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The Grinch who stole Independence Day

President Trump’s co-opting of our traditional Independence Day celebration on the National Mall is only the latest of his displays of deplorable narcissism. It rubs more salt into all the other wounds he has inflicted on our social and patriotic self-image as an honorable people.

His commandeering of the hallowed shrine to the memory of Abraham Lincoln to glorify himself is another measure of his notion that there is nothing too sacred to be confiscated in the service of his mountainous ego.

Heavy tanks have arrived at the Mall and will possibly rumble through the streets of Washington in a manner worthy of Moscow or Havana. Hundreds of thousands of citizens ponder the wisdom of bringing their kids after normal bedtime to watch an advertised bigger, louder and better fireworks display over the national mall.

Prime viewing areas for the Trump speech will be cordoned off along the Memorial’s reflecting pool for VIPs in what could be the largest crowd assembled there since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his memorable “I Have a Dream” oration in 1963. Tickets have gone to Republican donors for the heretofore nonpartisan event.

The National Park Service, which oversees such things, is said to have had to kick in $2.5 million more to accommodate Trump’s wishes for his own “Salute to America” extravaganza, which in reality is meant to be a salute to him.

All this comes on the heels of his outrageous national humiliation of going hat in hand into North Korea, in quest of an empty gesture of personal friendship from the abhorrent butcher/dictator in Pyongyang, who gives lip service to Korean Peninsula denuclearization while continuing to grow his deadly arsenal.

Trump compares our own constitutionally guaranteed free press and rights of expression and assembly with Russia’s bought and paid-for state propaganda arm. He jokes over which of them has the worst “fake news” operation while his own White House press office is essentially on permanent vacation.

Worst of all, what does all his self-aggrandizement say to the outside world about the temperament and even the mental balance of the man who will govern the pillar of Western democratic thought for another year and a half, or more?

The only partially comparable presidential intrusion on the Lincoln Memorial was Richard Nixon’s solo late-night visit during the Vietnam War to engage protesters, which disintegrated into a discussion of his other passion: football.

Trump’s own pastime, sexual predation, also has gathered more relevance as American women are mobilizing as never more for more voice and power. This most powerful figure in the land continues to demonstrate the most obtuse and insulting core attitude toward the opposite sex.

Even taking into consideration his abysmal personal history as a misogynist, his recent response to the public allegation of rape years ago from a well-known female writer, E. Jean Carroll, was incredibly casual and dismissive. He brushed off her accusation by observing, “She’s not my type.”

Yet millions of Americans continue to see Trump as a man and a leader to be respected and even sanctified.

Let us hope that our national holidays do not become Trump holidays from now on.

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Jules Witcover’s latest book is

“The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power,” published by Smithsonian Books.

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