250 Sad Trombones

Trump’s bid to hijack America’s 250th for his own glory is unraveling one fiasco at a time

America turns 250 this July 4, and Donald Trump had big plans—for himself, naturally. In his mind, the nation’s semiquincentennial was supposed to be a coronation moment for its king.

He had forced through a renaming of The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, with further plans to shutter it beginning July 4 for a top-to-bottom renovation.

He had planned a concert series on the National Mall to be run by his private Freedom 250 organization. It would displace the rival, congressionally-established America 250 celebration with acts and artists more to his liking.

To cap things off, the Treasury announced it would print a commemorative $250 bill bearing Trump’s stern, unsmiling mug, making Trump the first living person on American currency in more than 150 years.

America’s birthday was looking to be a Trump affair, start to finish, with his face, his name and his brand everywhere. But it isn’t going as he’d hoped. Trump’s grandiose plans to gild America’s birthday in cheap gold leaf are collapsing: His building renovation was blocked by a judge, his concert was boycotted by artists, and his Trump currency has stalled in legislative limbo.

Cue 250 sad trombones.

The Trump Kennedy Center: A sad, brief history

From the moment Trump returned to the White House for his second term, he set his sights on the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.’s crown jewel of arts and culture. Trump fixated on the Center with the zeal and grievance of a man who had never been invited to the right parties.

In February 2025, he fired the Center’s existing board, installed loyalists and appointed himself chair. By December, the dutifully sycophantic board had voted to rename the venue. And on the night of Dec. 19, 2025, workers under blue tarps, hung from the columns to shield the operation from public view, bolted the words “The Donald J. Trump and” above the existing lettering on the building’s façade.

The result was a name that reads less like a tribute than an awkward legal filing: “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”

Two “The”s in the title. The grammarian mind reels.

Then came the 250th birthday angle. In February of this year, Trump announced that the newly christened Trump Kennedy Center would close on July 4 “in honor of the 250th Anniversary of our Country” for a two-year renovation. Trump wanted to transform it into “the finest performing arts facility of its kind, anywhere in the world.” He chose the nation’s birthday to shutter the Center—eventually to reopen, bearing his name and his uniquely painful aesthetic.

As these changes were taking place, audiences and artists began voting with their feet. Renowned performers canceled appearances. The Washington National Opera ended its five-decade residency. Ticket sales cratered. The more Trump tried to make the Center his, the faster the talent and audiences fled.

Then, last Friday, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that the renaming was illegal. The Kennedy Center’s founding statute, Cooper wrote, “make[s] crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so.” In short, Congress named it, so only Congress can rename it. The judge issued his ruling, pointedly, on what would have been John F. Kennedy’s 109th birthday.

Trump denounced the ruling on Truth Social, calling Cooper a “Highly Conflicted, Crooked Federal Judge” and an “anti-Trump Hater.” His 580-word post predicted the Kennedy Center would “soon be closed, probably never to open again,” and Trump announced he was handing the whole mess over to Congress because continuing would be “a hopeless journey into ‘NEVER NEVER LAND.’”

In short, Trump declared, “I didn’t want that stupid center anyway!”

Kerry Kennedy once posted that she’d take a pickaxe to remove the letters Trump had placed on the wall in front of her uncle’s name. Happily for her, a federal judge got there first.

Freedom 250, where Milli Vanilli won’t even lip sync

If the Kennedy Center debacle was Trump’s attempt to crash the high-culture party, Freedom 250 was his attempt to throw his own outdoor music festival.

It was to be a rival celebration to the one planned by the congressionally-established America250 commission. That nonpartisan group had been quietly and competently planning the nation’s 250th birthday celebration since 2016, back when Trump was still just a reality TV host turned presidential candidate. Trump decided that whatever America250 was up to, he would do it bigger, louder and with his name on it.

He created Freedom 250 by executive order and set about booking the “Great American State Fair,” a multi-week extravaganza on the National Mall featuring concerts and pavilions from all 50 states. Freedom 250 announced its musical guest lineup with great fanfare in late May: nine acts, a celebration of American musical greatness, a moment of national unity. The artists included Martina McBride, Bret Michaels, The Commodores, Morris Day and The Time, and Young MC. Not exactly top-billed artists, but hey.

But even these commitments lasted just 48 hours.

In rapid succession, the billed musical acts began backing out, each citing a version of the same complaint: they had been told this was a nonpartisan celebration of America but discovered it was something else entirely.

Martina McBride explained that she had envisioned “just a bigger version of so many state fairs I have performed at over the years, celebrating community and what makes each state special. Sounds fun, right? Wholesome even.” Then, she said, “things started changing and what we were told is, in fact, not what is happening.” Bret Michaels of Poison, not exactly known for political squeamishness, said the event had “evolved into something much more divisive” and cited “threats that are completely unfounded and unforgivable.” Morris Day and The Time left. Young MC left. Even The Commodores left, taking with them “Three Times a Lady”—which, honestly, would have been a fitting tribute to Trump’s marital history.

By the end of the week, more than half the announced lineup had fled. Then came the Milli Vanilli chapter, which deserves its own moment.

For those who need a refresher, Milli Vanilli was the late-’80s pop duo whose Grammy was stripped when it emerged that Fab Morvan and the late Rob Pilatus had not sung a single note on any of their recordings. The real singers were a group of session musicians who performed anonymously while Morvan and Pilatus lip-synced their way to international stardom. The scandal destroyed the act and became the defining cautionary tale of pop artifice.

The true vocalists behind Milli Vanilli issued a statement saying they would not be performing at Freedom 250, and that any Milli Vanilli appearing in advertisements should be considered a tribute band. Then Morvan also dropped out, telling CNN: “Throughout the week, it turned into a circus. And this is not what I signed for.”

Too unreal even for Milli Vanilli. Another new low!

There were still a few artists willing to go forward. For his part, Vanilla Ice (no relation to the Vanilli) was characteristically unbothered. “I don’t even vote, so I don’t even care,” he told TMZ, before adding that he would happily perform for Biden, Putin or Iran because “music is not political, man. It’s universal.” Tehran and Moscow next, baby!

Flo Rida, whose stage name is just Florida after a run-in with the space bar, issued no statement, wisely avoiding any headline beginning “Florida Man….” C+C Music Factory, which many probably didn’t realize was still around, rounded out what remains of the billing.

In response to half his musicians bailing, Trump took to Truth Social to call the departing artists “Third Rate,” declared their music “boring”—never mind that his own organization had hired these “boring” artists. He then suggested the whole concert series be scrapped in favor of a “giant MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN RALLY” with, presumably, himself as the draw. He added, with characteristic modesty, that he gets “much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime” and does so “without a guitar.” Trump did not mention that Freedom 250 reportedly had not even contractually confirmed many of the artists before announcing them, a detail that leaked from inside the White House along with the news that “firings are coming” over the cancellations. A “circular firing squad,” one insider told the Daily Mail.

In the same Truth Social post, Trump linked his rage over the concert to his Kennedy Center humiliation, writing that the fair should be canceled “just like I canceled my involvement with the failing and unsafe to be in Kennedy Center.” That’s quite a reimagining of why his name had to come off a building.

It’s unclear, given the cancellations, whether the Great American State Fair will still happen—or whether the whole thing will be put on ice, ice baby.

The $250 idiot

Of all Trump’s attempts to brand America’s 250th birthday as a personal vanity project, the most audacious is his proposed $250 bill bearing his portrait.

The concept is straightforward enough: Create a new denomination of American currency, slap Trump’s face on it, and send it into circulation as a commemorative tribute to the president who happened to be in office when the country turned 250. Simple, executable and also completely illegal.

Federal law has prohibited living individuals from appearing on American currency since the 1860s. For it to pass legal muster, Congress would have to enact legislation to create an exemption from the dead-persons-only rule. Such a bill, the “Donald J. Trump $250 Bill Act,” was introduced by Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina. If his name rings a bell, he’s the same lawmaker who shouted “You lie!” at Barack Obama during a session of Congress in 2009..

The proposed bill was referred to the House Financial Services Committee in February 2025, where it has sat, untouched, ever since. But the languishing legislation has not stopped the Treasury from behaving as though the special note is still happening. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent held up a Washington Post article about the proposed $250 bill at a White House press briefing as though it were a proud accomplishment rather than a story about something that doesn’t yet exist and may never. Apparently the Bureau of Engraving and Printing also has been quietly preparing mock-up designs since last August featuring Trump’s image, described as a stern portrait of the president, along with his signature, the colors of the flag, and the “250” logo. The expression on Trump’s face is a characteristic glower.

There’s one twist that the Trump administration, in all its usual meticulous due diligence, failed to anticipate. As I drew attention to in Saturday’s Just for Skeets and Giggles, the number 250 in Mandarin (pronounced èr bǎi wǔ) is a common insult. It connotes “idiot.” The slang dates back to the Qing Dynasty and remains in vigorous use today. In Chinese culture, the number is considered so inauspicious that prices are rarely set at 250 for anything, and an item costing 250 is simply not given as a gift.

When news of the proposed currency broke in China, it generated over 14 million views on mainland social media, with the overwhelming reaction being “you can’t make this up” delight. One commenter suggested that someone in the White House urgently hire a Mandarin speaker and inform the president that “250 is not a glorious title.” My brother Kaiser Kuo, co-host of the popular Sinica Podcast, put it succinctly in a tweet:

250 (二百五, èrbǎi wǔ) is a common Chinese insult meaning a half-wit, a blockhead, a fool. Comedy writes itself. 笑死.

That last phrase means “dying of laughter.”

There is one way, of course, that a $250 Trump-branded bill could still become a reality without the need for exempting legislation. Federal law specifies that only deceased individuals may appear on American currency. And the universe, which has a well-documented sense of irony, has plenty of time before this thing goes to print to do the funniest thing.

Two hundred and fifty sad trombones, indeed.