One July 4 detail marked the beginning of the end for Trump: ex-GOP operative

President Donald Trump's turn as master of ceremonies for America's 250th birthday drew a scathing review from Steve Schmidt, and the veteran political operative claimed it foreshadows the president's downfall.

In a Monday episode of his show "The Warning," Schmidt, a former Republican strategist who co-founded the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, tore into the president's handling of the July 4 festivities. He mocked the scale of the fireworks as "overkill," derided Trump's Independence Day address, and argued that New York City, with its tall ship parade up the Hudson, "saved the celebration" while Trump's Washington spectacle faltered.

Trump had promised the biggest Fourth of July bash in history. However, the National Mall event was hampered by scorching heat, long lines, and a weather delay that thinned the crowd before he took the stage. Schmidt has been far from the only critic, with a presidential historian separately dismissing Trump's holiday rhetoric as "Joe McCarthy Red Scare idiocy."

Schmidt reserved his sharpest words for the president himself.

"Donald Trump is the smallest president we've ever had," he said, calling him "minuscule and preposterous."

The operative framed the weekend as a turning point rather than a triumph. Invoking Winston Churchill's wartime line that "you do your worst and we will do our best," Schmidt predicted a reckoning at the ballot box.

"Donald Trump is about to be repudiated from coast to coast," he said. "When he wonders why, he should remember the night he couldn't even get the fireworks right on the Fourth of July."

Schmidt's broadside landed as Trump's birthday events drew mockery over sparse crowds and logistical stumbles. He urged Americans to answer what he called Trump's "depravity" by building "a better America."