This July 4, Trump wants you to celebrate winning – big time

As President Donald J. Trump waits for One Big Beautiful Bill to sign on the 4th of July, it’s worth taking some Independence Day time to muse on what he means for The United States, other than making it some really big deals. The best deals, really. It’s what he does.

Trump’s detractors call him Cheeto Hitler, the modern face of fascist authoritarianism. He is not that. His most fervent supporters see him as the savior returned to Earth in a golf shirt. He’s definitely not that. Besides, Führer or God isn’t a very American dichotomy. There’s another way, an American way, a very Trumpian way.

America, at its core, is a con, a hustle, a 250-year real-estate boodle. You can talk all you want about the Constitution, ideals of freedom, or the better angels of our nature, but it all comes back to getting what’s yours. Trump is the ultimate grabber, a tap dancing conman, showman, hustler. He’s the monorail salesman in The Simpsons, P.T. Barnum (the actual one, not the singing, trans-friendly one from The Greatest Showman), Willy Loman made good, or maybe Willy Loman’s boss. “Third prize is: You’re fired,” says the supervisor in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross. Trump made his national reputation firing people, on TV. He does what’s best for him, even if that involves firing his employees, or threatening to deport them. And right now what’s best for him also happens to be best for America.

These aren’t necessarily negatives, either. For every American charlatan, there’s an innovator. Sometimes, they’re the same person. More than any other country, boundless self-interest defines the American character, that eternally youthful arrogance, the near-ignorant belief in your individual genius, that with grit, determination, and a little good fortune, great destiny awaits. That quality, combined with distinct geographical advantages and the most massive military arsenal in the history of the world, is what keeps the U.S.A. on top.

In a way, Donald Trump is the President we have always deserved. His America is entirely self-interested, and his current interest in it exists because it benefits him, bigly. What’s in it for me? The hustler asks. What’s in it for Trump? What’s in it for us? It’s all on the line as we balance on the edge of a golden knife.

This is no gee-whiz family man. He’s been married three times, with children from three different women. Trump may not drink, but he certainly gambles, with his money, with investor money, with our money. The man is President of the United States, and everywhere you go, you see skyscrapers with his name on them in big gold letters. That takes a lot of nerve.

When Trump announced for the Presidency the first time, he said, “I don’t need anybody’s money. It’s nice… I’m using my own money. I’m not using the lobbyists. I’m not using donors. I don’t care. I’m really rich, I’ll show you that in a second. And by the way, I’m not even saying that in a braggadocios… that’s the kind that’s the kind of thinking you need for this country.”

That statement is all you need to know about Donald Trump, and about the United States. Nothing has changed in the decade that’s passed since then. Trump has put up with a lot of shit, he’s made a big mess, he’s bent a bunch of rules. He’s yelled at and demeaned journalists and political opponents. Yet he just keeps winning, and, in his mind, if he’s winning, we’re winning. That’s what he wants us to celebrate this July 4th, not some head-bandaged Revolutionary War soldier playing the fife, not our liberation from some sort of mentally ill British monarchy. Winning, big time.

This is America. You can do whatever you want if you do it loudly enough, and with enough bumptious confidence. That may not be the lesson they teach in school, but it’s the truth. The ultimate evidence of that maxim, Donald Trump, is expected to sign his One Big Beautiful Bill today in a gilded office in a beautiful mansion. So crack open that Mexican beer on July 4 and dream that American dream, the best dream, Trump’s dream. The biggest dream there ever was.