House Democratic subcommittee report outlines web of alleged corruption, wire fraud and pay-to-play schemes
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.”
Of course, Fascism 101.
person who goes out of his way to make everything about him and openly embezzling…makes the celebration of our country try about himself while openly embezzling money
And they wonder why nobody gives a fuck this year…
I have fireworks…but not setting them off on the fourth this year…saving them for the day the big-beautiful-obituary hits the newsstands…
Neighbors are gonna be PISSED.
They should be pissed. The whole country should be pissed. I was around for the 200th, and it was a celebration of all of us. This is a disgusting multi-day rally for one guy, and not a very impressive one, unless you count the grift. Truly amazing, the biggest grift.
Republicans ruin everything. No wonder they are balls-deep on King Merdes. Everything he touches turns to shit.
This could have been one of the coolest July 4th in quite some time. Instead, diaper daddy has to get his grubby mitts on it…
I’ve been watching the crowds (or lack therof) for the “Freedom 250” bullshit in DC and laughing my everloving ass off… What a fucking joke…
First off, it’s like 1,000 degrees out right now, NO ONE is going to spend all day at the national mall sweating their balls off for a lame ‘state fair’
(It’s my understanding that State Fairs are usually in the fall, because they were originally intended to celebrate the harvest (or the end of it to be specific)
I never understood American patriotism outside of celebrating Sherman’s based war crime strategy, and parts of WW2.
On a related note, we need a federal holiday specifically recognizing Sherman’s patriotic and glorious March to the Sea.
I kind of understand patriotism…what I don’t understand is how, in the US, the people who are the “most patriotic” are the ones that usually hate everything about the government…
Yeah, they usually confuse nationalistic performative bullshit for patriotism. Don’t let them steal real patriotism from everyone else.
Just because they plaster the flag (and the flag of racists and traitorous losers, too, WTF?!) all over everything and talk about Jesus and the Constitution … does not a patriot make.
They treat patriotism as a contest and most of their personality.
Nah patriotism in the US is a facade for white Christian colonizer nationalism.
Fuck them all.
Yeah, no shit.
And almost anyone with two brain cells could have predicted the world’s most well-known malignant narcissist was going to do so, of course.
“if it doesn’t benefit me personally, then what’s it for?”
president dipshit needs to be paying for this whole failed event out-of-pocket (HIS not ours). taxpayers should not be paying even one cent towards a politically motivated and themed multi-day ‘rally’.
Remember, Trump is a symptom of a deeper and older problem. Maybe we should take this anniversary and reflect on the various ways we’ve screwed up. The 200th was different, as we did have lots of the same issues festering, but there was a feeling of hope to better ourselves. Now we know that was delusional and we should have done some serious housecleaning instead of being so gullible.
“How is this day different from any other day?”
I can’t believe it! To think, someone would transform a hyper-nationalist spectacle full of historical revisionism and militant jingoism into an exercise in political ideology?!
July 4th is supposed to be about things we can all agree on, like the Founding Fathers being Saints and F-35s being the apex aerial combat machine and Liberal Democracy being the perfect political system and England being a loser country full of knobs. We’re supposed to slap one another on the back and proclaim in one voice “This is the best country in the world, no cap!”
It’s not about politics. Who would be so vulgar as to make the signing of the Declaration of Independence political?!
Thank goodness we have the apolitical organization known as the checks notes minority caucus of the national legislature to look into this.
