Trump launches America’s 250th birthday celebrations with partisan attack | US news
Donald Trump kicked off America’s 250th birthday weekend with an extraordinary partisan attack on what he called the “communist threat” in America, framing his supporters as the “enemy of July 4, 1776.”
The US president spoke for half an hour at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota on Friday night; this was the last stop of his trip to celebrate the landmark anniversary of the United States’ declaration of independence from Britain.
“USA! USA!” was greeted with slogans. Trump, who was briefly interrupted by the passage of F-16 jets, praised the four presidents whose faces resemble each other. carved into granite mountain: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.
“They were men of action, men of ambition, men of courage, men of destiny and men of truly great intelligence,” Trump said. idea of own face It’s being added to Mount Rushmore. “Above all, they were the great men of history.”
The president argued that the United States’ exceptionalism stems not only from its constitution but also from its unique culture and identity. He condemned recent attempts to “rip out of us the American spirit” and “alien us from our history” and promised an overwhelmingly white crowd: “We will give our country back its identity.”
Trump later abandoned any pretensions to deliver a traditional presidential address designed to overcome infighting, unite political parties and appeal to citizens of all persuasions.
Instead, four months before the U.S. Congressional midterm elections in November, he took up an issue he has raised repeatedly recently: portraying progressive Democrats as communists who pose an existential threat to America. He was speaking hours after Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York and a democratic socialist, delivered a pro-immigrant speech that was widely seen as a rebuke to Trump and his “Make America great again” movement.
Four progressive candidates, including three democratic socialists, won the Democratic primary in New York last week and in Colorado on Tuesday. Progressive candidates also won contests in Kentucky, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.
Trump also tied his anti-communist rhetoric to the anti-immigrant theme that fueled his election. “As we approach this magnificent anniversary, we see our American identity under renewed attack,” he said.
“A generation after we fought and won the cold war against the communist threat, the communist threat is resurgent in our land, including newcomers to our country who espouse ideas diametrically opposed to our way of life and our great success.”
He described communism as a greater threat to American freedom than both the world wars and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. “This is the enemy of the constitution,” he declared. “First of all, it is the enemy of July 4, 1776… Communism is the opposite of life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness. It is death, tyranny and the pursuit of evil.”
Trump argued that communists do not love God or religion, nor do they respect law, justice, principles, traditions, or God-given rights. “You can be loyal to Karl Marx, you can be loyal to America. You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You can’t be both.”
The president has been widely criticized for using the sesquicentennial as a weapon to rewrite history, promoting a narrative that focuses on white Christian men like Washington and Jefferson and neglecting to acknowledge that both were slave owners. He used his speech on Friday to attack progressive narratives.
“Those who peddle Marxist lies about our heritage, who tell our children that we live on stolen land or that our heroes were cruel, are doing something far worse than slandering our past,” Trump said. “They are slandering, attacking our future, they will not allow this.”.”
Yet he was speaking in the Black Hills, which the U.S. government had illegally seized from the Sioux Nation in 1877 after Congress forced the tribe to give up lands guaranteed under the treaty.
Trump continued to equate the alleged communist threat with immigrants who, he suggested, could be deported. Pledging to “vanquish communism quickly” and “send them into exile”, he told the cheering crowd: “We will send them quickly away, and we will continue to build our country bigger and better and stronger than ever before. America will never be a communist country.”
Trump called on Congress to end fraud and pass the Save America Act, which has been widely criticized as a voter suppression bill. “We will do this, we will not lose an election for a hundred years,” he said. “The communist party is made up of illegal immigrants, criminals and anyone who doesn’t want to work.”
Earlier in the evening, actors portraying Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln stood behind podiums on the blue-carpeted stage and delivered some of their most famous quotes. Country music artist Chancey Williams played a set. A child was seen in the crowd holding a handwritten sign that read “Trump the GOAT.”
Trump, whose approval ratings are near historic lows, is scheduled to address crowds on the national mall on Saturday ahead of a massive fireworks display, amid a scorching heat wave that has disrupted Independence Day celebrations across the country.
