As Americans celebrated Juneteenth, President Donald Trump raged at the newest federal holiday in a posting on his Truth Social account Thursday.
“Too many non-working holidays in America,” Trump wrote. “It is costing our Country $BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to keep all of these businesses closed. The workers don’t want it either! Soon we’ll end up having a holiday for every once working day of the year. It must change if we are going to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Trump’s complaint about Americans taking a day off struck many as hypocritical, coming from a president who has already spent 33 days of his second term golfing. That’s about a quarter of the 146 days since his second inauguration, well beyond his predecessors.
Others found it striking that Trump went after a holiday celebrating Black freedom. It came on the heels of revelations that he has removed the bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office.
“Juneteenth isn’t political. It’s not ‘woke,’ whatever that is,” wrote one progressive activist, posting on X. It’s a simple commemoration of the end of slavery. The fact that Trump can’t even celebrate slavery ending is very on brand for MAGA.”
Juneteenth celebrates what is widely misunderstood as the end of slavery in the United States by commemorating June 19, 1865, the day Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced that enslaved people in Texas were free. The Emancipation Proclamation only applied to Confederate states, and many Texas slaveholders had ignored the proclamation and the end of the Civil War until Granger’s arrival. Slavery wasn’t formally and fully abolished across the United States until the 13th Amendment was ratified on Dec. 6, 1865.
But to many Trump supporters, Juneteenth is a “made-up holiday” authorized by then-President Joe Biden (in 2021) “because Joe (he) wanted to pander to minorities after the George Floyd riots,” as one MAGA loyalist posted on X.
As Trump ranted about Americans taking a day off, his administration virtually ignored the holiday. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered a “passive approach to Juneteenth messaging,” according to a report from Rolling Stone, citing a Pentagon email.
At the White House, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday was just another day. No proclamations were signed by the president commemorating the historic date.
“I know this is a federal holiday,” she told reporters in the White House briefing room. “I want to thank all of you for showing up to work. We are certainly here. We’re working 24/7 right now.”
Ironically, Trump once supported making Juneteenth the country’s 11th national holiday. It was included among his “Promise to Black America over 4 years” policy proposals in his 2020 presidential campaign.
Trump took credit for publicizing Juneteenth after moving a rally from June 19 to June 20 during the 2020 campaign.
“I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous,” the president told The Wall Street Journal at the time. “It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it.”
The change mirrors an overall switch in tone from his first term, when he at least paid lip service to civil rights. Now, any mention of America’s original sin is cast as “woke tyranny,” as the president calls it.
In March 2024, he criticized the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture for focusing too much on slavery and systemic racism.
“They make it all about how terrible this country is,” Trump complained. He has since signed an executive order “to restore truth and sanity” to the telling of history. The Smithsonian’s version, he said, was “racist” and “anti-American.”
Historic figures like Harriet Tubman and Medgar Evers have been erased from government websites. Diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives have been portrayed as methods of Marxist indoctrination.
The moves led some speculation on social media that this Juneteenth may be the last one recognized as a national holiday.
“We’d better enjoy and appreciate Juneteenth as a federal holiday today, because I can see the trump Administration (led by Stephen Miller) working to get rid of it…along with MLK Day,” wrote one man. “Surprised Trump hasn’t already done so via Executive Orders.”
