Trump's 4th of July fireworks display on National Mall confirmed as largest in history

Eight hundred and forty thousand fireworks. That's not a typo, that's a number somebody actually counted, and it's now the official record for the largest fireworks display in history, set on the National Mall on the Fourth of July under Trump's watch. Say what you want about the man, but the guy knows how to throw a party for the country's 250th birthday. There's something almost defiantly old-fashioned about it: a president deciding the anniversary of American independence deserves the biggest show anyone has ever seen, and then actually going out and doing it instead of issuing a proclamation nobody reads.

Cynics will roll their eyes and call it a spectacle, a distraction, an ego trip in gunpowder form. Maybe. But ask yourself when the last time was that a national celebration made headlines for being too big rather than too small, too cautious, or too apologetic. For years the instinct in official Washington has been to shrink these moments down, to worry about carbon footprints and optics and who might be offended by too much red, white and blue. This was the opposite instinct. Go big, put a number on it, make it official.

There's a real argument that a country celebrating a quarter-millennium of its own existence should not be shy about it. This wasn't a quiet, hedged commemoration. It was loud, unmistakable, and impossible to ignore, which is sort of the point of a birthday for the nation that invented the idea of not asking permission.

It won't fix inflation or the border or anything else voters actually argue about, and nobody's pretending it does. But a little unapologetic patriotism, delivered with more fireworks than any nation has ever set off at once, is not the worst thing a country can give itself on its 250th birthday.