Trump’s ‘lost cause’ is a threat to democracy

President Donald Trump’s attempts to celebrate America’s 250th birthday as a referendum honoring himself, and simultaneously plastering memorials to himself all over Washington, D.C., is a literal “lost cause” that threatens democracy.

“That’s some food for thought here in 2026, as an ailing, flailing President Donald Trump sets his sight on being the ringmaster of the clown show he has planned for the Fourth,” wrote The New Republic’s Jason Linkins on Sunday.

Previously, Linkins discussed how Americans should embrace discrediting the Lost Cause ideology of the Confederacy — namely, the idea that the Confederate rebellion against the United States after Abraham Lincoln’s victory in the 1860 presidential election was somehow honorable. In fact, the Southern states seceded from the Union because they supported slavery and feared Lincoln would bar it from the newly-conquered Western territories.

“When Trump’s not losing wars or setting the economy on fire, he’s busy turning the nation’s capital into an orgy of self-aggrandizement ahead of next week’s semiquincentennial celebration,” Linkins wrote. “At Wednesday’s kick-off event for his ‘Great American State Fair,’ Trump announced that ‘America is back.’ Where had it gone? The president proclaimed that ‘a short time ago we were a dead country. We were dead. Now we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world. We’re respected by everybody. Nobody’s laughing at us anymore.’”

Linkins added, “As a thin crowd made for the exits, he also touched on the matter of state that’s consumed most of his time lately: ‘The Reflecting Pool that you’ve heard so much about, which is so incredible, it’s been gruesomely vandalized by thugs, bad people, but soon will be looking as beautiful as it looked just two weeks ago,’ Trump said. ‘In fact, I looked at it just a little while ago. It looks perfect already, but we’re fixing it.’ As it happens, the Reflecting Pool is still green, still peeling, and half-assedly stashed behind some chain-link fence. It may be a federal crime for me to report this, it’s not really clear.”

While acknowledging that Trump is doing this in part to mollify his ego, Linkins argued that he is also drawing from Lost Cause ideological patterns to make his corruption, abuse of power and attempted coup after losing the 2020 election seem legitimate.

“Trump’s drive to commemorate himself, which has even run afoul of some of his fellow Republicans, is animated by the same idea as the Lost Cause: to lend legitimacy to a period of betrayal and to ensure this malevolent force lives on,” Linkins argued. “Allowing the Confederacy to commemorate itself was a profound failure on our part, and it seeded the earth for the weakening of our democracy. As Trump plans to sully the District of Columbia’s skyline with his triumphal arch (now with more fist!), I can see history repeating: Trumpism as the new Lost Cause.”

He added, “The possibility that he might not be remembered seems to vex Trump, whose administration moved with the same sort of alacrity to forestall the removal of his name from the Kennedy Center as it did in fighting its inane war with Iran. As Brian Beutler reported in his Off Message newsletter, Trump’s name only came off the building because Ohio Democrat Joyce Beatty, as an ex-officio member of the center’s board, had the standing to sue over the matter, and she took the opportunity. Some other Democrats who had standing for the same reason decided to pass, including House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries and outgoing D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.”

Linkins concluded by arguing that Democrats should act as Beatty did in challenging Trump over putting his name on the Kennedy Center, saying doing so “would send a strong signal that the party will brook no attempts to commemorate a discredited president—and that it has the stomach for the civic deworming this nation needs to kick off its next century.”

Trump’s attempts to celebrate America’s 250th birthday have also been criticized for being “trashy,” at least according to a retired professor from the U.S. Naval War College.

“I mean, it was trashy,” Tom Nichols told The Bulwark’s podcaster, Tim Miller, on Thursday. “The whole business was trashy. And I know that sounds — oh, that's snooty and elitist. But no, it was just trashy. And his speech was small. That's a thing. That's what I wrote about last night. He took this thing that could have been grandiose.”