![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/ed404616ea26b65d85dd28ac4633b1f0b3-maga-fourth.rsquare.w400.jpg\")
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\n Attendees are asked to evacuate due to thunderstorms in the area during the \u201cSalute to America\u201d Independence Day celebration on the National Mall in Washington, DC.
\n Photo: Amid Farahi\/AFP\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
Hours before Donald Trump addressed the nation on its 250th anniversary, the National Mall was in chaos. A storm was on the way, and law enforcement had ordered the MAGA faithful to evacuate \u2014 a process that did not go smoothly. People had waited in the extreme heat for hours to celebrate Trump and America; now they argued with the Secret Service and chanted \u201cUSA, USA\u201d out of fury. As the lightning descended, the New York Times liveblog began to sound a little incredulous. A Times reporter heard a man<\/a> blame the order on \u201cliberals in the weather service.\u201d Crowds seeking shelter found nearby buildings locked up for the holiday. An officer in front of the Commerce Department \u201cshrugged\u201d when someone asked him how to get inside, the liveblog noted. Others huddled inside the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Although Trump eventually appeared on the Mall for his speech, the spectacle had grown damp and strange, a fitting conclusion to months of disorder.<\/p>\n By now the mess is familiar. The Great American State Fair attracted small crowds<\/a>; some states even declined<\/a> to participate. Bret Michaels backed out<\/a>, and so did Martina McBride. The Real Milli Vanilli said they would not perform. When a Washingtonian reporter visited<\/a> the scene, an Evangelical preacher was holding forth from the main stage without an introduction;\u00a0\u201cthe handful of other spectators\u201d said they don\u2019t know who he is. A mock-up of Trump\u2019s triumphal arch oozed<\/a> a puslike substance, and a robot dog danced alone<\/a> in the mud. Nearby, the reflecting pool sat green and full of algae, lethal<\/a> to ducklings and irresistible<\/a> to protesters, who demonstrated next to it in costume. A grand jury indicted<\/a> an Olympic canoe racer for touching a piece of the pool\u2019s disintegrating bottom liner.\u00a0Two days before the storm, a portion of the stage broke off and nearly struck dancers<\/a> who were in the middle of a rehearsal.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s tastes have always been entertaining, if garish. Lately, though, the seams are fraying. Last weekend\u2019s semiquincentennial shitshow is almost the least of it: The White House is now a construction site, and the entrance of the Kennedy Center is covered by scaffolds and wrapping. A spokesperson for the center told<\/a> The Atlantic that the tarps are there for a maintenance project, but they also hide the building\u2019s name, which, because of a recent court order, is no longer Trump\u2019s. The landscape is ugly. Worse, it\u2019s dull. If Trump can\u2019t throw a good party or make everything golden, what\u2019s left? Loyalists have leaned on MAGA for glitz and a little excitement. Without spectacle, the future of the movement is in jeopardy.<\/p>\n In 2015 and 2016, Trump\u2019s rallies were notoriously extravagant. The crowds grew, inexorably; they fawned, as no one has ever fawned over Ted Cruz. Against a star-spangled backdrop in state after state, Trump made the mob laugh and channeled its libidinal hatred. He returned to the same lines, played the same songs, and it generated a kind of emotional bond among the crowd. People wept. At times, the frenzy spilled into violence. Trump said he\u2019d like to punch a protester in the face, and some events broke out into brawls. Protesters \u201cwalk in and they put their hand up and they put the wrong finger in the air \u2026 and they get away with murder. Because we\u2019ve become weak,\u201d he said<\/a> at one event in Fayetteville, North Carolina. As the election approached and stories of Trump\u2019s sexual misconduct went public, rallygoers started booing the press at his urging. \u201cFor them, it\u2019s a war,\u201d he said of the media. The crowd cheered.<\/p>\n The vibe reminded me of worship services I\u2019ve attended, but there are other, secular antecedents for the role of spectacle in the MAGA world. The tea party has always known how to make itself the center of our attention. People dressed up as various Founding Fathers and warned of death panels. In college, I attended one rally in Springfield, Ohio, and observed a middle-aged white man wearing heavy chains, which he would rattle to make a point about the injustice of taxation. A report in The New Yorker described<\/a> the feeling as one of \u201cfestive despair,\u201d fed by grievance. Texas Monthly saw<\/a> George Washington on horseback, leading rallygoers in \u201ca rag-tag march\u201d around the state capitol before asking them to \u201cswear an oath of enlistment\u201d to his cause. Participants thought D.C. could not hear them so they made themselves obnoxious \u2014 so successfully they and their moneyed patrons reshaped the Republican Party. The tea party was not a cult of personality, like MAGA, but theatricality was key to the movement. It sparked interest.<\/p>\n Before the tea party, there was George Wallace and his third-party run for president in 1968. A vicious segregationist, Wallace ran on racial hierarchy \u2014\u00a0or law and order, as his modern-day compatriots like to call it. Wallace had flair, if nothing else; a country-boy affect and slapstick grin helped him sell the poison. In Alabama, a rioter \u201cgets a bullet in the brain, that\u2019s all,\u201d he said<\/a> that year. He kept his fans laughing and worked them into ecstasy. The writer Garry Wills described a Wallace rally in Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man, in grotesque terms. \u201cThis middle-aged group, so critical of the hippies\u2019 four-letter words and \u2018immorality,\u2019 had already, at eight o\u2019clock, donned the ten-o\u2019clock faces of an all-night party at the Elks Club,\u201d he wrote. Wallace radiated \u201ca gritty nimbus of piety, violence, sex.\u201d He railed against communists and journalists and the ungrateful youth of America while supporters honked their air horns and shook their fists at hecklers in their midst. \u201cTheir happiness is enough to break the heart,\u201d Wills wrote. Wallace lost, but the Equal Justice Initiative says<\/a> he is still \u201cthe most successful and popular independent candidate in modern presidential election history,\u201d having won 10,000,000 votes during the general election and the electoral votes of five southern states.<\/p>\n As with Trump, hate was as much a part of Wallace\u2019s campaign as the spectacle. To his followers, he pledged counterrevolution, the revival of their power over Black Americans. The tea party began, arguably, with Rick Santelli\u2019s rant <\/a>against foreclosure aid to struggling homeowners. From there, it absorbed various outrages \u2014 over big government and health-care reform and taxes \u2014 represented by the nation\u2019s first Black president. MAGA combines the same counterrevolutionary fervor and racial prejudice with standard conservative policies and the father worship of Donald Trump, plus a kind of joie de vivre that anticipates better days ahead. If Trump can\u2019t sustain that energy through rallies and fun and whatever else he dreams up, he looks less like an idol and more like a man. For now, grocery prices are high, people are losing their health care<\/a>, and the job market looks weak<\/a>. Deportations are up, congratulations to all, but wailing children and dead protesters leave an impression.<\/p>\n There won\u2019t be a mass epiphany within MAGA. Online, the most conspiratorial Trump supporters blamed sabotage for the Fourth of July weather; there are traces of Jade Helm<\/a> to be seen. But others may experience something more subtle, like the sense of being had. Trump understands his vulnerability, on some level, which is why he is obsessed with the size of his crowds. Without them, he\u2019s just another president. In the absence of spectacle, corruption and cruelty are more difficult to ignore.<\/p>\n Sign Up for the Intelligencer\u00a0Newsletter<\/p>\n Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n