Commentary Culture Investigations

Americans will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Founding tomorrow with an extravaganza of concerts, parties, fireworks, and parades. Our friends from abroad are joining the party with gusto: Yesterday, an armada that descended on New York Harbor as part of the festivities included service members from over 100 countries.
The signing of the Declaration of Independence is a world-historical event, and it is fitting that friends of freedom from all around the world hail it as one of the great advances in liberty. The Declaration became so consequential not merely because of the profound insights within it, but also because the signers got the geopolitics right. This country will only endure if Americans stay clear-eyed about both the great truths embodied in the Declaration and the grubbier realities involved in its defense.
The same day the Founders signed the document announcing their independence from the British Empire two-and-a-half centuries ago, a different armada bore down on New York Harbor. On July 2, 1776, British troops landed on Staten Island. As the ink dried in Philadelphia, the battle for New York began.
Many now think of the Declaration as the foundational text for understanding the ideas underpinning the American way, but the Continental Congress needed it to answer a more immediate and practical problem. The “glorious cause” of the American Revolution could not survive without funding, weapons, and military assistance that could only come from Europe, but no monarchs were interested in intervening in a local tax revolt. To get the support they needed, and to turn the rebellion into a global war, the Congress needed to convince Europe that the break with England was irreparable.
The prudent course would have been to downplay the anti-monarchical ideas driving the revolution, but that is not what the Founders did. Instead, they asserted “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” They continued, moreover, “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of” their citizens’ rights, “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.”
This is still not the court politics version of How to Win Friends and Influence People. But they believed in their cause so strongly that they couldn’t help themselves but write it, even when they knew a diplomatic failure would mean their ruin and, almost certainly, their death.
Despite this outpouring of republican fervor, geopolitical realities pushed Paris and Philadelphia together. France armed and funded the revolution, and eventually allied with the Americans, because the benefit of harming their hated rivals in England was so apparent. Not for the last time, the Americans defended their way of life as part of an international coalition that fought around the world. The war began in Boston and spread as far as the Bay of Bengal.
The former colonists knew that if they prevailed, their revolution had the potential to change the world. As Alexander Hamilton wrote, “it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example” to show all if men could be governed by “reflection and choice” rather than by “accident and force.”
But for the American system to thrive, it needed to survive a dangerous international environment. The United States was effectively surrounded after the war. Britain still owned Canada to the north, Spain’s control of New Orleans could choke off westward expansion, and the Atlantic Ocean was a highway for any adversary’s fleet. The revolutionary-era Articles of Confederation also left the central government too weak to do much.
This could not last. As Hamilton told his fellow delegates at the Constitutional Convention, “no government could give us tranquility and happiness at home, which did not possess sufficient stability and strength to make us respectable abroad.”
The text of the Declaration of Independence has inspired freedom movements around the world and helped Americans understand their glorious cause. Abraham Lincoln called it the “apple of gold” at the heart of the American experiment. In his view, the Constitution was the “picture of silver” that would “adorn, and preserve it.” The Declaration’s “great principles of political freedom and natural justice” convinced the escaped slave Frederick Douglass that the Constitution was a “glorious liberty document.”
As Americans celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration, many can see storm clouds on the horizon. Russia is still attacking Ukraine and threatening the United States and its allies, Iran has been bloodied but is vengeful, and China looms behind them eager to overturn the U.S.-led order.
The Founders would find this predicament all too familiar. To win their independence, they had to get the geopolitics right. To maintain it, they had to create and sustain a government that could effectively protect the American way of life. To preserve this precious heritage, we must too.
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The indictment against the man accused of defacing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was a unique opportunity for algae to return to the Elitist Media evening news after a one-day break. ABC took this as an opportunity to indulge their reflexive Trump derangement, and practically blame him for the defacement.

Watch the report in its entirety, as aired on ABC World News Tonight on Thursday, July 2nd, 2026:

WATCH: after a night off, algae returns to the evening news. For @ABCWorldNews, an opportunity to indulge their TDS and practically blame Trump for the defacement of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool pic.twitter.com/9g8Z55f55I
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) July 3, 2026

DAVID MUIR: Tonight, the Justice Department now charging a former American Olympian for damaging the Reflecting Pool in Washington. President Trump spent $16 million in taxpayer money to paint and renovate the pool. He blamed vandals for the algae and peeling paint. Now that former Olympian has been charged and tonight he says he did nothing wrong. Here’s Mary Bruce.

MARY BRUCE: Tonight, the Justice Department bringing felony charges against former American Olympian David Hearn, accusing him of damaging the Reflecting Pool two weeks after he was arrested on the National Mall. President Trump spent $16 million in taxpayer money to refurbish the pool. But just one week later, it turned green with algae, parts of its freshly painted bottom rising to the surface. Trump blamed vandals, not his hand-picked contractors.

DONALD TRUMP: They put a big gash- 350ft long. Think of that. 350-foot gash.

BRUCE: Today, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro accusing Hearn of damaging approximately two square feet.

JEANINE PIRRO: The National Park Service employees observed Hearn actually forcefully and violently pulling up and removing the bottom liner with both hands.

BRUCE: President Trump claims the alleged vandals used box cutters.

TRUMP: They came in with box cutters and they cut it up.

BRUCE: Today, reporters asking what Hearn allegedly used.

REPORTER: Did he have any tools or was it just his bare hands?

PIRRO: Right now, we believe it’s his bare hands. Both hands.

REPORTER: So does that indicate, in your belief, that it was probably damaged before or do you believe that he…

PIRRO: Oh, he damaged it.

REPORTER: Further, but do you believe it had already been damaged before?

PIRRO: He damaged the pool.

BRUCE: Hearn told ABC News he was biking near the pool when he saw a piece of loose paint in the water and reached out and touched the end. He insists he’s no vandal, just a “curious, concerned citizen.”

And David- in a statement tonight, Hearn’s attorneys insist he is innocent and say, quote, “these charges are outrageous and should be alarming to every American,” adding: “this indictment reflects the administration’s effort to shift blame for their own failures.” David.

MUIR: Mary Bruce, live at The White House. Thanks, Mary.

The framing gives the game away, with anchor David Muir engaging in another one of his overly long introductions that could have served as its own brief, before tossing to Mary Bruce who then repeats most of it. The emphasis was to be placed on the cost of the initial repair.

Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce, formerly Joe Biden’s chief sycophant, parrots that point before knocking Trump for not blaming the contractors that worked on the Reflecting Pool. Anything but blaming, perhaps, the people who vandalized and pulled up portions of the lining that, as ABC has made abundantly clear, cost the American taxpayer $16 million dollars.

The purpose of this story, in addition to bringing algae back into the evening news, is to deflect guilt away from the people that caused damage to the Reflecting Pool. It is grim business to convey that the defacement of national monuments seems to be acceptable so long as Donald Trump is the president. But this is par for the course for Trump-deranged ABC.