Donald Trump Mocks the Declaration of Independence
Donald Trump literally wanted the original copy of the Declaration of Independence removed from the National Archives to the Oval Office as a statement of his victory over our entire national experiment of the last 230 years.
Declaration of Independence: On Thursday March 6, 2025, The Atlantic magazine published an article innocuously entitled, Trump’s Own Declaration of Independence. It had a tagline of, “The president, who has flirted with regal rhetoric, wants a historic copy of America’s founding document placed in the Oval Office.”
Yes, you read that right. “Regal rhetoric,” which he “flirts with.” How charming. Although the Atlantic writers were reporting on a true recent dustup within the Trump Administration, their tagline sought to be delicate about the sinister nature of what it was all about. After a lot of alarm amongst his White House enablers at his bombastic suggestion that the original Declaration no less, be sent over to the Oval Office, he did settle for one of several copies kept in the National Archives be sent to him.
How big of him. Maybe in the end, practical considerations did prevail. After all, the original document needs special lighting and atmospheric conditions to prevent further deterioration of the original parchment, or so his praetorian guard enablers tell the world. But so do those few other copies kept in the National Archives.
Trump apparently settled for one of those copies, then ostentatiously showed it to Laura Ingraham of Fox. It had a little curtain put over it, pretending it was the original. I suppose he figured the rubes out there in the heartland wouldn’t know the difference anyway.
Our Tory-in-Chief Just Can’t Help Himself
Declaration of Independence: But the important question to be asked is, Why? Why would an American President, the purported servant of “We, the People,” want to move the very Declaration signed on July 4, 1776 by Jefferson, Hancock and all the Founders, sent to his office, and not be left in full view for the American people and all the world to see? Why would he even, “go there”?
Subsequent reporting on this by various media outlets have speculated that, “since Trump is a cinephile, he fancies himself to be in the role of Nicolas Cage in National Treasure, looking for a mythical treasure map hidden on the B side.”
Sure. Sure he is, and sure he does. Even this outsized enfant terrible isn’t that childish. That’s just nervous media reaching for something, anything, to avoid facing up what this obviously is. The real reason is that the Founders’ literal declaration of independence from the control of a distant British monarch, was a move that opened up the world to the modern democratic era. It was a step that brought the world out of the darkness of feudalism and its stark aristocrat vs. peasant model, into what we’ve been enjoying for the last two-plus, progressive centuries of ever-increasing common man democracy.
That is, until Republicans began to realize how unpopular their policies are with the public, explaining their sudden shift to Hungarian/Russian-style dictatorship. By doing this, Trump is symbolically declaring that he has ended the modern era, and bought us back to the real “good ‘ol days,” the days of monarchical feudalism or even warlordism.
In so doing, he’s showing he’s hand-in-glove with what the real heritage of the so-called “Heritage Foundation,” the driving force behind “Project 2025” and all that it stands for, really is—pre-Revolutionary Tory-ism and British colonial imperialism. But what else could we expect from a pretentious organization started by a Catholic so fundamentalist as to identify with medieval “Christianity”?
Is Donald Trump Really A Bumbling Fool?
Declaration of Independence: As I, like so many others, have sought to comprehend the absurdity of the Donald Trump phenomenon for now lo, these last ten years, one thought has constantly vexed me. Does this ignoramus of historical proportions, this extremely-eccentric man, this doddering King George the Third-like idiot, actually know what he’s doing? Is he a self-deluded narcissist who is just too full of himself to realize how reckless and destructive his entire “agenda,” if you can even call it that, is? Or is this dude just crazy like a fox?
I’ve kind of concluded, based upon the stellar training my dear old cynical, Republican Dad bequeathed to me (plus what my tough-minded theology teachers added), that it’s the second reason. At least, most of the time. Donald Trump may be intellectually incurious, oblivious to appreciating the intangible spiritual and idealistic values of the Western freedom tradition and the we’ve all been enjoying in favor of his cheap Louis the XIV shallow materialism, all with kitsch style and vulgar manners.
But the truth is, when it comes to gutter politics, the man’s a genius, stable or otherwise. If there’s anything that represents human decency, decorum and order left, he will find a way to bring it down into the sewer of cynicism with him. After all, that is where his mind lives and thrives. As the old saying goes, misery loves company, and Donald Trump has plenty of misery to spare, and plenty left over to spread around.
Trump’s secret sauce in this is not a mysterious “something,” just a complete lack of conscience. If there’s anything decent left to tear down, if there’s anything that entails being a rebel without a cause, if there’s any expression of nihilistic defiance of all that ever came before him still left, he’s your man.
Just weeks before, he “tweeted” out this Time-like cover of him as America’s new king. That he has taken Executive Orders, originally designed to clarify policy within the Executive Branch, to new lows and way beyond into dictatorial overrides of the roles of other “co-equal” branches, especially Congress, goes without saying. Donald Trump is a buffoon who honestly thinks the era of kings and feudalism was the way to go.
Who else but him would give an aristocratic name to hi youngest son (Barron)? Ergo, the modern, common-man self-government phenomenon was, like so many in his party feel, a big mistake, no matter how much they pander to the working man, pretending to share his values (such as Steve Bannon). And nothing sums up the modern overthrow of that mentality quite like his taking of the Declaration of Independence like it’s a spoil of war.
Let’s Take A Big Sela Here
Declaration of Independence: I mean, just think about this for a moment. What kind of a nuclear meltdown would the terrorized, sadistic, for-sale-to-the-highest-bidder Republican Party and their right-wing agitprop media have had if Barak Obama, Joe Biden or even Ronald Reagan had the effrontery to suggest such a thing? Would not a normal US President show enough respect for We, the People’s foundational philosophical statement as to leave this “sacred” document within public view? To not make it a piece of booty as Trump sees it? Wouldn’t they have shown the kind of humility that at least George Washington showed when one of his junior officers suggested he be made “King of America,” and Washington turned it down?
But no. Donald Trump, who just before the last election accepted some blather about being “the greatest President in history…better than Abraham Lincoln and George Washington”[2]—doesn’t have the humility to be a great leader like say, Jesus Christ (Mt 11:29), or any other American President for that matter, who actually took seriously their oaths to honor the office they were about to step into.
For terminal cynics like Trump, who allowed Melania to hold up a Bible for his second swearing-in ceremony while making sure his hand stayed clearly off of it, ceremonies like that are empty gestures and another opportunity to dump all over the clueless “suckers and losers” who voted for him.
I’m surprised he didn’t order up a crown, grab it out of Roberts’ hands, and set it on his head himself, Napoleon-style.
Trump’s party, petrified of crossing him lest his biker gang brown shirts threaten their families with death, excuse all such behavior as, “Oh, that’s just Trump, the eternal jokester.”
Sure, he’s just joking. He claims he never tried to jail his opponents, in an attempt to erase your memory. But in truth, he tried to jail both Hillary Clinton and the entire Biden family, the latter just weeks before the 2020 election, in spite of his insincere protests to the contrary.
He Just Can’t Help Himself
Declaration of Independence: Thus it was, that Donald Trump just had to have the original Declaration sent to the White House. Since he fancies himself to be an ancient warlord who just takes what he wants without justification or apology,[3] sending our very founding document to his fraudulently-seized little war room called the Oval Office was an especial middle finger to the country and the world.
The question is, why? Why is this man so unhappy, so obsessed, so contrarian, so petty, so stubborn, so vindictive, so enthralled by cheap Russian mafia culture, so hateful of all the good traditions, practices, values and blessings his native country bequeathed to him? Just fill in the blanks, and you find a man with no soul, no gratitude for all the advantages life has given him. Like Bill Maher once said of this spoiled little Richie Rich—“When is the guy ever going to catch a break?!” What accounts for all these negative, nihilistic character qualities?
We are delving now into the world of psychological aberration, of a spiritual denseness that perhaps God only can understand and explain. As human beings though, we are limited in our understanding. All we know is that none of this is a part of Enlightenment thinking, none of this does us any good.
We can look upon Donald Trump as the end product of 50 years of perverse Republican policies, oriented to the care and feeding of oligarchical fantasies. But it is the madness, and quite frankly, ridiculousness of this man that proves once again, that the history of idealistic yet realistic egalitarian society is such a fragile thing. All it takes is one determined demagogue to drive it over the cliff. Even seemingly-innocuous moves like demanding the people’s founding document to become his own insatiable personal property, should set off five-alarm fire bells in all our minds.
Notes: Declaration of Independence
[1] Hebrew for essentially, “Stop and ponder this for a while”
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf7k5il5WBw
[3] In an interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox “News,” he told her he’s taking Greenland “because we need it,” or something to that effect. In the vast firehose of lies and psy ops that is Donald Trump’s mouth, I can’t find the interview offhand, even though I heard the words myself. Maybe Fox scrubbed it for all I know. But it’s right in line with his basic jingoistic, “Ugly American” approach to everything.
