MONDAY, JULY 6, 2026
Jeffrey Rosen's concern: Yesterday, we tried to click our way through the sitting president's speech.
(You can start by clicking here.)
We refer to his rain-delayed public address of July 4th of this year. Due to the lightning the gods sent down, he wasn't able to start until 11:16 p.m. local Washington D.C. time. When he finally started to speak, the sometimes-invaluable Rev lets us see that he started by saying this:
PRESIDENT TRUMP (7/4/26): Good evening, America! You think that was easy? It wasn't.
AUDIENCE: Applause
The president was referring to the chaos of the rain delay. Then, as he proceeded, he tossed out a number--a number he may have made up:
PRESIDENT TRUMP (continuing directly): And I want to thank everybody because they did the right thing...
And they estimated they had 375,000 people before everybody had to leave. And they now have 150,000 people. It's the craziest thing anyone's ever seen. At least!
When the president describes some alleged accomplishment or some event, the accomplishment is routinely said to be something "no one has ever seen before." An invented number will often be present, perhaps to be embellished at some later date.
The initial number may be replaced by an even larger number! And so it went on this occasion, as Mediaite reports:
‘422,000 People!’ Trump Makes Wild Claim About Crowd Size at His July 4 Event
On Sunday, President Donald Trump revised his initial claim that 375,000 people gathered for the America 250 celebration on the National Mall before the crowd was forced to evacuate due to weather.
“We’re here, we’re here, we’re here. There’s no way we can be deterred. They estimated they had 375,000 people before everybody had to leave and they now have 150,000 people. It’s the craziest thing anyone’s ever seen,” Trump said during his speech that began after 11 p.m. Saturday.
Trump revised that [first] number upward on Truth Social Sunday afternoon.
“The Crowd at 7:05 in the evening was 422,000 people! All were forced to leave because of the weather, the event was cancelled, and everyone was gone because of lightning,” Trump wrote.
By now, the initial crowd was said to be substantially larger. To peruse the Truth Social post, you can just click here.
Back in real time, back in the actual speech on Saturday night, astounding flattery of us the people quickly began after that. He was flattering us the American people. Here's how the fluffing began:
PRESIDENT TRUMP (continuing directly from above): And I want to just thank you, and I feel so badly about some people they left, and they couldn't get back.
But you're very special people, and we have a very special country. Thank you very much.
Those who stayed were "very special people." That's how the fawning began.
That might have seemed like a sensible word of thanks directed at loyal followers. But as the president's speech continued, the delusional flattery grew.
By the time it was 11:18, the president was saying this:
PRESIDENT TRUMP: For two and a half centuries, our American Republic has stood as the crowning achievement of human history...And we're doing better now than we've ever done before.
No people have done more good, shown more courage, made more progress, righted more injustice or achieved more greatness than you, the American people. For 250 years, the United States of America has been the hope, the promise, the light, and the glory among all of the nations of the world.
All over the world, they try and be like us. Nobody can be like us. And with God's help, we will always be this, or even better.
Nobody can be [as good as] us, the president had now said. Later, on several occasions, he traveled that road again:
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Americans must never forget that we are a historic and heroic people with a heroic spirit and a heroic purpose on this beautiful earth of ours.
We are made of the courage and the fire and the flesh and the blood of the best and the bravest people this world has ever produced. We are the bravest and the best.
Tonight we pledge allegiance to the flag they gave us, and we say, "God bless the immortal patriots of 1776 and long live the cause of independence." May it reign forever and ever and ever. We will always be on top. We will never let our country fall. We will always be the best.
"We will always be the best," the president said. As he continued, he turned to this:
PRESIDENT TRUMP (continuing directly): Our founders not only won our liberty, they secured it with the most righteous political document ever conceived. It's called the Constitution of the United States. Very special.
And it's because of their genius that we remain the finest people on the planet after 250 years.
We're the finest people on the planet! So this severely challenged, disordered person now said.
The people who stayed to watch the speech heard themselves praised in such ways. Much later, the president added the strangest claim he's ever made--the strangest in a fifteen-year public career of extremely strange public assertions:
PRESIDENT TRUMP: After two and a half centuries, this American republic still stands tall and strong and we love each other.
Say what? Do we the people love each other? American citizens, please!
As you can see by clicking this link, we love each other so much that this very same sitting president did this the very next day:
Trump also posted a doctored picture of ex-President Barack Obama and ex-First Lady Michelle Obama boarding Air Force One; the pic showed “BLM” and Obama’s slogan “Yes We Can” spray painted onto the plane, as well as some Arabic writing.
Another doctored photo--and how strange! In the rendering posted by the apostle of love, Arabic writing had been spray-painted onto the side of President Obama's Air Force One!
You can see that post if you click that link. (If you do, you will also read about the latest insults the sitting president has directed at Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister.)
As we've noted, we tried to click our way through the entire July 4 address. Eventually, what we took to be a succession of (tasteless) acts of "stolen valor" persuaded us to stop.
We thought we were watching extremely tasteless behavior. Presumably, many of our fellow citizens didn't see it that way at all.
Way back when, President Lincoln almost seemed to wonder if a nation constructed like ours could hope to "long endure." His famous speech started like this:
PRESIDENT LINCOLN (11/19/1863): Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure...
That nation has endured, right up to the present day. The population has actually grown, from something like 33 million back then to something like 345 million today.
Lincoln's nation has endured, in the most obvious sense. But in a recent essay for The Atlantic, Jeffrey Rosen suggests the possibility that the nation President Lincoln described may not endure much longer.
Who the heck is Jeffrey Rosen? And why is he saying such things?
We think his thesis is very strong. We also think it will be ignored, except right here at this site.
Tomorrow: Who is Jeffrey Rosen?
President Lincoln was not talking about tastelessness when he wondered whether our nation might endure. Somerby says:
ReplyDelete"We thought we were watching extremely tasteless behavior. Presumably, many of our fellow citizens didn't see it that way at all.
Way back when, President Lincoln almost seemed to wonder if a nation constructed like ours could hope to "long endure."
But when we read the quote, we see that Lincoln was talking about the civil war, where people were shooting each other on a battlefield, not about tasteless flattery.
This is mainly a problem of Somerby grabbing Lincoln's famous words and applying them in service of his own complaint about Trump, out of context and despite being irrelevant to what Trump was doing. This kind of thing looks ridiculous and Somerby shouldn't do it. It makes a mockery of the criticism he himself just made, appropriately, of Trump's ridiculous behavior in his speech. And that negates the mockery, leaving a question about whether Somerby was sincere in his criticism of Trump, or just engaging in it to establish a minimum of liberal cred before his real purpose in writing today's post, to bash liberals and our unfounded faith in democracy. Here is what is said at the link to Rosen's Atlantic article:
"American Democracy Wasn’t Designed for This
Can our 18th-century institutions survive 21st-century technology?"
Lincoln made the federal government bigger, more expensive, more intrusive.
Delete"President Lincoln was not talking about tastelessness when he wondered whether our nation might endure". Somerby didn't say he was, dumb ass.
Delete"that negates the mockery, leaving a question about whether Somerby was sincere in his criticism of Trump" Only in that dumb-ass brain of yours
2:22, when has Somerby ever mocked Trump? He routinely urges us to pity him and show sympathy for his purported afflictions.
DeleteRosen said (at that link):
ReplyDelete"The American experiment would “decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.”
Conservatives and liberals answer that question differently. Digby today has an article about an ethnographic study of the beliefs of conservatives, in which researchers embedded with conservative families and had in-depth, frequent conversations with them about their core beliefs. Mike Lofgren describes this at Salon:
https://www.salon.com/2026/07/05/abundance-politics-may-not-win-over-conservative-christian-voters/
Quoting the study itself, Lofgren says:
"Most participants believe that the cultural conditions necessary for a viable democracy no longer exist. A ‘true’ democracy of untrammeled majority rule would require a population with shared values, shared realities, and the capacity for self-governance conditions they feel America has lost.
Part of their rejection of democracy is the fact that they know they would be outvoted in a straight-up, ungerrymandered system: “Kyle (mid 20s, WY), a delivery driver, extends the logic: ‘Every single small town would be outvoted by every single city. We wouldn’t be able to feed people cows. We’d all be eating seaweed.’”
This is something Somerby himself has stated here several times before. We the people are not up to participating in a democracy, we need gatekeepers to tell us how to think, we aren't built for thinking seriously about our community needs, we are a babel and multi-culturalism makes that worse, so we cannot agree about how to run our nation without the kind of civil war Lincoln mourned. (Somerby quotes Lincoln a lot.)
Today, Somerby quotes Rosen because he too questions whether democracy is workable, but due to technology, not human frailty. Somerby ignores that part in order to use Rosen's ideas to support his own claims that we are not capable of participating in a democracy while diverse. This is also a theme among right wing extremists such as Curtis Yarvin and a theme on the right.
And, this is support for the conclusion that Somerby is essentially a conservative, promoting right wing talking points at this blog, and knocking the left while pretending to be liberal -- a concern troll. Somerby's core belief about the viability of democracy as an institution is closely similar to that expressed by the conservatives. As the study says:
"The most fundamental issue the researchers attempted to resolve is the relationship their subjects had with what is commonly thought of as the American secular faith in democracy. What the study found is that the respondents either had a notion of what constituted democracy that greatly differed from what is taught in Civics 101 — when such a course is even offered — or rejected outright the very concept of democracy. In fact, the latter view was the majority opinion:
14 out of 21 participants in this study had an immediate negative reaction when asked about democracy . . . Sarah (mid 30s, WY), a homeschooling mother, put it plainly: “I don’t like the word democracy.”
Let that sink in. It’s what many of us expected, but it’s still surprising to see it in print, given the almost phobic avoidance by major media, academia and think tanks of any discussion of whether Americans actually believe in the nation’s unofficial civic religion of democracy. It may also explain why ordinary, non-elite conservatives are untroubled by Donald Trump’s assertions that he would be “dictator on day one” or that he intended to “terminate” parts of the Constitution. On the contrary, that’s what they want."
And that seems to be what Somerby wants too, based on his return to this subject over the years since 2015 and his frequent assertions that we humans are not built to participate in our current form of government, that assures us of the freedoms we value and that had been the envy of the world prior to Trump's election.
"And [dictatorship] seems to be what Somerby wants too"
DeleteOr perhaps it's not what he wants, but what he despairs will happen.
Maybe, DG. One thing you probably shouldn’t do is to urge pity for the man taking us to dictatorship, or to oppose his impeachment, or to complain about prosecuting him, or deride his opponents, the democrats, all things Somerby has done.
Delete11:37 is spot on.
DeleteAn excellent paraphrasing of the ideas I have been posting here for years, albeit my attempts are not as elegantly put as 11:37 accomplishes.
Somerby is typically fairly indirect with his prescriptions (or even descriptions), but on the stance of being skeptical/cynical about democracy and the need for a caste of ruling elites, Somerby is much less indirect.
Lincoln would not agree with Somerby on many things, so it is gross the way Somerby misuses quoting Lincoln to push his own right wing agenda.
Rosen says: "As America approaches its 250th anniversary, the biggest question for our democracy is whether a system designed for the communications technologies of the 18th century can survive those of the 21st."
ReplyDeleteRosen describes the usefulness of the well-developed newspaper system of the late 1800s to a democracy like ours. But that was diminished by radio and TV well before the internet arrived with social media. Further, his contention that the newspaper system existed during the revolution is incorrect. A system of broadsides and pamphlets spread info and people congregated in pubs to discuss them. The few newspapers in large cities did not foment the revolution. Travel was so difficult that news took a very long time to arrive across the colonies. Our system of democracy was NOT developed based on newspapers but based on representation elected by the people, located in cities, statehouses and a national legislature. That continues to exist no matter how individuals communicate their ideas to each other in order to form opinions.
Somerby has argued that the internet has broken the TV method of communication of news. He doesn't seem to fully understand how the internet, social media and substacks work, much less podcasts and youtube. But anything that denigrates democracy, he's for it. Gerrymandering is also a flaw of democracy and Somerby has eagerly grabbed that discussion to push his idea that people cannot participate in democracy, so it needs to be shut down in favor of those who know best how to run things. He doesn't say that is Trump but what would replace democracy? History says it is despotism.
Jeffrey Rosen was a member of Trump's first administration.
DeleteSomerby says: "We think his thesis is very strong. We also think it will be ignored, except right here at this site. "
DeleteArticles in The Atlantic (Somerby's new favorite source) don't tend to be ignored. They are deliberately written to be controversial and thus are the magazine-equivalent of clickbait. Somerby has called The Atlantic liberal, but Rosen doesn't seem to be. Why would someone who cared about our democracy ever work for Trump?
DeleteAlong with his unimportant lies about the size of the audience, Trump told an important truth: No people have done more good, shown more courage, made more progress, righted more injustice or achieved more greatness than , the American people.
ReplyDeleteThis is obvious, if one only considers the spread of democracy, civil liberties, the enormous amount of charitable giving all over the world, and the defeat of three of the most evil regimes in history, the USSR, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. No other nation comes close in what was done to benefit the world.
Speaking truths that others were ignoring has been one reason for Trump's popularity ever since his first Presidential campaign.
It seems unfair for Trump to be taking credit for the good works done by other people. We all know that Trump is not one of those doing good, showing courage, making progress, righting injustice and achieving greatness. He does the opposite of those things. He impedes them. He got rid of the people doing that stuff by having DOGE fire them.
DeleteWhen Trump got up and praised the things he himself has destroyed, he engages in stolen valor. Trump hasn't defeated any regimes -- he had bone spurs, remember?
If David is suggesting that Trump spread a feel-good image of America, that may be so, but it doesn't mean his people and his government has done anything except tear down America since taking office.
Note that Somerby himself criticized Trump's speech on July 4th.
Matt Labash says:
Delete"Have a question about when, exactly, we can stop celebrating America’s 250th birthday, a “party” that has seen no end for about six months now? Don’t ask Matt, ask Donald J. Trump (the “J” stands for “jerking your chain”), who is much fonder of gaudy bread’n’circus spectaculars than he is of effective governance. Turns out, it’s hard to give people affordable healthcare and lower their costs of living, as falsely promised. Much easier to put on UFC fights, to infect the Reflecting Pool with algae blooms, and to lie about Fourth of July crowd sizes. "
https://mattlabash.substack.com/p/proud-to-be-an-americant
David calls Trump's lies about crowd size "unimportant." Defending truth is important to fighting autocracy, according to both Timothy Snyder and Hannah Arendt. No lie is trivial when the goal of a tyrant is to convince people that there is no such thing as truth and that all statements are meaningless.
DeleteSomerby has argued that here for decades. He says anything is possible, there is no way of knowing what is true or right or correct. He used to say "your mileage may vary". He states something, then says "I have no way to know if this is right" or "I could be wrong" as if there is no way to investigate or verify anything. He never fact-checks anything. That is all destructive of the concept of truth, just as Trump's constant lies are, making it possible for Trump to justify anything he wants simply because he says it.
Truth matters.
Dickhead in Cal is a liar. He admires other liars. Dickhead is a liar. A fucking liar.
DeleteDiC: Trump lost the popular vote in 2016. He lost the election in 2020 (he claims he didn’t, but I guess you think that’s an unimportant lie, DiC). He barely won the popular vote by 1.5% in 2024, getting less than 50% of the vote. His current approval is 37%.
DeleteIn what sense is he popular, DiC?
Also, will you ever have anything to say about his world historical corruption? That undercuts everything positive that you foolishly ascribe to him.
@11:57 - you make a good point. Trump is taking credit for things he didn't do. In fact, he is also giving credit to you and me and other Americans today for things we didn't do. That may be unfair, but it also might be beneficial. Positive aspirational goals are a good thing IMO.
DeleteToday, it's popular to focus on bad things done in the past by Americans, such as slavery and Jim Crow. Focusing on the bad is valid. Americans certainly did do bad things. But, I don't think its healthy.
When I was young, I was told about Jews like Albert Einstein and Irving Berlin. I wasn't told about mobsters Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky. IMO that helped me develop healthier life goals.
@2:17 - It may be hard today to realize how remarkable Trump's 2016 victory was. He had zero political experience. He had little qualification for the Presidency. The media detested him. The Republican Party was lukewarm at best. Yet, he defeated a strong group of Republicans in the primaries and a very well qualified Democrat. He must have done some things right to overcome all these weaknesses.
Delete@12:05 wrote, "Defending truth is important.... Truth matters."
DeleteGive me a break. Truth about Trump is not important. Lies that malign Trump are totally acceptable. People who spread these lies are treated as heroes.
Consider the "fine people" hoax. The injected bleach hoax. And, many others. @12:05, I suspect that you did not dispute these lies or castigate the people who spread them.
https://ozeunleashed.substack.com/p/the-top-40-media-hoaxes-about-donald
The media detested Trump? The media loved him; the media made him! Without Apprentice he would've been just another failed "businessman". The media gave him life and rarely called him on his bullshit.
DeleteIt isn't Fox that we should be blaming for giving this psychopath life. It's CNN and ABC (or whichever network his idiotic show was on). The media propped up a conman and a grifter, and in the end he came back to bite them.
David, one people has done the most for the world. That people has lived not merely 250 years but 3000 years. That people, which has given us faith and morality, is the Jewish people.
DeleteI sort of agree, Ilya. But, I would interpret as, "Trump played the media." Especially during the primaries, Trump made outrageous statements. The media blasted him for these statements. All that media attention is how Trump became the most popular Republican Presidential candidate.
DeleteI think the media did blast Trump for his bullshit. As I recall, the ratio of positive to negative media coverage was enormously in Trump's disfavor in all three of his Presidential races.
@12:05 raises the question of how important various lies are. IMO, some of the anti-Trump lies are more important.
DeleteE.g., the lie that Trump called neo-Nazis and white nationalists "fine people" when he actually said they "should be condemned totally" is a more important lie than the exact size of some group. YMMV
Got to go back to Charlottesville to find one is duly noted.
DeleteMeanwhile, he fucked up the World Cup with his interference.
"That people has lived not merely 250 years but 3000 years. That people, which has given us faith and morality"
Deletewhat a dumb ass. as if faith and morality didn't exist before 1000 bce and outside of the sphere of jewish influence. and as if "faith" is necessarily a good thing. "faith" is a euphemism for believing something without having sufficient evidence. i wouldn't count that as a positive thing. additionally, jewish "morality" encompasses such gems as "don't beat your slave so badly he dies" and "if a bride is found not to be a virgin, stone her to death."
I could be wrong, 2:40, but I think that comment was meant ironically.
DeleteDiC,
Deletethe Charlottesville rally was organized by white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
Who were the 'fine people' who attended that rally, not to protest, but in support of its point of view?
https://jacobin.com/2026/07/chait-dsa-socialism-harrington-democrats
ReplyDeleteTrump is, in every sense, the Ugly American. Blustery, stupid, ignorant, and yet, somehow full of himself believing he has all the answers, and others are, as Kipling described them, "lesser breeds." The UK's empire began its sharp decline once such people became prominent.
ReplyDelete"The initial number may be replaced by an even larger number!"
ReplyDeleteHow horrible! Excuse me for I'm so shocked I need to lie down now.
The initial number was bunk. We know how many people can fit onto the mall from previous gatherings there where crowd sizes were more carefully measured.
DeleteI get it that you think it doesn't matter about the crowd size, but it obviously matters to Trump or he wouldn't throw a fit when accurate estimates contradict his own lies. One of the facts of Trump's current situation is that his support is decreasing and his attendance numbers have been pitiful lately.
But don't you want a president whose word is good, who can be relied upon to be truthful? You deserve better than Trump. Most people are not sociopath and compulsive liars like Trump is. We can elect one of them soon.
12:02: Trump’s lies about crowd size are a window into his delusions (according to Bob) and/or his sociopathy, whereby he wants to manipulate facts that don’t line up with his megalomaniac view of himself. He is unfit.
DeleteWhen a psychopath, such as Trump, has become mentally diminished due to old-age dementia, do they become less of a psychopath? Discuss amongst yourselves.
ReplyDeleteI’m incapable of self-government. I need a great leader.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that you chose Trump as your great leader is proof you are incapable of self government.
DeleteNo. I chose Netanyahu as my great leader.
DeleteThere was already enough proof.
DeleteHere’s a hundred proof. Long live the great leader!
Delete