Democratic House staff have developed an interim report on the Malignant Fascist's hijacking of the Nation's 250th anniversary, and, well it fits the Trump Crime Family brand (our emphasis):
Donald Trump staged a hostile takeover of the US’s 250th anniversary celebration
to enrich political allies, harvest voter data and promote Christian
nationalist ideology, according to a congressional investigation
released on Thursday.
The interim report,
“From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American
People Out of Their 250th Birthday”, outlines a web of alleged
corruption, wire fraud and pay-to-play schemes orchestrated through a
shadow corporation embedded within the National Park Foundation (NPF).
The document was produced by Democratic staff of the House of Representatives’ natural resources committee’s oversight and investigations subcommittee. It has not been officially adopted by the committee.
“Under President Donald Trump,
this anniversary has been hijacked and perverted into a hotbed of
corruption and self-enrichment,” it states, contending that the
machinery built for a national commemoration was converted “into an
apparatus for raising and spending money in service of the President’s
ego, political ideology, and pet projects.”
In 2016 Congress established the US semiquincentennial commission, operating as the nonprofit America250 Foundation,
to plan the nation’s 2026 celebrations on a nonpartisan basis. However,
under Trump, the White House launched a sustained pressure campaign to
subsume the commission.
When
America250 leadership resisted its demands to shift focus toward
partisan, campaign-style spectacles, the Trump administration created Freedom 250 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the congressionally chartered NPF.
The
interim report finds that, by taking control of the NPF board and
installing key campaign operatives such as Meredith O’Rourke and Chris LaCivita,
the White House secured an opaque vehicle that enjoyed the NPF’s
nonpartisan credibility and tax-exempt status while operating outside
standard government transparency laws.
The report goes on to flag funds surreptitiously diverted from the official America250 Foundation to the MF's "Freedom 250" wire fraud / grifting / pay-to-play / crony payoff operation:
Sources interviewed by Democrats on the committee
said fundraisers including O’Rourke misled prospective America250
donors by providing them with Freedom 250’s banking and routing numbers
instead. The report finds this could constitute wire fraud and
charitable solicitation fraud under federal and District of Columbia
law.
This deceit extended to the entertainment
industry. Artists recruited for the kickoff of the Great American State
Fair – including Martina McBride and Young MC – were assured the event
was nonpartisan, only to face social media backlash when the event was revealed to be a Trump-backed rally. In the words of Young MC, the booking was a “bait and switch”.
The
investigation also outlines how Freedom 250 effectively put a price tag
on presidential access, circulating sponsorship packages starting at
$500,000 and climbing above $10m for tiered recognition, culminating in a
“historic photo opportunity” with Trump. [snip]
Freedom 250 has also functioned as a conduit for steering federal funds to Trump campaign loyalists. Event Strategies
– the same firm that planned the January 6 rally that preceded the US
Capitol attack – was awarded 18 federal contracts totalling roughly
$40m, along with an indefinite delivery master contract worth up to
$100m.
Beyond lucrative contracts, the
administration is accused of building a partisan political database
disguised as a government domain. Freedom 250’s website, initially
managed by ex-Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) employees known
for past data leaks, extensively logs user data.
Event registration is powered by Campaign Nucleus, a firm founded by Brad Parscale,
a veteran of Trump election campaigns. Campaign Nucleus openly boasts
about using artificial intelligence to analyse personal data and target
“persuadable” voters. Unsuspecting visitors, such as attendees of a free
Fifa World Cup Fan Zone on the National Mall, unwittingly fed their
personal information directly into this Republican campaign apparatus.
Of course, with the Christian nationalist fascists in charge, you also had to have the re-writing and whitewashing of American history:
The report also focuses on the ideological
overhaul of the semiquincentennial. Freedom 250 replaced America250’s
civic engagement focus with overt Christian nationalist programming,
operating in tandem with the Religious Liberty Commission, which recently recommended repealing the Johnson amendment to allow churches to engage in partisan politics.
A central feature of this effort was “Freedom Trucks”
– a federally funded fleet of mobile museums dispatched to
schoolchildren across the nation. Supplied with content from the
conservative PragerU [the Prager University Foundation] and Hillsdale
College, these exhibits recast the founding of the US as an exclusively
Christian project, embracing demonstrable falsehoods.
Exhibits
include an AI-generated George Washington claiming that “our rights are
a gift from God”, a statement the first president is not documented as
having made, alongside antisemitic tropes suggesting that Jewish
merchants financed the Revolutionary cause while omitting they also
fought and died for it.
Concurrently, the administration aggressively moved to erase historical realities, removing national park signage
detailing slavery, forced removal of Indigenous peoples and climate
change. Huffman said it amounted to an attempt to reshape American
identity to fit a narrow rightwing agenda.
“It’s
a fantasy that airbrushes out the more complicated parts of our history
– slavery, the Native American genocide, the actual secular ideals on
which our government was founded. It wasn’t the opening of the clouds
and some revealed covenant with God as they would have you believe.”
Fortunately, the MF's hijacked fail isn't the only celebration going on. From the backyard barbecue, to local parades and fireworks, to local- and state- sponsored events, etc., Americans will largely ignore the MF's self-aggrandizing to celebrate in their own ways.
The country is utterly awash in a Trump crime spree that's overwhelming the senses and is unprecedented in the history of Western democracies. But it's providing a long list of particulars if Democrats (who must have the stomach) go after the entire criminal operation when they get back in power (and damn the illegitimate Republican Supreme Court's bogus grant of criminal immunity to the MF!).
(Photo: packing in the crowds! / (Andrew Leyden/Getty Images)
