Six things Trump has in common with George III

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands that have connected them with a vulgar, orange-skinned real estate tycoon and to assume the democratic rights to which they are entitled, they should at least be decent enough to send him a break-up text explaining why. 

So I imagine America’s Founding Fathers declaring their independence from Donald Trump (thanks to Thomas Jefferson for lending me a couple of the above phrases). In typical fashion, the current US president has chosen to celebrate 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence by making it all about himself: this week, he opened the Great American State Fair on the National Mall – a shambolic, sparsely attended 16-day festival featuring Maga merch and D-list celebrities – with a stump speech in which he called the Biden administration “a joke”, “dead”, and “a total disaster”. (So much for national unity.) He plans to build a triumphal, 250-foot arch along the Potomac and a gilded ballroom on the ruins of the East Wing of the White House – monuments to his vanity less becoming of Washington than the capital of Kazakhstan. 

In so many ways, the present administration feels – and is – unprecedented. But as the many No Kings demonstrations across the US have pointed out, we’ve been here before. The Declaration itself is a litany of complaints about a narcissistic autocrat. Scroll past Jefferson’s lofty rhetoric (“we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”) and the rest reads like a prickly Dear John letter. More than a few allegations sound awfully familiar. Out of context, you’d be forgiven for not knowing if they refer to Trump or King George III: 

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers…

Trump has repeatedly meddled with the affairs of the Department of Justice. During his first term in office, he pressured staff to remove Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was appointed to investigate him for alleged interference in the 2016 election. He fired James Comey after the FBI director refused to lie to the public about the existence of the investigation. More recently, Trump sent FBI agents to seize voting records from Fulton County, Georgia, where he is being investigated for once again allegedly interfering in the 2020 election. 

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone…

Trump has called for the impeachment and removal of judges who rule against him, in direct violation of the Constitution’s provision for “separate and equal” executive and judicial powers. Dissenting judges Trump labelled “monsters” and “radical-left lunatics” on Truth Social have been deluged with threats to their personal safety. 

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world… 

In March of last year, the Trump administration announced punitive tariffs on more than 90 countries – as well as a few remote, unpopulated territories, like the arctic Heard and McDonald Islands. In the case of China, tariffs climbed as high as 145%. Many remain in place, including a 10% baseline tariff on British goods, though they have not significantly altered America’s trade balance, as large importers find creative workarounds for new customs regulations. 

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury… 

In its brutal immigration crackdown, the Trump administration has denied immigrants their right to a trial by invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a notorious wartime law that calls for the suspension of judicial procedure in a moment of extreme national emergency. The Department of Homeland Security’s policy of “expedited removal” is specifically designed to deport people faster than immigration courts can keep up with, in what top Trump aide Stephen Miller has called a “shock-and-awe blitz” targeting some of the country’s most vulnerable communities. 

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences… 

Trump has vowed to prepare the US military base at Guantánamo, Cuba to hold 30,000 migrant detainees. (Several of the alleged 9/11 attackers are still awaiting trial there after more than 20 years, despite repeated efforts to have their cases heard in a civilian, rather than military, court.) But his administration has already deported dozens of other people to countries where they have no ties whatsoever, “disappearing” Afghan migrants to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Venezuelans to the SECOT mega-prison in El Salvador, without offering proof that they have committed any crimes. 

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners…

For years, Trump has peddled a racist narrative about undocumented immigrants giving birth to “anchor babies” in order to prevent the government from deporting them. In 2017, he removed Obama-era protections for as many as 3m “Dreamers”, who came to America as infants. Some have even been deported to their place of birth, even though the US is the only country they have ever known. In January 2025, within hours of returning to the Oval Office, Trump signed an executive order barring birthright citizenship to children born in the US to undocumented immigrants – despite this being explicitly guaranteed by the 14th amendment to the Constitution. 

But at last, some good news: on Tuesday, in a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court struck down the order. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her concurring opinion, the court “has dutifully preserved the most basic animating principle of our Nation’s founding – that all human beings are created equal – once more.”

For more about America’s 250th birthday, listen to the Slow Newscast: America at a crossroads

Photograph by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Photograph by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images