The Great American State Fair, the centerpiece of the official celebration of the United States’ 250th birthday, was made in the image of the president who called it into being. On its face, the fair, slated for June 25 to July 10, was a bombastic mess. President Donald Trump promised “the most unforgettable birthday party any country has ever seen,” and for reasons unintended this may well prove to be true. Half the fair’s announced musical guests promptly dropped out. Power outages crippled the Ferris wheel and melted ice cream. On July 4, a storm drove the fair’s guests into museums for shelter. The National Museum of African American History and Culture, which Trump has tried to dismantle, quickly reached capacity. Later, once the rains cleared, an attempt was made to put on “the largest fireworks display in history.” Air pollution levels in Washington, DC, increased more than sixfold.
However ridiculous Trump’s public commemoration appeared, the president had private reasons to celebrate. In the week leading up to the nation’s birthday, it was revealed that in 2025, Trump had raked in some $1.4 billion in income from his cryptocurrency ventures. Among those efforts was the $TRUMP meme coin, which The New York Times characterized as having “no intrinsic value itself” but was instead “a bet on the aura around Mr. Trump.” The bet went swimmingly for the house and poorly for its takers. By July 4, $TRUMP had declined 97 percent from its peak. Meanwhile, Trump appeared to have had the most lucrative period of his long and dubious career as a businessman, all in the first year of his second term. “Presidential historians said they could identify no other president in American history,” wrote New York Times investigative reporter Eric Lipton, “who entered into new business enterprises just before moving into the White House, and then continued to personally profit from them during his term.”
Trump’s quarter millennial—featuring overt buffoonery and historic grifting as neighbors—was characteristic of his two presidencies. But both emanate from something his opponents have never quite grasped. Trump is not just the most acquisitive politician of his era, he is also the most visionary, gifted with the ability to appreciate his country’s darkest pathologies and profit from them. Perhaps more importantly, Trump understood that the inanities and shibboleths of this country’s alleged institutional guardians, its senators, lawyers, elite universities, and free press, were little more than that, and the guardrails of this liberal democracy were illusions easily dispelled by one who would dare. One such as Trump.
