Donald Trump — “the undisputed ringmaster of a circus he cannily designed,” as I put it last September. The prime mover, the man who decides, always hungry for the spotlight — a showman enthusiastically playing the role he considered himself born for.
Now, his act feels tattered and diminished. Rainy gusts rip through the tent, while surly gangs of trained animals (otherwise known as GOP politicians) mill about aimlessly and angrily inside, eyeing their master. But say what you will about Donald Trump: rumblings of November discontent aside, the man still knows how to stage a spectacle in praise of himself.
Yes, it was Trump’s 80th birthday on Sunday, and the nation was invited to celebrate the patriotic holiday on Paramount Plus. It’s not quite America’s 250th anniversary, but the administration oh so subtly sought to conflate the two by hosting a UFC event on the White House lawn and branding it “Freedom 250” — in conjunction with Trump’s since-collapsed Fourth of July ceremonies — complete with a flyover by a combined squadron of USAF Thunderbirds and USN Blue Angels. …
… But really the reason the spectacle rang hollow is that it was all about Trump. Staged on his birthday, for his audience, his America, complete with tacky slurs hurled at the former first lady, for a paying audience of fanatics, it inevitably played like Trump’s attempt to force America to love and respect him by leveraging the power and prerogative of the Oval Office to celebrate himself. Trump has a 38 percent approval rating right now and is visibly flailing at all endeavors except persecuting his domestic enemies. No amount of spectacle can distract from that.
