10 takeaways from Trump's 'America 250' speech in Des Moines on Fourth Of July eve
With Sinatra swagger, Trump said he wants farmers empowered to vouch for undocumented immigrants to spare them deportation
DES MOINES, Iowa —
It hit me in the heat of the evening.
President Donald Trump models his stage style after none other than Frank Sinatra.
The swagger, the rhythm of the humor, the observations about women (I heard Trump thank a female voter once at another event. He called her "doll.")
A Trump speech like the one in Des Moines Thursday night takes cues from the famous Sinatra album/CD "Sinatra At the Sands" in which the crooner ad libs in a swinging way, baby, between songs.
The Sinatra influence on Trump is uncanny — similar to what you see with Bill Maher's opening monologues on "Real Time," clearly inspired by Johnny Carson.
Trump spoke in Des Moines Thursday night, July 3, to kick off the America 250 celebration — a slate of events scheduled for nation's 250th anniversary in 2026.
The president addressed thousands at the sun-swept, scorched Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines.
Here are 10 takeaways from the event, which Iowa Mercury covered in person.
1. Trump introduced a new element to immigration policy. The audience of some of the president’s more fervent supporters didn't know how to respond as the instinct clearly was to jeer — but it's Trump and maybe he's serious, so heads were swiveling toward, cheers? No, not sure, so members of the crowd looked around. Finally some polite cheers.
Trump said he plans to create an exemption for undocumented workers in agriculture if farmers vouch for them. The president laid out no criteria for how farmers could, in essence, save immigrants from deportation for no other reason, seemingly, that they employ them or even just know them.
"We're going to sort of put the farmers in charge," Trump said, adding that many farmers cry when they lose immigrant employees.
"If a farmer is willing to vouch for these people, in some way, Kristi, I think we're going to just have to say that's going to be good, right. We're going to be good with it," Trump said, referencing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, the former governor of South Dakota who was in attendance in Des Moines. "Because we don't want to do it where we take all of the workers off the farms."
The president acknowledged that "serious, radical right people, who I also happen to like a lot" won't support the farmer-driven exemption policy for undocumented immigrants. But the right will learn to live with it, he said.
2. Why does Trump have appeal to a range of working people in the nation?
A member of the Urbandale Republicans, Brad Boustead, 65, a retired engineer and traveling salesman, said Trump understands daily anxieties of working Americans.
I talked with Boustead as he volunteered to help people get to their seats in the bleachers and elsewhere on the grounds. He’d done some sales work in Carroll, and we chatted about the late Jim Pietig, one of Boustead’s clients who operated the Pepsi bottling plant in the western Iowa city where I live. Boustead told me Trump has a rare connectivity with voters and Boustead explained it this way:
"I've been a Trump fan for years and people say, 'Well, he's a rich guy. He's a billionaire. What does he know about me?' He's in industries where normal people work — the food business, the motel business. That's where regular people work. The construction business. So he can talk to a regular person like nobody's business.”
3. UFC Fight at the White House? At some point in the celebration of America's 250th expect a major television Ultimate Fighting Championship event live at the White House. A big fight, and a long undercard. Here is what Trump said:
"We're going to have a UFC fight on the grounds of the White House."
4. "We saved Los Angeles." Trump equated the immigration protests in Los Angeles (largely peaceful, police there say) with one of the worst natural disasters in American history, the early 2025 LA fires that claimed 29 lives and destroyed 16,000 structures.
"If we didn't send in the National Guard, Los Angeles would have been burned down to the ground just like half of their houses were burned down to the ground because they didn't give water," Trump said, exaggerating the reach of the damage and delivering the line on death and destruction in an American city with glee.
5. The most sustained applause of the speech? Trump's comment on gender definitions.
"I made it the official policy of the United States that there are only two genders,' Trump said.
No other line drew even close to the level of cheering.
6. Strong words from Trump on the winner of the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, Zohran Mamdani.
"This guy is a communist at the highest level — and he wants to destroy New York City," Trump said of Mamdani, who is a democratic socialist and advocates policies like free bus service and rent freezes.
7. Trump said he planned to have a new hat that said, "Donald Trump was right about everything.’
Or maybe not, the president said.
"That's absolutely too conceited, but it happens to be true,” Trump said.
8. Trump on nine occasions in the speech took shots at the media, another member of the media who counted that told me.
9. The president hailed the re-naming of a major Army base outside of Fayetteville, North Carolina back to Fort Bragg. The military changed the name in 2023 because of the association with Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg. It's now named after a World War II hero with the same last name — the late Silver Star recipient and veteran of the Battle Of The Bulge, Roland L. Bragg.
"We win two world wars from a place and we say 'Let's change the name?" Trump said in criticizing the re-naming during the Biden Administration.
10. Arguably the greatest demonstration of public sycophantic remarks for the president came from Ambassador Monica Crowley, the former journalist who is now the Chief Of Protocol of the United States.
Here is what Crowley said before Trump took the stage in Des Moines on the eve of the Fourth of July.
"Our current president is a direct inheritor of the Founders’ heroic character, a profoundly great man driven by the noble fight for American freedom guided by the hand of God. From Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Hamilton to Trump, the through lines of history are clear. President Trump is the heir to those greats."
About The Iowa Mercury
(Douglas Burns, founder of The Iowa Mercury and a fourth-generation Iowa journalist from Carroll, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Read dozens of the most talented writers in Iowa in just one place. The Iowa Writers' Collaborative spans the full state. It’s one of the biggest things going in Iowa journalism and writing now — and you don’t want to miss. This collaborative is — as the outstanding Quad Cities journalist Ed Tibbetts says — YOUR SUNDAY IOWA newspaper. )
As I've said before, Trump is like the abusive boyfriend. We stick with him because of the initial impression we had of him (which is a calculated cover story). We ignore all the signs that he's not who we think because we are naive and hopeful - and don't want to admit we are wrong. So we either end up dead or wake up and finally kick him to the curb.
Thanks Doug. Important read, since other media has not covered these contexts.
I am not necessarily a Sinatra fan. But...despite his rough edges and controversial associations, Sinatra quietly helped countless people behind the scenes. He paid medical bills for strangers, supported civil rights causes, and used his influence to help friends and fans in need, showing genuine compassion beneath his tough exterior.
Other writers have commented that Trump's bill has done more to hurt more Americans than any other piece of legislation in our 250 years.
I think Sinatra would have lobbied against it.