President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump are scheduled to watch Sunday’s Freedom 250 Grand Prix as IndyCar cars race through Washington, D.C., including a stretch along Pennsylvania Avenue not far from the White House. The city’s streets, monuments and roadwork are being bent around a presidential spectacle, with Trump set to lead the prerace kickoff in his presidential limo, U.S. Ambassador Monica Crowley said in an interview on Fox Business on Friday.
The race is part of Trump’s celebrations this year to mark America’s 250th birthday. That means open-wheel cars whizzing past Washington’s monuments at speeds approaching 200 mph, military aircraft flyovers, and a city once again turned into a stage for power. The people below get the noise, the closures and the pageant. The man at the top gets the show.
Who Gets the City
Trump said at the White House earlier this month, “Their beautiful cars are going to make freedom roar. This will be a freedom that’s roaring like never before.” The line fits the event’s branding, but the machinery behind it is less poetic. An executive order Trump signed earlier this year calling for the Freedom 250 Grand Prix declared that the “cars and drivers inspire awe and respect in all who watch this quintessentially American sport,” and said the event will “showcase the majesty of our great city as drivers navigate a track around our iconic national monuments in celebration of America’s 250th birthday.”
That’s the language of state pageantry. It wraps authority in spectacle and calls it celebration. The race route runs through the capital itself, not some neutral venue, and the White House sits close enough to make the whole thing feel like a procession for the powerful rather than a public event for ordinary people.
Who Pays for the Track
IndyCar series owner Roger Penske, a longtime friend of Trump’s who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from him in 2019, helped lead the effort to bring the race to Washington. Bud Denker, president of Penske Corporation and the race’s chair, said that Penske is paying for the “vast majority” of the race, including building the track and road improvements, while the District of Columbia handled some repaving.
That’s the arrangement in plain sight: a billionaire-backed racing empire bankrolls most of the operation, while the city does part of the street work needed to make the event possible. More than 200 manhole covers had to be welded shut so the race cars wouldn’t suck them up off the road. The infrastructure gets altered for the race. The public streets absorb the strain.
The event also includes a prerace show and flyovers of military aircraft, which swooped and boomed over the city during the July Fourth celebrations. Trump’s other events this year to mark the semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence’s signing have included a UFC fight on the White House lawn, military aircraft flyovers, a massive July Fourth fireworks show on the National Mall and a Great American State Fair that the president headlined after scores of ’90s-era musical acts dropped out.
What the Bosses Call Celebration
Trump in his second term has increasingly seemed to focus on relishing the presidency’s ceremonial aspects. That’s included a healthy dose of visits to sporting events, including an appearance last month at the World Cup final, where he presented the trophy to winner Spain and lingered onstage with the team as its members jumped in a hail of confetti.
The White House has become a backdrop for branding, not just governing. Trump’s latest display comes as he has been struggling to resolve the war he started nearly six months ago with Iran, a conflict that has driven up gasoline prices and exacerbated worries from officials in his Republican Party that voters in this November’s midterm elections see the president as distracted and not focused enough on cost-of-living concerns.
That’s the hierarchy talking to itself. The same political class that stages the spectacle also worries about whether the public will notice the price tag elsewhere. Gasoline prices rise. Officials fret. The race goes on.
Sunday’s festivities are also the latest opportunity for Trump to revel in the way he’s putting his mark on the nation’s capital, including large banners showing his face on government buildings, the construction of a massive White House ballroom, a gold-adorned Oval Office and botched repairs at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. The city becomes a canvas for presidential ego, while the people who live there are left to navigate the mess, the closures and the pageantry dressed up as national pride.