“He had one bad moment in the January 6 thing when he stood up — ‘alright, now I’ve had it, that’s it, I can’t do it anymore’ — then he called me about 40 minutes later and said, ‘Did I really said that? I can’t believe it.’ And he took it back. So I give him a 99.9 instead of 100.”

— President Trump, remembering Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Fox News.

“I’ve disagreed with many (many) of Lindsey Graham’s choices and beliefs, but he was also — as one of the house managers on the ‘98 impeachment — the one who worked tirelessly to prove there was a smear campaign against me from inside the White House.”

— Monica Lewinsky, on X.

Lori Sturdevant writes that the Graham Platner debacle recalls Minnesota’s chaotic 1990 governor’s race, when scandal forced Republican nominee Jon Grunseth out just nine days before Election Day and runner-up Arne Carlson stepped in and won.

A great story.

David Frum: “To the extent the decision is up to Trump, the United States that his speech celebrated on July 4 will exist no more.”

“Trump’s grotesque botch of the 250th anniversary of ‘We hold these truths’ aptly demonstrates how far his leadership has already pushed the United States away from its noblest past. Americans may not wish to acknowledge what Trump has done to their standing in the world. Such denial does not change reality. Norma Desmond’s last lover—and doomed narrator—delivers a verdict on the fading star’s descent from delusion into madness: ‘The dream she had clung to so desperately had enfolded her.'”

“Americans have not clung to their dream nearly desperately enough, but they too are now enfolded in something dark and diminished.”

Ron Brownstein: “At 250 years, America’s (fault) lines are showing. Partisan and regional divisions now rival the most intense internal conflicts apart from the Civil War.”

“The escalating tension between the red and blue political coalitions is permeating almost every aspect of American life, particularly under the pile-driver pressure of Donald Trump’s polarizing and norm-breaking presidency. Even the commemoration of this momentous anniversary has split the country into the familiar antagonistic camps.”

“Conflict within a nation is a difficult concept to quantify, but many measures — the widening policy differences among the states; Trump’s relentless confrontations with Democratic political leaders; the virtual disappearance of bipartisan cooperation in Congress; an uptick in political violence — suggest the US is operating at the high end of the scale.”

A new Cato Institute poll found that only 53% of Americans could correctly identify the adoption of the Declaration of Independence as the historical event marked by July 4.

And 46% said they did not know what the day commemorated, including 61% of Gen Z respondents.

“A quarter of a millennium into its experiment in self-governance, the United States finds itself living out twin realities,” the New York Times reports.

“The nation’s capital, mired in septic politics, has struggled to pull off a big Fourth of July party. There is algae in the Reflecting Pool, acrimony in the air, and a sense, in some quarters, that America is in deep peril if it cannot persuade the 80s poodle-rocker Bret Michaels to sing for its official 250th birthday celebration. Mr. Michaels and other performers bowed out for fear that President Trump had made the affair overly partisan.”

“But beyond Washington, thousands of Fourth of July celebrations will run today on an old, familiar muscle memory, unblemished by scandal, factionalism or questions about the attendance of boldface names.”

“An appeals court ruled Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration can reinstall interpretive panels that critics say whitewash the history of slavery at the site of President George Washington’s home in Philadelphia,” the Associated Press reports.

“President Trump has always stood ready to tear down his immediate predecessors, lobbing deeply personal insults and offering unfavorable interpretations of former presidents Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Barack Obama,” the New York Times reports.

“But in recent months, he has been reaching further back into American history, either attaching himself to the achievements of past presidents or insisting he would never replicate their failures.”

“President Donald Trump isn’t exactly the outdoorsman and conservationist that was Theodore Roosevelt, a hunting, wilderness-loving president who preserved hundreds of millions of acres of public land and, in his final years, led a jungle expedition to the Amazon,” the Washington Post reports.

“Yet the White House wants Americans to know that the two New York natives — one the leader of the Rough Riders volunteer cavalry, the other who spent most of his adult life seated behind desks and in limousines — have plenty in common.”

“On Wednesday, Trump is scheduled to fly to Bismarck and from there travel to remote Medora, North Dakota, to open Roosevelt’s presidential library, a project that has been in the works for years at the site of the national park bearing the 26th president’s name.”

“By President Trump’s account, his desire to annex Greenland merely restores prewar borders, his trade policy returns Gilded Age fiscal policy and prosperity and his efforts to build a towering arch in Washington completes a 150-year-old architectural dream,” the New York Times reports.

“President Andrew Jackson’s spoils system was an anti-corruption purge, not unlike Mr. Trump’s own. President William McKinley’s protectionist stance was also downright Trumpian. Oh, and the Unabomber, too, evidently has a link to the 47th president, by his telling: His uncle once taught the notorious terrorist.”

“Since retaking office, Mr. Trump has spun many historical yarns that stretch the truth, strain credulity or are downright false. American history has become a mirror for his preferred policies and a mine for his favored narratives. The details are not as important as overarching themes, and facts take a back seat to entertainment.”

“Interior Secretary Doug Burgum botched a bit of U.S. history on Monday, claiming that George Washington was president on the country’s first birthday,” Mediaite reports.