Don't let a strutting Trump spoil Independence Day

Donald Trump is a man who could strut sitting down.

This week, he is doing a hostile takeover and tacky makeover of the U.S. Capitol's traditional non-partisan celebration of the Fourth of July. "A Salute to America" will be The Donald blowing his own horn.

"HOLD THE DATE" the 45th president tweeted recently, promising "one of the biggest gatherings in the history of Washington, D.C.," with a "major fireworks display, entertainment and an address by your favorite President, Me."

Trump will be front and center, jaw jutting out like Mussolini, at the Lincoln Memorial. The man who has told (at last count) 10,796 lies, and talked of the "fine people on both sides" demonstrating at Charlottesville, will hold forth before the likeness of a president who told a divided nation:.

"The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched , as surely as they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

The Lincoln Memorial will be used as frontispiece for a campaign rally. It's the spot where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech . . . the setting where contralto Marian Anderson, barred from Independence Hall because she was African-American, sang "My Country 'Tis of Thee" to a crowd of 75,000.

"The last president to try to hijack July 4th was Richard Nixon, who staged Honor America Day on July 4th, 1970: It was widely ridiculed. Nixon later left office in disgrace," anti-Trump conservative writer William Kristol told Huffpost.

The event featured Bob Hope, Lawrence Welk and the Rev. Billy Graham. But thousands of demonstrators descended on Washington, D.C., and hippies staged a marijuana smoke-in on the National Mall.

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