Birthday grift

The cultural and political offenses of the Trump era are many: inflaming bigotry, rejecting congressional oversight, shredding alliances. The administration’s most consistent tendency has been finding new and creative ways to mix public policy and private profit.

It was seen — well, partially seen — on the Fourth of July, and we don’t mean in the rolling out of tanks and generals.

For decades, Americans have flocked to the National Mall on Independence Day to stretch out and take in the night sky for the annual fireworks show. While thousands did so this year, a swath of the mall nearest the Washington Monument was cordoned off, many of the seats reserved for donors who had contributed healthy sums to the Republican National Committee or the Trump reelection effort.

Meanwhile, the Salute itself included the explosion of $750,000 in fireworks from Phantom Fireworks, a Youngstown, Ohio firm which has been lobbying the administration to hold off on increasing tariffs on China. By coincidence, the donation was announced the same day Trump delayed tariffs. Hmm.

So on America’s birthday, donors got prime location on federal property and a private company got its favored policy granted in apparent exchange for donating some product (a Trump tweet included a shoutout to Phantom). All brought to you by a president welcoming any and all business before his administration, foreign and domestic, to stay at his family’s properties.

We hold this truth to be self-evident: that in Donald Trump’s America, some are created more equal than others.