Trump is hoping for an enormous crowd, and July Fourth reliably draws plenty of people to Washington. But the last time he delivered an address on the National Mall, on Inauguration Day, he was disappointed by the turnout, or at least in the way the turnout was depicted on the news.

That’s left some of his aides working overtime to fill out the space along the Mall where he will speak. It’s not clear that their efforts will be successful, and some people who were offered tickets this week — including donors and administration officials — said they’d already made other plans…

It’s all a vastly scaled-up version of how presidents ordinarily celebrate July Fourth, the date American colonists officially served notice to Britain in 1776. Usually the holiday is marked with a picnic for service members and their families on the White House South Lawn, followed by a viewing of fireworks over the Washington Monument.