Douglas Burns is a fourth-generation Iowa journalist. He is the co-founder of the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation and a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, where this article first appeared on The Iowa Mercury newsletter. His family operated the Carroll Times Herald for 93 years in Carroll, Iowa where Burns resides.
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 on July 3 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 came to Iowa 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.
Here are ten 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. He 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. “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 appeal to a range of working people?
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 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.”
Brad Boustead of Urbandale assists America 250 rally goers as they enter and seek seats. (photo by Douglas Burns)
Patti Parmenter, 67, (right) and Vicki Clubine, 57, both of Des Moines, work together in Ankeny. They attended the America 250 event at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. (photo by Douglas Burns)
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 (largely peaceful) immigration protests in Los Angeles 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.
Crowd watches Trump deliver remarks at the America 250 event (official White House photo by Daniel Torok)
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. On nine occasions during his speech, Trump took shots at the media.
Another reporter, who counted the references, shared the tally with 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 public demonstration of sycophantic remarks for the president came from Ambassador Monica Crowley.
Here is what Crowley, the former journalist who is now the Chief Of Protocol of the United States, said before Trump took the stage 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.”