Defeating Trump’s Despotic Declaration of Independence
Now is not the time to cede patriotism and “the spirit of ‘76” to Trump and his MAGA supporters. It is the time to defend a robustly democratic version of the Declaration of Independence, as a way of honoring what is best in our past, but also what is best in ourselves as citizens and free human beings capable of realizing a better future.
”propelled by the spirit of July 4th, 1776, we will win a righteous and resounding victory on November 5th, 2024. And we will make America great again, greater than ever before.” --Donald Trump, speaking at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference in Washington, D.C. on June 24, 2023.
Hyperbole aside, Donald Trump did win last November, in part by touting “the spirit of July 4, 1776” and promising to restore “American Greatness.” And upon assuming office, he immediately began weaponizing American history--and especially the interpretation of the Declaration of Independence and its historical legacy—as part of his broader assault on liberal democratic norms and institutions. In the coming year, defenders of liberal democracy will need to counter Trump’s despotic reading of the Declaration, and to defend a robustly democratic understanding of its role in inspiring the very freedoms that Trump is determined to destroy.
In his second week in office, Trump issued two Executive Orders centered on the Declaration. The first, “Celebrating America’s 250th Birthday,” announced that “it is the policy of the United States, and a purpose of this order, to provide a grand celebration worthy of the momentous occasion of the 250th anniversary of American Independence on July 4, 2026.” The second, “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” mandated the termination of “radical, anti-American ideologies,” the promotion of policies designed to “instill a patriotic admiration for our incredible Nation and the values for which we stand,” and the reestablishment of a “President’s Advisory 1776 Commission and Promoting Patriotic Education.”
Why does the Declaration currently loom so large for Trump? At least three reasons present themselves.
The first is simple-- Trump’s enormous ego. Back in early March of 2025, The Atlantic, in a piece entitled “Trump’s Own Declaration of Independence,” reported that shortly after moving back to the White House this year, Trump sought to move an original copy of the Declaration, displayed in the rotunda of the National Archives Building, into his office. The Atlantic noted the obvious contradiction between the Declaration’s bold repudiation of monarchism and Trump’s grandiose tendency to confuse his person with the body politic itself, from his 2016 campaign declaration that “I alone can fix it” to his Second Inaugural declaration that “I was saved by God to make America great again.” Apparently Trump was eventually persuaded by aides that the original Declaration is not a property he could personally claim—at least not yet--leading him to settle for a historical copy, rather than the original, in his office. All the same, in his March 4, 2025 State of the Union Address, Trump declared that “it has been stated by many” that his presidency is “the most successful in the history of our nation,” naming as his runner up none other than George Washington. In his own mind, Trump is a 21st century Founding Father. So of course he must lay claim to the nation’s founding document, especially in the year leading up to its 250th anniversary.
The second reason for Trump’s obsession with the Declaration is more political—his media savvy and his need to occupy center stage in all things. Trump intends to pull out all the stops to promote a MAGA-inflected celebration of the Declaration’s 250th anniversary on July 4, 2026. Back in May 2023, he released a campaign video promising what Politico described as “a blowout, 12-month-long ‘Salute to America 250’ celebration [including] Trump a ‘Great American State Fair,’ featuring pavilions from all 50 states, nationwide high school sporting contests, and the building of Trump’s ‘National Garden of American Heroes’ with statues of important figures in American history.”
Ever the showman, Trump will produce a scripted, televised, and live-streamed extravaganza of “Americanism,” culminating in what he has called “the most spectacular birthday party. . . . the best of all time.” He will wrap himself in the Declaration, a reading of its history, and its rhetoric of revolution, as part of his broader effort to frame anyone who criticizes him as either an alien or a a dangerous Marxist menace to the American way of life. Doing so will no doubt elevate his own stature, wealth and power, even as it also cements his nihilistic political legacy.
The third reason for Trump’s Declaration obsession has less to do with him than it does with the reactionary rhetorics and ideological resentments that he has both brilliantly tapped and then further inflamed through his demagoguery over the past decade. For the fact is, much as he might wish it were otherwise, the Declaration of Independence is neither about him nor his personal property. For almost 250 years, it been a foundational text for a wide range of causes. And its appeal to far-right activists has long preceded the ascendancy of Trump. Highbrow conservative scholars, many influenced by Claremont Institute guru Harry V. Jaffa, have long treated the Declaration as a foundation of American greatness and civic virtue threatened by progressivism and democratic egalitarianism. So too, in a different way, have the lowbrow weekend warriors associated with the so-called “patriot” militia groups that have thrived at the margins of American politics at least since the end of the Vietnam War, whose members imagine themselves to be latter-day Minutemen, heirs of the supposedly “Three Percent” of Americans who were “the active forces in the field against the King’s tyranny” during the American Revolution.
Both groups of ideologues have for the past half-century played important roles on the far-right. Validated and empowered during Trump’s first administration. both were outraged by the criticisms of Trump--and of American society itself--that burst on the scene in 2019, when the New York Times featured the Nikole Hannah-Jones-led 1619 Project, which sought to shift the narrative of American history from a focus on freedom and independence to a focus on slavery and racism. The heated debates brought on by the Project, which converged with a Black Lives Matter movement that gained enormous steam after the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, generated an intense backlash among these right-wing activists in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.
One important consequence of this backlash was Trump’s decision, in the summer of 2020—after months of calling for both police crackdowns and vigilante “Second Amendment solutions”--to convene a September “White House Conference on American History” with the explicit purpose of reviving the “patriotic” celebration of “American Greatness.” This led shortly thereafter to the creation of Trump’s 1776 Commission, headed by Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn and featuring luminaries affiliated with Hillsdale, the Claremont Institute, and the Heritage Foundation. Clearly intended to legitimate Trump’s increasingly repressive approach to the BLM demonstrations, and to energize his 2020 re-election campaign, the Commission also had a broader ideological purpose: to inaugurate a MAGA-inflected Cultural Revolution in a second Trump term. Neither Trump’s campaign advisers nor his 1776 Commission enablers anticipated that Trump would be defeated by Joe Biden in the November 2020 election. Whatever fanfare might have been planned for the Commission’s work product, its Report was hurriedly published in the waning days of Trump’s first term, in a rush to beat the January 20 inauguration of Biden—who promptly disbanded the Commission on day one of his presidency.
Weeks before the Report’s underwhelming publication, its high-minded and academic agenda for MAGA-style civic education and patriotic reverence was overtaken by the second, and much less mannerly, form the Trumpist “spirit of ‘76’” had taken—the effort to overthrow Biden’s election that culminated in the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. As that date approached, Trump amplified his claim that the election had been stolen and called on his followers to “take back your country.” What ensued was a swelling of incendiary “patriotic” energy.
On January 3, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz told a Georgia “Stop the Steal” rally: “You are patriots. Just like the patriots that gathered at Bunker Hill. Just like the patriots at Valley Forge. Just like the patriots who forged this nation . . . We will not go quietly into the night. We will defend liberty.” On the morning of January 6, MAGA Congresswoman Lauren Boebert Tweeted “Today is 1776.” Congressman Jody Hice followed a few hours later, Tweeting “this is our 1776 moment.” The rallying cry was heard. And, led by Proud Boys and Three Percenters cosplaying the Minutemen of Lexington and Concord, the “patriotic” mob descended upon the Capitol, doing their part to prevent Biden the Usurper from actually becoming president.
Days later, the Philadelphia Inquirer profiled Jim Sinclair, a 38-year-old home restoration contractor from Bensalem, Pennsylvania, who traveled to Washington to participate in the “Stop the Steal” march. “Freedom!!!!!!!” Sinclair posted on Facebook alongside a photo of Mel Gibson from Braveheart. “It’s 1776, the American people have ears and eyes,” he declared. “We will not accept this fraudulent election.” Politico reported that online social media traffic among extremists in the lead-up to the insurrection frequently alluded to the precedent of 1776. An open letter by Chris Zimmerman, a Nevada Republican party official, went viral, insisting that “Trump will be president for the next four years. Biden will not be president,” declaring Pence a “traitor,” and concluding “the next 12 days will be something to tell the grandchildren. It’s 1776 all over again!”
The next day, Rush Limbaugh—recipient of a Trump-bestowed Presidential Medal of Freedom—continued to press the symbolism of the moment, declaring: “We’re supposed to be horrified by the protesters. There’s a lot of people out there calling for the end of violence. A lot of conservatives, social media, who say that any violence or aggression at all is unacceptable regardless of the circumstances. I am glad Sam Adams, Thomas Paine, the actual Tea Party guys, the men at Lexington and Concord, didn’t feel that way.”
This “patriot” rhetoric, having fueled a bona fide insurrection that only barely failed, did not abate in the years of Biden’s presidency.
Back on April 23, 2022, for example, MAGA Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene took to Twitter to declare that: "Today and everyday is 1776. Never give up our freedoms. . . . Be a watchman on the wall and stay guard every single second of every single day because the left will stop at nothing until they destroy our faith, our families, and our freedoms." Days later, on May 7, a complete unknown named Ricky Shiffer –who, it turns out, had been present at the January 6 insurrection--posted a reply on Truth Social: "Congresswoman Greene, they got away with fixing elections in plain sight. It's over. The next step is the one used in 1775." Months later, after the FBI executed its August 8 search warrant to seize classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Shiffer’s patriotic ire was further aroused. And after posting scores of calls for violence at Truth Social, on August 12 he attempted to enter the FBI field office with an AR-15-style rifle in order to take that 1775 “next step.” He was prevented by police from entering, and was eventually killed by police in a gunfight after a high-speed chase.
Shiffer, hardly a typical MAGA enthusiast, was nonetheless an adherent of the violent rhetoric, some of it deliberately invoking the American Revolution, that was widely purveyed by Trump and other MAGA leaders in the years following Biden’s inauguration. This rhetoric was kicked into high gear in November of 2022, when Trump announced his campaign for the presidential election of 2024.
While that announcement made no reference to the Declaration or “1776,” it described the campaign as a war against “the combined forces of the establishment, the media, the special interest, the globalists, the Marxist, radicals, the woke corporations, the weaponized power of the federal government, the colossal political machines, the tidal wave of dark money and the most dangerous domestic censorship system ever created by man or woman.” As the campaign proceeded, Trump’s speeches became suffused with the rhetoric of violent revolution. In a widely covered March 2023 speech in Waco, Texas, Trump, describing Biden’s administration as a totalitarian state run by “Marxists and communists,” declared that his campaign represented “the final battle” against enemies intent on destroying the country. He also promised that a second Trump administration would set everything right:
“In 2016, I declared, I am your voice.’ And now, I say to you again tonight, “I am your warrior. I am your justice.” . . . For those who have been wronged and betrayed . . . I am your retribution. We will take care of it . . . Either we descend into a lawless abyss of open borders, rampant killings, super hyperinflation . . . and festering corruption. Or we evict Joe Biden and the Democrats from the White House, and we make America great again. . . We will liberate America from these villains and tyrants who are looking to destroy our country. . . [and ] restore the American republic to all of its greatness and glory greater than ever before.”
As the campaign unfolded, Trump’s rhetoric became even more incendiary. In a November 11 Veterans Day Speech, he declared: “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections. They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream. . . the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within.” As Trump doubled down on such “enemies,” his evocations, and invocations, of the American Revolution became more resonant.
On Trump’s logic, Biden’s defeat and his own 2025 Inauguration represents nothing less than the removal of a tyrant much worse than King George III; the subjection of the tyrant’s evil and dangerous supporters; and the redemption of those authentic and “patriotic” Americans who despise elites who hate everything great about America. By promising a restoration of “Greatness” via appeal to the country’s revolutionary origins—“today is 1776”— Trumpism is a doctrine of “conservative revolution” by any means necessary.
Trump claims a popular legitimacy that transcends ordinary politics and supersedes all traditions, norms, laws, or legal institutions. By Executive Order he has sought to end birthright citizenship and suspend the due process rights of non-citizens; attack the autonomy of academic institutions; and use his executive power to intimidate and punish those who challenge him. He has purged the federal bureaucracy and the military of career professionals, appointing cronies and supporters to every major position of leadership. He has instituted harsh border and tariff policies by edict. And he has talked about a third presidential term—something manifestly at odds with the U.S. Constitution.
Trump has done all of this by wrapping himself in the American flag and claiming to represent the true, patriotic legacy of 1776. It might be tempting to imagine that he cannot succeed in a country like the U.S., given its history and its Constitution. Joe Biden was captive to such imaginings. From his first day in office to his last, he appealed to the Declaration, saying in increasingly desperate tones to the American public that “this is not who we are, people. We are the United States of America.” The problem is that this is who we are. We are a people whose liberalism has always been entwined with illiberalism. And we are a people who experienced four years of Trumpism--with its corruptions, impeachments, abysmal response to Covid, and attempt to overthrow a democratic election itself—and then voted to return Trump to the White House. Trump is not an aberration, nor is he a simple tool of Putin or anyone else. He is 100% Made in America, and he has made himself the most powerful, and dangerous, president in U.S. history by claiming to stand for American Greatness and having over seventy million voters embrace or at least normalize his claim.
Yet while Trump represents a feature of the American political tradition that is both disturbing and real, he does not represent the things in the American political tradition most worth celebrating and defending. Indeed, he represents a blight on and a danger to those very things.
In the coming year Trump will mobilize American history to further his hold over an American political system that is decayed, fragile, and on the verge of being commandeered, and transformed, into something deeply authoritarian and extremely dangerous to the health, security, and freedom of most Americans. In the name of “the spirit of ‘76” he will attack essential freedoms that generations of Americans have fought and died to achieve and to defend.
Those ancestors of our liberal, constitutional democracy often fought against their own versions of Trump—people like Jefferson Davis, Strom Thurmond, and George Wallace--who claimed at earlier moments to be the true heirs of the American Revolution even as they displayed contempt for the Declaration’s spirit and the most noble achievements that it helped to inspire. Our liberal forbears—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Eugene V. Debs, Martin Luther King, Jr.-- saw the Declaration as a “charter of liberty,” and they mobilized behind it to make the United States, very imperfectly and over decades and centuries, “a more perfect union” by making it a more democratic one. Not perfect. Simply a bit more perfect. In other words, better. Fairer. More inclusive, open, and decent.
Now is not the time to cede patriotism and “the spirit of ‘76” to Trump and his MAGA supporters. It is the time to defend a robustly democratic version of the Declaration of Independence, as a way of honoring what is best in our past, but also what is best in ourselves as citizens and free human beings capable of realizing a better future.