Mad King Trump’s Birthday Party

Historians looking back will feast on the metaphors for chaos and decay that haunted America’s 250th birthday celebration in the nation’s capital on Saturday.

A bloated old man pretended to project an eternal imperium after nature clogged his “fixed” reflecting pool green with slime and then hurled lightning bolts on the hottest Fourth of July that Washington has ever endured. The Independence Day Parade was cancelled after 11 visitors to the ill-attended, gimcrack Great American State Fair collapsed from heat stroke.

It’s as if angry gods in an ancient Greek tale were sending a wake-up call. But we needn’t look to the heavens to know that America can’t survive two-and-half more years of Donald Trump. It is time to impeach this rogue president who would be king.

In a recent interview on the Axios Show, Trump dropped a bombshell that should rouse Americans from their political slumber. When asked a question about the limits of presidential power, Trump replied, “There are no limits. I haven’t learned that lesson yet.”

That wasn’t quite accurate. As Trump told the New York Times, the only real limits on his power were his “own morality” and his “own mind.”

At this point, many Americans and much of their news media seem too exhausted to denounce the patently immoral Trump for lying that he possesses limitless power. But it really is a big deal.

After all, the U.S. Constitution says that America is made up of three co-equal branches of government — the legislative, the judicial and the executive.

Contrary to Trump’s claim that the president holds all the power, Article 1 of the Constitution gives Congress the sole power to pass laws, control federal budgeting and taxation, and investigate the executive branch.

Article 2 of the Constitution not only creates the executive branch it sets out the specific responsibilities and authorities of the president.

The Constitution is at pains to create a system of checks and balances at the heart of American democracy. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from declaring that his will is supreme. The direct implication of that statement is that he is above the law, the Constitution and the Congress of the United States.

Which is to say that under Trump, America doesn’t have a president but a potentate.

Testing the limits

Trump is the most dangerous president in U.S. history. One who keeps daring his nation to show the gumption to rein in a megalomaniac. A few recent examples:

Trump decided on his own to go to war with Iran, even though the War Powers Act of 1973 requires congressional approval for such a decision. Based on his threats, Cuba may be next. He also claimed that he could deploy troops in his own country.

No one in Congress has lifted a finger to stop Trump’s demolition of the Constitution as he presses ahead with his project of grossly extending executive power.

Trump introduced hefty tariffs at home and abroad even though any form of taxation is the sole responsibility of Congress. The courts have struck down those illegal tariffs.

But don’t assume the judicial branch is a bulwark against Trump overreach. In fact, the highest court in the land is acting as the president’s key enabler. It should be no surprise. Over time Trump has managed to politicize and control the Supreme Court by stacking it with judges willing to do his bidding. Conservatives now account for six of the nine justices. With nearly every ruling Trump’s power grows by leaps and bounds.

Most recently, the justices granted the president the power to fire the heads of federal agencies or commissions. That ruling overturned 90 years of jurisprudence that legally prevented the president from having that unlimited firing power.

The previous law was based on the idea that commission heads needed to be independent to do their jobs, protected from political interference by the president.

With the exception of the Security and Exchange Commission, Trump not only can now fire the heads of commissions he can do so without cause. And he can fill those agencies with people who serve his interests, not those of the public. Loyalty to Trump is the key qualification.

Consider some of his appointments.

Real estate developer Steve Witkoff was put in charge of delicate Middle East peace talks with zero diplomatic experience. Fox News figure Pete Hegseth became defense secretary with modest military experience. And vaccine-denier Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took over Health and Human Services with no credible background in public health.

Even before Trump won his second term as president, the Supreme Court was doing its best to remove restraints on his behaviour. In 2024 the justices voted six to three to grant Trump an “absolute” immunity from any criminal prosecution arising from any of his official acts.

Not to be outdone, the president’s sycophantic Department of Justice has given Trump, his family and his businesses protection from all past tax filings and all future prosecutions or tax audits.

And who was the attorney general who came up with this stinker? None other than Todd Blanche, Trump’s former criminal lawyer.

A threat to Canada and world order

Canadians cannot expect to avoid repercussions if the giant to our south further unravels. We have benefited from the economic and diplomatic heft of our powerful neighbour. Now we must map new global relations as Trump diminishes America’s reputation abroad.

According to a recent Pew Research poll, several countries in the West have more faith in the leaders of China and Russia than they do in the president of the United States.

Around the world, Trump’s reputation is in free fall even among right-wing, former allies like Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

In Canada, according to the Pew poll, a mere 20 per cent of respondents believe Trump will follow the right policies. His musings about annexing Canada and Greenland, his punitive tariffs, and his war of choice with Iran have all contributed to his plummeting popularity.

Those historians who someday assess where the United States stood at age 250 will have more than symbolism to cite in making comparisons with the decline of the Roman empire.

They will note that the nation whose founding documents profess noble ideals was led by man found guilty of sexual assault, a civil court decision recently let stand by the Supreme Court. The same proven huckster has multiple felony convictions for illegal business dealings.

Scholars someday will marvel at the ability of Trump’s evangelical Christian base to rationalize his sins. Just days before Trump’s self-aggrandizing July 4 pronouncements, a former Miss Switzerland beauty contestant became the 28th woman to accuse him of sexual assault. Beatrice Keul told Swiss public television that she expected to have coffee with Trump back in 1993, but it quickly turned into an attack. Trump has denied her accusation.

Meanwhile, Trump makes corruption standard practice in the White House. According to the New York Times the president pocketed at least $2.2 billion while in office in 2025, much of it from his family’s cryptocurrency businesses. In the case of the so-called $TRUMP memecoin, two out of three buyers have lost money, leaving nearly a million people in the hole for a total of $3.81 billion while Trump netted $600 million.

He stands to make a lot more. One of the world’s largest untapped sources of tungsten, “the war metal,” is in Kazakhstan. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick met with Kazakhstan’s president at the St. Regis hotel in New York last September, and Trump joined the negotiations by phone. A deal was sealed to mine the metal that the U.S. needs for missile warheads, fighter jets and computer chips. Preliminary applications had already been approved for up to $1.6 billion in potential federal financing for an American company now called Kaz Resources.

The sons of Trump and Lutnick have done business with partners in a deal their fathers negotiated, “continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in America history,” according to the Times.

According to federal filings the families have financial ties to at least 14 companies working with the federal government on critical mining deals. Federal funding for these deals is estimated to be over $8.9 billion. The two families also played a role in billions of dollars of cryptocurrency deals while the fathers helped set policies that supercharged the industry.

The Trump Organization has called the story “libellous" and is demanding a retraction.

Historians specializing in the excesses of power-mad caesars may see parallels in the golden chariot “gifted” to the president by leaders of Qatar, the $400 million Boeing 747-8 that Trump declared would lead a flyover of the nation’s capital on Independence Day. He’s also said he’s taking the jet with him when he leaves the presidency.

Those historians also will shake their heads at Trump’s decision to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary by staging a UFC cage match on the White House lawn — an echo of the bloody Coliseum spectacles that distracted the Roman citizenry until it was too late.

But history, like the lightning bolts that hammered Washington on Saturday, should be read as warnings and not as the future ordained. Can Americans retrieve the hope born 250 years ago that their democracy might weather any storm?

If so, that salvaging of America’s possibilities can begin with the impeachment of Trump. Most Americans say they dislike him, but millions feel too harried and overwhelmed to fight back against the dismantling of their democracy. An impeachment trial in the Senate would give them a signal that the slide is reversible.

Should Americans rally to the challenge of ending Trumpism and repairing the damage, they would be cheered on by people all over the world who, too, are searching for a sign. They wonder whether the United States, at long last and once again, has the resolve to free itself from the grasp of a mad king.