Political strategist Steve Schmidt is scorching President Donald Trump, contrasting him with President Barack Obama amid Thursday’s opening of the Obama Presidential Center.

“America has a dignity crisis, and it begins at the top,” Schmidt writes of Trump on his Substack, The Warning.

Schmidt calls Trump “an amalgam of vice piled so high it has become a mountain of degeneracy. He’s arrogant without accomplishment, ignorant without curiosity, cruel without purpose, corrupt without shame, erratic without discipline and emotional without restraint.”

He described Trump as someone who lacks self-control, emotional intelligence, and integrity — all while being a “chronic liar,” a “convicted felon,” and a “loser.”

“The greatest danger,” Schmidt explained, “is that millions looked at him and concluded he was worthy of the office Washington held, Lincoln ennobled and Roosevelt transformed into an engine of democratic purpose.”

But Thursday, on “Chicago’s South Side, beneath an American flag surrounded by living presidents from both political parties, something rare happened,” said Schmidt: “America remembered itself.”

He called the opening of the Obama Presidential Center “an act of national memory” and “a reminder that character once mattered, that dignity once occupied the center of American public life, and that there remains an American tradition worth defending.”

Schmidt praised former First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech as “the finest speech of the day because it was not fundamentally about politics” but “about character.”

“She spoke movingly of the love, support and shared journey that carried their family through extraordinary years of public life,” said Schmidt. “It was a tribute rooted not in power, but in decency.”

“Then,” Schmidt continued, “Barack Obama stood before the country and spoke of something that once seemed ordinary because it was: respect.”

Obama said that the exhibits in his presidential center “focus not just on policies, but on the shared values that make democracy possible, a belief in the intrinsic dignity and worth of all people, and that no one is above the law or beneath its protection, a belief in checks and balances in our government and an accountability that comes with an independent judiciary and a robust, free press.”

Donald Trump, Schmidt said, by contrast, “stands outside that American circle.”

“He isn’t merely controversial. He’s profoundly un-American,” and “embodies precisely the type of man the founders feared — a man who mistakes appetite for strength, personal grievance for public purpose and power for virtue.”

But he also delivered a warning — and a roadmap.

“America’s revival will never begin with a stronger man,” Schmidt said. “It will begin with better citizens. It will begin when dignity is once again admired instead of mocked. It will begin when character once again outweighs celebrity. It will begin when Americans decide that virtue is not quaint — it is essential.”

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Federal workers for the U.S. Department of the Interior are being directed to wear pins promoting the president’s public-private partnership created to celebrate America’s 250th birthday — instead of the congressionally mandated group that was created to organize the events.

According to Mother Jones, National Park Service employees have been ordered to wear the pins, under threat of “professional reprimands.”

“When I asked if I would receive any disciplinary action if I chose not to wear the pin, I was told, ‘Yes,’” one person told Mother Jones. “I chose not to continue the conversation after that.”

Mother Jones reports that the “establishment of Freedom 250 has allowed Trump to more easily plan events that double as campaign rallies, to privately raise funds from corporations seeking influence with the administration, and to avoid disclosing exactly how much all this is costing US taxpayers.”

“Consequently,” says Mother Jones, “NPS employees say that wearing Freedom 250 pins amounts to a partisan declaration, akin to donning a MAGA hat, or worse.”

Democrats have called the Trump-created Freedom 250 organization a dark money group, Mother Jones noted, warning that it has no congressional oversight and has been accused of being used to buy access to the president.

Trump has announced that Freedom 250’s July 4 celebration on the National Mall would feature a “Trump rally.” Sunday’s White House UFC cage fight, which also celebrated President Trump’s 80th birthday, was organized by the president’s Freedom 250 group.

In a February statement, House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-CA) and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Democrats “called out Republicans for allowing Trump to hijack America’s 250th Birthday celebration to sell access, hide his donors, and rewrite history — turning the country’s founding anniversary into a party exclusively for billionaires and a platform for Christian Nationalism.”

NBC News reports that the bipartisan America250 “is the nonprofit supporting the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, which was established 10 years ago through an act of Congress and is led by a bipartisan group of lawmakers and private citizens,” while Freedom 250 “was established by the Trump administration as a public-private partnership by which to fund and plan events celebrating this summer’s historic anniversary.”

President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance serve as chair and vice chair for the Freedom 250 group.

America250 lists its corporate sponsors while Freedom 250 only indicates certain “strategic partners.”

“Knowing the difference between the congressionally-mandated group and Trump/Project 2025’s personal, political grift-machine, the little lapel pin takes on the historical weight of a collaborator’s badge,” one NPS employee told Mother Jones. “Some within my division have taken to calling it the ‘Vichy Pin.’”

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The National Trust for Historic Preservation is blasting the Trump administration’s claim that a foiled plot at the White House’s “open air” UFC event justifies President Donald Trump’s ballroom — noting the 4,000-person event would not have fit inside the structure, and that law enforcement had disrupted the plot four days before it took place.

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice announced “charges against five men for an alleged plot to carry out an attack to kill government officials and others attending the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Freedom 250 event held at the White House last Sunday.”

Reiterating that it “takes the President’s safety and security seriously,” an attorney for the National Trust wrote that the Trump administration “repeatedly advanced national security arguments to the District Court—including on remand from this Court, when such issues were the sole focus.”

“Last Sunday’s event, with 4,000 attendees, would not have even fit in the proposed ballroom,” attorney Thaddeus A. Heuer wrote. Heuer noted that the alleged plot had been “‘detected and disrupted’ four days” before Sunday’s UFC event at the White House.

“Nothing in the injunction halting above-ground ballroom construction limited the security options available to law enforcement for the President’s open-air UFC event,” he wrote. “Indeed, the President, the Vice-President, and Speaker Johnson all attended, with full Secret Service knowledge of the alleged plot that was ‘detected and disrupted’ four days earlier.”

Heuer added that the U.S. Supreme Court “could not have been clearer.” The Constitution, he wrote, “forbids the President from exercising powers vested solely in Congress, even when he asserts that a ‘national catastrophe’ ‘endanger[ing] the well-being and safety’ of the country and ‘immediately jeopardiz[ing]’ national defense requires it.”

The president, argued Heuer, is not permitted to “freely violate the separation of powers.”

What the president can do, said Heuer, is get congressional authorization.

He wrote, “if the President believes any particular security incident bears persuasively on the need for a White House ballroom, he has the same remedy as his predecessors: obtain authorization from Congress, the body in which the Constitution vests plenary authority over the nation’s property.”

This was not the first time the Trump administration had made similar arguments to advance its case for the need for a White House ballroom.

After the alleged assassination attempt during the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, the president argued for the need for the ballroom, The Guardian reported in April. The WHCA reportedly hosts roughly 2,600 people at its annual fundraising dinner, while Trump’s proposed ballroom is believed to be designed to seat about one thousand people.

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