MAGA families forced to shelter in African American History Museum on Independence Day
Maybe they learned something?
Where do you think is the funniest possible place that Trump supporters at the Freedom 250 July 4th celebration would be forced to shelter in place due to severe weather?
After a week of Trump’s absolutely disastrous Great American State Fair that pointedly diminished the role Black people played in the nation’s history, extreme heat and lightning storms delayed the fireworks for hours and forced thousands of MAGA attendees to take shelter inside the Museum of African American History and Culture. The National Guard had to herd them off the mall and into the museum like cattle.
“Currently trying to evade the DC storm by staying in the African American Museum with 5,000 Trump supporters,” Liberal Currents writer Sami Gold posted on X. NBC reported that the museum hit full capacity with over 1,000 people still stuck outside, and people on the floor were singing “God Bless America.”
Virginia State Senator L. Louise Lucas, the Black woman who led Virginia’s redistricting push and was punished for it with a federal raid on her office, called it “God’s plan to educate them.”
This had to be the Trump Administration’s worst nightmare of a shelter location, considering that Trump has been locked in a standoff with the museum over its refusal to change its exhibits to sanitize slavery. Trump demanded in an executive order last year that the Smithsonian take action to ensure the museum does not “contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.”
But the New York Times reports that when the feds tried to direct storm evacuees to shelter in the Department of Commerce yesterday, all the doors there remained locked as a Secret Service agent just shrugged at clumps of people trying to get in. So a Black history museum basically saved the day after a week of nightmares for the MAGA folk trying to view Trump’s white-centered version of history. Eleven people had been sent to the hospital the day before due to the extreme temperature, and then festivalgoers were made to stand in long lines in 100+ degree heat again just to get onto the mall yesterday, while the event offered them no shade or water.
“In line for two hours for the fireworks on the mall,” posted right-wing commentator Glenn Beck. “It is 105 and we are all standing on the street, no shade. To say the mood is declining a bit might be an understatement. :)”
To make the metaphor more abundantly obvious, masked white dudes in the neo-Nazi group Patriot Front marched around D.C. with Confederate flags all day, terrorizing the residents. Here’s a future Pulitzer Prize-winning photo (by Cheney Orr of Reuters) depicting a Black woman surrounded by members of Patriot Front, who were too cowardly to show their faces in public, on Independence Day. (ICE must’ve had the day off in order to free these men up for a D.C. trip.)
Fox News’ Laura Ingraham was so embarrassed by the Patriot Front guys that she claimed it was a false flag operation by the left. “I call fake,” she posted on X. “Looks more like Antifa in costume. No one should be allowed to cover their faces.” (Republicans used to claim the “feds” were behind Nazi marches like the one in Charlottesville, but they can’t claim that anymore because the feds are on their team.)
Trump didn’t say a word about literal white supremacists descending on the mall for America’s 250th birthday, but he did wait out the storm watching a live Fox News feed of himself watching Fox News.
And when the president finally managed to give his speech at 11 pm, after his supporters were freed from the Black history museum, he badly misquoted the Declaration of Independence. "And as our Declaration of Independence tells us," Trump said, "we are all made in the image of one almighty god. And a communist will never say that."
Indeed, a communist would probably not say that because it does not appear anywhere in the document. The Declaration of Independences states that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” But that’s the kind of principle more likely espoused by a place like the African American History Museum than the guy desperately trying to pass a voter suppression bill to stay in power.
Anyway, here’s what Mamdani’s New York looked like on Independence Day eve:
kicking feet and giggling