With a president fighting for his career and a once-and-possibly future president vowing he'll use his vast powers to exact retribution on his enemies, it's not the most auspicious Independence Day celebration this year.
Biden gathered the family members who will be critical to any decisions about his future at the White House and planned to watch Washington's spectacular annual fireworks display from the White House with serving members of the armed forces.
Trump offered a July 4 greeting that was vituperative even for him.
"Happy Fourth of July to all, including to our highly incapable 'President,' who uses Prosecutors to go after his Political Opponent, who choked like a dog during the Debate but tried to pretend it was 'International Travel' (only 12 days rest!) and, when that gig was up, he blamed it on a 'cold.' Therefore, why would anyone say he's cognitively challenged?" Trump posted on Truth Social, claiming without evidence that Biden was behind his criminal cases.
It's a long way from the blueprint for July Fourth that the US founder and second US President John Adams prescribed.
On the eve of the first-ever Independence Day in 1776, Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, that future generations should commemorate their "day of deliverance" from Britain with acts of devotion to God. "Old Sink or Swim" also envisioned "shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other."
July Fourth has fallen on some dark moments in American history, and presidents have often used its symbolism to reaffirm the country's founding values. Soon after the start of the Civil War, on July 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln defended calling up a militia and assuming controversial powers in order to keep the country united, telling Congress he could only "perform his duty or surrender the existence of the government."
Amid the carnage of World War I, Woodrow Wilson visited the tomb of America's first president, George Washington, on July 4, 1918, and said the war was not just to secure "American liberties" but also global freedom. And before America's entrance into World War II — on July 4, 1941, six months before the Pearl Harbor attack — Franklin Roosevelt warned of a gathering storm: "I tell the American people solemnly that the United States will never survive as a happy and fertile oasis of liberty surrounded by a cruel desert of dictatorship," he said on the radio. That's a message that might also apply to the current age when autocrats seemed to be on the march.
Still, while things seem grim in America right now, the history of July 4 suggests it could always be worse.
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