Producer-in-chief puts on a 4th of July show — with emphasis on the military

President Donald Trump stood before the fabled Lincoln Memorial on the Fourth of July and, as the producer-in-chief, sought to place himself at the center of the nation’s history.

With subdued remarks, which touched on everything from the founding of the country to the civil rights movement to America’s ingenuity and its military, the president for the first time in recent history made himself part of Washington, D.C.’s longstanding, non-partisan Independence Day celebration.

To rebut any criticism that military leaders did not support the event, Trump at one point called up to the stage Acting Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford. The two men flanked Trump as he delivered part of his speech in the rain.

The event was punctuated by flyovers of U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Army and U.S. Navy aircrafts, the president’s own plane, and the Blue Angels, which closed out the speech.

Part pep talk, part history lesson, the president’s roughly 45-minute speech attempted to highlight Americans’ grit and resilience.

Speaking before a bulletproof enclosure covered by raindrops, he called out by name diverse historical figures including Betsy Ross, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman. He mentioned the women’s suffrage movement and asked a prominent member of the civil rights movement to stand for applause. He gave a nod to the speech that the late Martin Luther King Jr. delivered in the same location in 1963, during which he unveiled his famous line “let freedom ring.”

And Trump touted space exploration. “Someday soon we will plant the American flag on Mars!” he said to applause.