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President Donald Trump is tapping a familiar institution, Hillsdale College, to produce a video lecture series for the U.S. sestercentennial, the administration announced on social media.
“On July 4, 2026, we will celebrate 250 years of American Independence. The White House has partnered with @Hillsdale to tell our story of a rag-tag army defeating the world’s mightiest empire and establishing the greatest republic ever to exist,” the administration posted Tuesday.
The first installment in the series, according to the post, was a seven-and-a-half-minute video featuring patriotic imagery and comments from Hillsdale president Larry Arnn, who emphasized the importance of knowing American history in order to commemorate the 250th anniversary.
In introducing the video series, Arnn cast Trump in the mold of Abraham Lincoln.
“Part of the purpose of this series of lectures is to remember. President Trump does this in part I think—I don’t speak for him—but the word ‘again’ is important to him. He has a famous slogan that I will not repeat here, but everybody knows what it is,” Arnn said. “He wants to do something again. Something [that’s] already been done, he wants to see it happen again.”
Arnn argued that Trump’s campaign slogan, Make America Great Again, “places him somewhere near the politics of Abraham Lincoln,” who sought to build on the foundation laid by George Washington.
The video focused on the Declaration of Independence and start of the Revolutionary War. The second installment in the series is about the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
A Hillsdale spokesperson told Politico the college did not take “a dime of federal money” for the video lecture series, which it is providing in partnership with the White House and the Department of Education. (Hillsdale, a private, Christian institution in Michigan, does not accept federal financial aid.)
The Trump administration also worked with Hillsdale at the end of the president’s first term. In early 2017, Hillsdale officials were part of a commission, chaired by Arnn, that produced the 1776 Report, a widely ridiculed document that academics dismissed as unserious scholarship. Critics argued the 1776 Report provided a whitewashed view of American history, omitted Native Americans entirely and had multiple citation issues.
