On Friday, President Trump will stand beneath the carved faces of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt at Mount Rushmore National Memorial and headline America's 250th birthday celebration. The event, organized under the banner Freedom 250 and announced on June 25, will feature fireworks over the Black Hills of South Dakota, military bands, aviation flyovers, a salute to all six branches of the Armed Forces, and presidential reenactors.
If that sounds familiar, it should.
In 2020, Trump held a July 3rd celebration at the same monument. The response from the press was something to behold. CNN called it "divisive." The Washington Post treated patriotic fireworks like a public health emergency. Multiple outlets ran stories questioning whether celebrating America at a monument to American presidents was somehow dangerous, reckless, and possibly racist. Fireworks — the things we've shot into the sky every Fourth of July since the country had a Fourth of July — were suddenly a threat to the republic.
The granite hadn't changed. The presidents hadn't changed. The fireworks hadn't changed. The only thing that changed was who was standing at the podium.
Now Trump is heading back, and the setup is even bigger. The celebration includes family activities, educational exhibits, interactive displays, music, ceremonial presentations, precision drill demonstrations, and a full aviation flyover sequence. Governor Larry Rhoden and Secretary Doug Burgum are both expected to welcome Trump to the event, which the National Park Service and Travel South Dakota are supporting.
This isn't a campaign rally dressed up in bunting. It's the nation's semiquincentennial — two hundred and fifty years since the Declaration of Independence — hosted at a monument that was literally built to celebrate the idea of America. The kind of event that, in any normal timeline, every American president would attend and every news network would cover like the historic occasion it is.
But we don't live in a normal timeline. We live in one where a sitting president visiting a national monument triggers op-eds about the "weaponization of patriotism." Where lighting up the sky over carved Founding Fathers gets fact-checked. Where journalists who cover protests that set actual buildings on fire suddenly develop deep concerns about fire safety when the flames are red, white, and blue.
The 2020 event was supposed to be a one-off embarrassment for the press. They bet that calling Mount Rushmore "controversial" would land with the public. It didn't. The images of fireworks exploding over those four faces became one of the most iconic visuals of Trump's first term — precisely because the media's hysteria made the contrast so sharp. A president celebrating America. A press corps furious about it.
Six years later, the monument is still standing. The fireworks are coming back. The president is the same one they said would never return to office.
The faces on that mountain have watched 250 years of American history unfold beneath them. They've survived wars, depressions, and several generations of politicians who weren't worthy of the view. A few breathless CNN segments aren't going to be what finally does them in.
