Trump’s most surreal mash-up of historical periods, however, occurred during a Fourth of July speech in 2019, when he offered this time-bending narrative of the Revolutionary War: “Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do, and at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory.” People were so distracted by the image of eighteenth-century airports—did they have Sbarro back then, too?—that most overlooked the fact that the battle of Fort McHenry occurred during the War of 1812.
