President Donald Trump gestures as he attends UFC Freedom 250 on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., June 15, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci
President Donald Trump’s Wednesday night speech to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary was garbage, according to a former U.S. Naval War College professor.
“I mean, it was trashy,” Tom Nichols, retired professor from the U.S. Naval War College, told The Bulwark’ 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.”
Nichols then quoted George Washington, America’s first president, who in his last will and testament started by describing himself as a citizen first and a president second.
“For him, that was the most important thing to be — to be a citizen, and he understood that we were all sharers in this great adventure, this great experiment, and Trump just doesn't understand any of that,” Nichols said. “He made it all about me, me, me.” Quoting Trump’s bragging about ending taxes on tips, declaring war against Iran and renovating the Reflecting Pool, Nichols added that “the few times that Trump tried to be elevated, or tried to be presidential, he said things like — the one that jumped out at me — ‘from the storied alleys of Boston to the streets of Philadelphia.’”
“Okay, first of all, anybody who's lived in Boston knows there's no such thing as these storied alleys of Boston,” Nichols said. “They have some stories, and we won't tell them. But "to the streets of Philadelphia" — I'm sorry, wasn't that a Bruce Springsteen song about a movie about a guy with AIDS? I mean, it just went on and on — skyscrapers and railroads and Normandy and Saratoga. But then he would go right back to the really petty, small, you know, ‘look at me, look what I did.’”
He concluded, “And I'll finish with one serious comment, which is that it shows that Trump and his people don't understand the difference between patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism is love of one's country for itself — for what it is, for its eternal characteristics. Nationalism is ‘my tribe is better than all other tribes.’ And that's the only way Trump can conceive of this. He kept saying we're better than everybody else, we're the hottest, we're the biggest.”
Nichols is not the only one to draw attention to a “trashy” quality in Trump’s celebration of America’s 250th birthday. His Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy aroused controversy when he described Trump’s critics and the artists who cancelled appearing at his event as “libtards,” even though his daughter with Downs Syndrome was present. According to CNN senior political reporter Aaron Blake, “In one sentence, Duffy both complains about the musical acts who canceled and completely legitimizes their stated reason for doing so.”
More controversially, during a UFC event on the White House lawn intended to commemorate both America’s birthday and Trump’s own birthday, fighter Josh Hokit told pro-Trump podcaster Joe Rogan that “Michelle Obama is a man! Am I right, America?”
Similarly National Park Service employees have balked at being required to wear Freedom 250 pins under the threat of “professional reprimands,” with one employee telling Mother Jones “when I asked if I would receive any disciplinary action if I chose not to wear the pin, I was told, ‘Yes.’ I chose not to continue the conversation after that.”