A Senator Says the Country Can’t Enjoy Its 250th Birthday — and It’s Trump’s Fault.

America turns 250 on July 4, 2026 — the Semiquincentennial, a once-in-a-nation milestone the country spent a decade preparing to mark. On the Sunday before the fireworks, Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) went on ABC’s This Week and offered an explanation for why a chunk of the country isn’t in a celebrating mood. The reason, in his telling, was not the economy, not the wars, not the usual partisan grind. It was one man in one building.

Many Americans don’t feel like celebrating, Kelly argued, because of President Trump (R) — a president who, in Kelly’s words, “looks at every opportunity, not as an opportunity to bring the country together, but to further divide us.” A 250th birthday that should be about “the history of our country and all the great things we’ve done” had, he warned, been reduced to a rally.

It is a familiar move, and a revealing one. This is a sitting United States senator explaining that the nation cannot enjoy its own birthday — and locating the cause not in any policy, but in the simple fact of who won an election. That framing is the subject of this page: what Kelly actually said, the polling underneath it, and why “the country can’t feel joy because of him” is the purest distillation of a now-familiar reflex.

• “Further divide us” — Kelly's charge against Trump on ABC's This Week, June 28, 2026 — that the president treats the 250th as a chance to divide, not unite · Source: Mediaite; ABC News transcript
• 36% — of Democrats say they are 'extremely' or 'very' proud to be American — down from 62% a year earlier and an all-time low · Source: Gallup, June 2026
• 27% vs. 64% — Democrats vs. Republicans who say they will fly the American flag on July 4 · Source: Fox News poll
• 11% vs. 62% — Democrats vs. Republicans who say the U.S. is the greatest country in the world · Source: Gallup; Fox News
• “A rally” — Kelly's dismissal of the July 4 plans — the celebration, he said, has been turned into a campaign event · Source: Mediaite; ABC News
• Astronaut, 39 combat missions — Kelly's own résumé — a Navy captain and four-time spaceflight veteran, now arguing the country is too dispirited to celebrate itself · Source: Space.com; Kelly statements

The setting was ABC’s This Week on Sunday, June 28, 2026, six days before the Fourth. Anchor Jonathan Karl put it to Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) that the festivities tied to the 250th were “being politicized.” Kelly agreed the country is “clearly very divided” — and then placed the blame squarely on the president.

“We have a president that looks for — looks at every opportunity, not as an opportunity to bring the country together, but to further divide us,” Kelly said. The 250th, he continued, “is really an opportunity to think about like the history of our country and all the great things we’ve done, all the innovation.” And what would actually happen on July 4th? “We’re going to have a rally.” The framing, as Mediaite captured it, was unmistakable: Americans aren’t celebrating because they are, in the outlet’s words, “bummed out” about who is in the White House.

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Strip the politesse away and the argument is striking. A 250-year-old republic — one that survived a civil war, two world wars, a depression, and the assassinations of four presidents — cannot, according to a sitting senator, summon the spirit to mark its own semiquincentennial because of the outcome of a single election. The nation’s birthday is not framed as a shared inheritance that outlasts any one administration. It is framed as something a political opponent has spoiled.

This is what the site calls a TDS tell — not the disagreement itself, which is fair game, but the scope of it. There are honest critiques of how the administration has run the 250th: the congressionally-chartered, nonpartisan America250 commission ended up competing with a separate, White House-run “Freedom 250” effort, and the July 4 centerpiece does look a great deal like a campaign rally. A senator could make that case narrowly. Instead, Kelly reached for the maximal version: the country itself cannot feel joy, and the reason is the man.

Kelly is right that the mood is genuinely down — but the polling tells a more pointed story than his framing allows. Gallup’s June 2026 survey found national pride at an all-time low, and the collapse was almost entirely on one side: only 36% of Democrats said they were “extremely” or “very” proud to be American, down from 62% a year earlier. Republican pride, by contrast, sat at roughly 92% — steady, and slightly up from 2024. Independents drifted down but stayed far above the Democratic figure.

The split widens on the specifics. A Fox News poll found that 27% of Democrats planned to fly the American flag on July 4, against 64% of Republicans. Asked whether the United States is the greatest country in the world, just 11% of Democrats agreed, compared with 62% of Republicans. The pattern is hard to square with Kelly’s thesis: if a divisive president were depressing the nation’s spirit, you would expect the gloom to be broad. Instead it is concentrated, and it moves with which party holds the White House — Democratic pride also dipped during the first Trump term and rebounded under Biden.

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The messenger sharpens the irony. Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) is, by his own account, a Navy captain with 39 combat missions and four flights to space — a former astronaut whose career is itself a chapter of “all the great things we’ve done.” He is married to former Representative Gabby Giffords, who survived a 2011 assassination attempt. Few senators are better positioned to make a stirring, unifying case for the country at 250. He chose, instead, to explain why it can’t be celebrated.

Context matters here, and it cuts both ways. Kelly has real grievances with the administration: he was one of six Democratic lawmakers in a 2025 video reminding service members they can refuse illegal orders, which Trump branded “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH” on Truth Social. The Justice Department pursued the matter, the FBI sought interviews, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth moved to strip Kelly’s retirement rank — an effort a court later blocked, and which produced no indictment. That history explains why Kelly distrusts the president. It does not explain why the country cannot have a birthday.

The deeper problem with Kelly’s framing is that it speaks for the whole country while describing a slice of it. The 250th is not being skipped. Across the country, towns are holding parades, fireworks, and commemorations; the National Mall is hosting a 50-state fair; tens of millions of Americans — including the 92% of Republicans and majority of independents who told Gallup they are proud — will mark the day without a second thought about which party controls Washington. The “lack of joy” Kelly described is real, but it is largely his coalition’s, and it is self-reported as contingent on an election result.

That is the heart of the TDS pattern this section documents. A normal critique says: the administration is running the 250th badly, here is how. The derangement version says: the country itself cannot feel good, and it’s his fault. The first is an argument a voter can weigh. The second tells half the country that its pride is illegitimate and the other half that its sadness is the national condition. Neither, notably, is a reason a 250-year-old nation should decline to celebrate the fact that it has lasted 250 years.

“This is really an opportunity to think about the history of our country and all the great things we've done. But what's going to happen on July 4th? We're going to have a rally.”

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), ABC's This Week, June 28, 2026

Six days before America turned 250, Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) went on national television and explained that the country couldn’t celebrate — because of Donald Trump. The polling he was gesturing at is real, but it tells a different story than he did: national pride didn’t collapse, Democratic pride did, by 26 points in a year, while Republican and independent pride held. The 250th is being celebrated by most of the country regardless of who is president. What Kelly described was not a national mood but a partisan one — offered, in the site’s view, as the cleanest recent example of treating a milestone that belongs to everyone as something one election can cancel. The republic will turn 250 on July 4 whether or not its critics feel like clapping.

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Last updated June 28, 2026