Mehdi Hassan

As far as I understand it, there are two separate committees working on this sort of celebratory extravaganza.

There's America 250, which was established by Congress 10 years ago, and Freedom 250, which was set up by Trump as a public-private partnership.

Slash grift machine.

Well, it's giving quite King Trump vibes.

How are we supposed to read what it says about his presidency and about his vision for America?

So a couple of things.

It's always very hard to talk about Trump's dictatorial tendencies because on the one hand, they're so tacky, right?

This is a guy who puts gold in the White House, fawns all over Kim Jong-un, says we sent each other love letters.

I wish my people saluted me like his people salute him.

The guy's in the middle of a war he's losing in the Middle East and all he talks about is a ballroom.

He went to China.

When he left China, the Chinese government put out a statement about what they spoke about, trade, globalization.

He put out a statement saying they have a ballroom, we should too.

On the one hand, I talk about this stuff and we laugh and we say, how ridiculous, how absurd.

It is $400 million worth of ballroom going on right there.

More than that.

So on one hand, it's kind of tacky, weird, you know, cheap, self-aggrandizing.

On the other hand, it is very serious.

This is the executive branch of the United States government, which is taking over the other two branches, has taken over Congress and has declared war basically on the judiciary.

And therefore, in a country which is supposed to be built on checks and balances on three co-equal branches of government, you have a president who's doing everything he can right now, politicizing his DOJ, his Department of Justice, to go after his political opponents and doing things like enriching himself in office.