The British Are Coming!

Prince William & Princess Catherine were the first to greet President Trump & First Lady Melania Trump on their state visit in September

The last time anyone uttered the phrase ‘The British Are Coming,’ on American soil was on April 18-19,1775. Everyone knew the Brits would soon invade the colonies to put down their rebellion, sparked by the Boston Tea Party.

Dozens of skilled riders fanned out on horseback to warn the patriots that the British were coming. You could call it the rebels’ intel network.

Paul Revere, a 40-year-old Boston silversmith with eight children, rowed across the Charles River under the nose of the British warship HMS Somerset, got a horse and rode northwest toward Lexington to warn revolutionary leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock that the British were coming to arrest them. The two rebels escaped.

Historians remind us that it was unlikely Revere used the phrase ‘The British Are Coming,’ because so many in the colonies were still considered themselves British. More likely it was ‘The Regulars Are Coming,’ or ‘The Troops Are Coming.’

Still, I think of Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride now because the New York Post reports that Prince William and Princess Catherine — the first to greet the Trumps on their state visit to Britain in September — are coming to America to join our July Fourth celebrations marking 250 years since Thomas Jefferson penned those historic words in our Declaration of Independence from Britain, that “all men are created equal.

Then, we rebelled against King George III, known as the monarch who lost the colonies. Now, sources say, if his health allows, King Charles and Queen Camilla may kick off the 250th anniversary celebration with a state visit to the US in April.

Remarkable. Perhaps the irony hit me deeply because I have just spent several years researching my new book, a historical novel about our country’s founders, in which I pose the question of what George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and the rest would think of the America that they bequeathed to us.

Trump’s Superpower: A Historical Novel About the Founding Fathers & One Founding Mother imagines the founders arriving from heaven to participate in our 250th birthday celebrations. Their encounters with 21^st Century Americans are hilarious — Ben Franklin is arrested for misgendering a husky man named Christina — and their musings about whether the US is still a constitutional republic are profound.

At one point, Alexander Hamilton tells Scott Bessent — over lunch at the Fed — that he believes President Trump is leading a second revolution—this time against Marxists and globalists who threaten national sovereignty, and that he is waging this battle on the shoulders of the founders and their principles.

The hardcover version of the book is available for pre-order now on Amazon, with the audio and kindle versions to follow. I would so appreciate your early support, as pre-order sales influence the print volume.

As we approach our 250th anniversary, many left-wing revisionists will have books and films coming out that seek to topple the founders from their perch, sometimes literally. At the Jefferson Memorial, there is an effort underway to undercut the soaring beauty of Jefferson’s words with an exhibit dedicated to his slaves.

In his recent PBS documentary American Revolution, Ken Burns used a platoon of historians to re-frame the story of our founding, steering it away from the white men of genius who absorbed the values of Enlightenment to create the world’s longest lasing constitutional republic. Instead, the series opens with a land acknowledgement to the Indian tribes and ends with a tribute to the slaves. During the depiction of the critical battle at Yorktown, the last word is given to a Hessian soldier.

In interviews, Burns has referred to these great men and women of cause as “so-called founders.” His intent is to “rebuild our origin story.” As historian Joseph Ellis explains in the film, Americans have smothered this history “in gallant bloodless myth.” Historian Jane Kamensky says they were not “gilded statues of marble men.”

Trump’s Superpower argues instead that even with their flaws — slavery being the original sin of the American founding — they were in fact the most brilliant minds of a generation, passionate about “the consent of the governed,” about democracy, willing to risk everything — names, reputations, even their lives — for the cause.

Ironically, in his original draft of the Declaration of Independence from Britain, Jefferson cited, in his list of grievances against the king, the importation of slaves.

‘He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation.’

Congress insisted that wording be stripped, for fear of offending Virginia and South Carolina. If they were going to fight the mighty British Empire, they would need a united front. Truth is, the new American economy relied on slaves, North and South. It would take a bloody Civil War, almost a hundred years later, to right the wrong.

I hope you will buy and enjoy Trump’s Superpower as I enjoyed researching and writing it. Help me make it a best-seller. When it comes to remembering our history, and teaching it to our children, we can’t let Ken Burns have the last word.