From one coast to the other, streets were filled Saturday with patriotic Americans celebrating our great country and thanking the heroes who made it possible. From the tall ships sailing into New York Harbor to the small town streets of Middle America, happiness prevailed. It must have driven the American-hating leftists crazy!
 
The celebrations in Washington, D.C., were setback by serious heat and thunderstorms. Revelers had to abandon the National Mall and took shelter in various government buildings that were opened up for them. Hundreds of people sheltering in the Department of Agriculture headquarters spontaneously started singing the national anthem.
 
As time went on, it began to look like President Trump might not speak and the fireworks might not go off as planned. But President Trump called Fox News and said, “No matter what happens, I am delivering this speech. It’s America 250. If [our heroes] can storm the beaches on D-Day, I can deliver a speech and we can keep this program going.”
 
So, the 80-year-old president we’re told is mentally and physically unfit for office, spoke from 11 to midnight and then watched a record-breaking fireworks show unlike anything ever seen before.
 
 
 
What Didn’t Happen
 
For weeks, U.S. intelligence agencies had been intercepting incredible amounts of chatter from enemies outside our country and inside hoping to lay us low during this celebration.
 
We may never know how many plots were stopped, but we know that nothing happened, even though powerful forces were trying. And for that we thank people whose names we will never know—the watchmen on the towers guarding our freedom.
 
 
 
Planning For 300
 
There will be a tendency among many of us to say, “Well, the celebrations are over, so it’s time to go back to our regular lives.” I hope we can resist that temptation. I know President Trump intends to continue the 250th celebrations though the rest of the year.
 
I have been working with some friends who are making plans for an American birthday I will not experience—our 300^th birthday. They are getting serious people together now for a 50-year plan.
 
 
 
Left-wing Hate
 
Sadly, there were many leftists who just couldn’t bring themselves to celebrate anything about America. Even worse, they had to make sure everyone knew just how much they hate this country.
 
Wearing a “Free Palestine” t-shirt, domestic terrorist and Obama mentor Bill Ayers led an event called “250 Years of Resistance.” He fondly recalled “celebrating” America’s 200th birthday by printing posters in 1976 that read “200 Years Is Enough.”
 
One of the speakers at the event was Princeton University professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, who joked, “This audience is all like, ‘F–k the USA.’” She told the audience, “We have to reject the idea of loving a nation state, right? Which is what patriotism is at the end of the day… the nation state itself is destructive,” adding that “borders kill people.”
 
Singer Alicia Keys “celebrated” the Fourth of July by claiming women don’t have equal rights in America. She didn’t offer any specific examples of rights she is being denied. Instead, Keys referred people to a left-wing organization that seeks to add “collectively endorsed” new rights to the Constitution.
 
In the liberal enclave of northern Virginia, leftists were whining on social media about the frequent military flyovers. They couldn’t stand seeing our military aircraft that keeps their sorry butts safe. It’s times like this that I am grateful my father, Spike Bauer, is not alive to see these ungrateful people trashing the country he fought to defend.
 
Nikole Hannah-Jones, who created the 1619 Project, said the “entire existence of the United States” is a “crime” because, in her twisted view, the nation was founded on slavery. She suggested that we could never have racial reconciliation in America unless we demolished “all the monuments on the Mall in Washington.”
 
I have often said that if the Left ever succeeded in taking God out of American history, they would have to sandblast half the walls of Washington, D.C., because the history of God in America is carved in stone. Hannah-Jones admits she wants to tear down monuments in Washington.
 
Her anti-American history is in schools across our country, already tearing down those monuments in the hearts and minds of our children.
 
 
 
Pastor Jin Is Free
 
In other news, Pastor Ezra Jin was released from prison in Communist China last week.
 
There is a connection to Pastor Jin and a church in Washington, D.C., attended by our oldest daughter and her family. I had the opportunity to speak with the pastor’s daughter, Grace Jin Drexel, in the weeks before President Trump went to Communist China to meet with President Xi Jinping.
 
Grace filled me in on her father’s plight and asked us to do whatever we could to make sure the president brought up Pastor Jin to President Xi. Of course, I was one of many calls she made, but I did what I could and President Trump did raise his name when he was in China.
 
When President Trump returned from China, he told reporters that he was hopeful Pastor Jin would be released. But weeks went by and we didn’t hear anything about him. Then, as we were celebrating our 250th birthday, word came that Pastor Jin had landed in Los Angeles.
 
This is another heroic effort the president gets little credit for. He has saved more American hostages and foreign dissidents from totalitarianism than any president in our history.