The president delivers a ‘Salute to America’ speech on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.: Fox News

By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The verdict of “the people” is in: “It was the worst Fourth of July ever.”

That’s the conclusion I heard the most out of locals from Virginia, the District and Maryland about Independence Day 2019 that will be known forever as the day President Donald Trump took over “the peoples'” day and tried to turn it into his own.

“Trump wants to be the first American dictator,” said one former journalist from Alabama. “We can’t let him succeed.”

He likes my idea that protesters should surround the White House and demand Trump’s resignation.

But as long as the mainstream media is still being fair and balanced to the guy who makes a fool of them and calls the press “the enemy of the people,” he will remain atop the executive branch and rain havoc on the federal government and the world.

The local newspaper, The Washington Post, ran a story on Sunday from a recent presidential poll indicating that Trump’s approval rating is on the rise and he could very well be reelected in 2020.

“Aided by a strong economy and perceptions that he has dealt with it effectively, President Trump’s approval rating has risen to the highest point of his presidency, though a slight majority of Americans continue to say they disapprove of his performance in office,” the paper reports.

Trump’s approval rating among voting-age Americans stands at 44 percent, according the poll taken while Trump was traveling to Japan and stepping into North Korea, giving a platform to a brutal dictator known for killing his own relatives to gain power. That’s up from 39 percent in April.

Yes, 53 percent still say they disapprove of Trump. But this should scare Americans and Democrats the most: Among registered voters, 47 percent say they approve of Trump while 50 percent disapprove.

Trump won the presidential election of 2016 with only 46.1 percent of the popular vote. While Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton won 48.2 percent of the popular vote, Trump won in the Electoral College 304 to 227.

“The survey highlights the degree to which Trump has a narrow but real path to reelection,” the Post reports. “His approval rating on most issues is net negative, and more than 6 in 10 Americans say he has acted in ways that are unpresidential since he was sworn into office. Still, roughly one-fifth of those who say he is not presidential say they approve of the job he is doing, and he runs even against four possible Democratic nominees in hypothetical ­general-election matchups. He trails decisively only to former vice president Joe Biden.”

The former Senator and Vice President leads Trump 53 percent to 43 percent.

While some hard core supporters defend Trump’s performance in his speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and seemed to like the tank props and flyovers, you only have to compare the looks on the faces of people at Trump’s rain-drenched crowd to those at the Capitol Fourth on the other end of the National Mall to see the truth. Look up the TV coverage to see what I mean.

Trump’s people were not only wet and miserable, as one man from Brooklyn, New York told me after returning to the campground, they were confused by his words, since they were nothing like what they have come to expect from a Trump campaign rally and speech: Rambling ad libbing and attacks on immigrants, the press, Democrats.

Trump’s crowd seemed confused by his inaccurate story about American independence riddled with errors, while the Capitol Fourth crowd seemed happy and engaged at the real show produced by Congress and PBS.

At one point that Trump defended later by claiming his teleprompter was streaked with rain, he made his worst mistake of the day.

“The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter of Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown,” Trump said. Then, after an unintelligible reference to an army at the “ramparts,” he went on: “It took over the airports. It did everything it had to do. And at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory. And when dawn came, their star-spangled banner waved defiant.”

All over Facebook and Twitter, Democrats made fun of Trump all weekend for not seeming to realize that there were no airplanes or airports in 1776 during the Revolutionary War, and that the Star Spangled Banner song came out of the War of 1812, not the Revolution. He was once again a laughing stock, but spent the rest of the weekend playing golf in New Jersey at taxpayer expense, clearly not even caring that people were laughing at him, not bowing down to worship him like a king.

But hey, understanding history and facts don’t seem to be an issue for Trump’s political base.

“We don’t need no stinking facts,” one center-of-the-road independent voter and friend of mine from Mobile, Alabama said about Trump’s supporters when we talked about how the event was received back in the town where Trump launched his 2016 campaign at the first football stadium rally.

In addition to the botched speech, Trump ordered the fireworks moved from the Washington Monument to West Potomac Park behind the Jefferson Memorial, and got two different companies to pummel the sky with so many blasts that after only a few minutes, the moisture-laden sky became so smoky that the bursts became obscured and the cloud of smoke sent viewers running for the Metro.

“That was a disaster,” more than one witness said on local television news.

If you want to read stories about the American Revolution that are actually based on the facts and my travels, check out my stories from last year.

Siege at Yorktown Reveals Real Story of American Independence

Perhaps Can We Learn to Save Democracy from the Experience at Valley Forge

Of course if you don’t mind having a president who knows nothing of history and even botches a speech written by someone else on live television for the world to see, keep voting for Trump and you will end up with the first American dictator when he wins reelection in November, 2020.

Perhaps the saddest takeaway of them all from this telling incident is that not only is Trump the worst president in American history, he can’t even hire one single competent person who can write an accurate speech for such an occasion. No one on his staff even knows that Independence Day was set aside as a day for “the people.”

The military already has two national holidays, Veterans Day and Memorial Day. Perhaps we need a new national holiday to honor the press. Of course that won’t happen as long as the people allow Trump to occupy the White House.

Democracy can’t function without a free press, for sure, but it also needs the robust involvement of “the people.” Without more public involvement, Trump will rule for at least five more years – if he doesn’t find a way like war and calamity to cancel future elections to replace him.