JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
As America prepares to mark its 250th birthday this weekend, we were wondering, how do people view the country and the celebrations? NPR's Frank Langfitt attended two very different ones here in the nation's capital to find out.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Michael Och drove in from Northern Virginia earlier this week to see the Trump-sanctioned Great American State Fair on the National Mall. Och stood on a grassy lawn, taking in the giant ferris wheel and pavilions promoting U.S. states.
MICHAEL OCH: Florida, they're talking about the manatees and the nature and all the water and seafood. Texas was the Space Center. They did a really nice job with this. You got to see it, and we probably won't see it again in our lifetime.
LANGFITT: Like most at the fair, Och is white. He served as a Marine, and at 63, he's old enough to remember America's last big birthday, bicentennial of 1976.
OCH: There was a lot of celebration, a lot of camaraderie, a lot of esprit de corps, a lot of patriotism, and everyone's looking out for everybody.
LANGFITT: The America of today feels less settled, more divided. Och generally supports President Trump and says some of the nation's divisions are really over the past. For instance, he thinks some liberals focus too much on slavery.
OCH: It was a different time. We have grown since then. So give us - people some credit on that.
LANGFITT: Och says he served in Iraq and Afghanistan and has traveled extensively abroad. He describes America like this.
OCH: You know, the United States is a messed up place. It's the best messed up place in the world.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
LANGFITT: Last weekend, I went to an alternative commemoration about a mile from the mall. It was billed as a people-powered vision of America's future.
There are these signs that say equality, dignity, democracy, truth, collective freedom, immigration justice, living wage. And so a very different approach.
The crowd was liberal and diverse but also included some older white folks, such as Nan Raphael. Like Och, Raphael also served in the military. She played solo piccolo in the U.S. Army Field Band. Raphael is now 71. She, too, has fond memories of the bicentennial. She recalls celebrating by playing in a big band for hundreds in a park in New Jersey.
NAN RAPHAEL: Fourth of July was always my very favorite holiday of the year. It was a holiday that had a lot of meaning 'cause we had built something great.
LANGFITT: Raphael feels differently now under President Trump. She's angry about everything from the decimation of USAID to the deployment of the National Guard here in the capital.
RAPHAEL: I feel like my duty is to protest and protest what this country could be and protest against the direction this country is taking.
LANGFITT: An NPR/PBS News/Marist poll out this week suggests that Och and Raphael are representative of national opinion these days. As the 250th anniversary approaches, more than 90% of Republicans say they are proud or very proud to be an American. Only 45% of Democrats say the same. Todd Bennett is a professor of history at East Carolina University, co-author of "The Flag Was Still There," which examines America's 50-year anniversaries.
TODD BENNETT: Each of these anniversaries - 2026 and 1976 - found the country at a crossroads of some type.
LANGFITT: The bicentennial came in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam. Bennett says President Gerald Ford handled the celebration well.
BENNETT: He did not, for the most part, turn the bicentennial - attempt to use it for his personal and political agenda, despite the fact that 1976 was an election year.
LANGFITT: Bennett says Ford's speeches were nonpartisan and inclusive. Here's Ford speaking at a naturalization ceremony at Monticello.
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GERALD FORD: You came as strangers among us, and you leave here as citizens - equal in fundamental rights, equal before the law, with an equal share in the promise of the future.
LANGFITT: Bennett says Trump, who also faces a big election in the midterms, seems to be trying to use the 250th to his advantage. On Truth Social, the president called the upcoming July 4 celebration, quote, "the most spectacular Trump rally of them all." At the Great American State Fair, a tent promotes Trump investment accounts, and on the main stage, a Republican strategist hosted a politics podcast. NPR reached out to Freedom 250, which organized the fair, but has not heard back.
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LEE GREENWOOD: (Singing) And I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm...
LANGFITT: Kicking off the event, President Trump gave what sounded at times like a campaign speech.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The American dream is alive again. That's something that nobody thought they'd be saying when you went through that last four years of incompetence.
LANGFITT: Robert Chase is a professor of history at Stony Brook University on Long Island. He came to the fair this week to observe. There were no lines. Crowds were thin.
ROBERT CHASE: Unfortunately, Donald Trump tried to associate the idea of American freedom and patriotism with himself, and many people were turned off by that, to associate an individual with an idea.
LANGFITT: An individual who is also unpopular. In an average of recent polls, 57% said they disapproved of the job Trump's doing. Frank Langfitt, NPR News, on the National Mall in Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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