Washington, July 4: President Donald Trump ushered in the 250th anniversary of American independence on Friday with soaring rhetoric about American exceptionalism before veering into a darkly political speech with warnings about a sinister threat of communism that evoked one of the country’s ugliest chapters.
“Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty,” he said from Mount Rushmore. “It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbour or even 9/11.”
While the language was similar to several other speeches Trump has given in recent days, it was notable for being delivered in a national park that commemorates some of America’s most prominent presidents. And it swerved from the typically apolitical, unifying speeches past presidents like Gerald Ford or Ronald Reagan have delivered during earlier high-profile Independence Day celebrations.
Indeed, Trump’s language evoked the Red Scare of the 1950s, when alleged communists were persecuted and blacklisted from jobs across America, from Washington to Hollywood.
In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, delivered his own address that cast America as a nation of contradictions “working each day towards the perfection in which it was conceived.”
The president’s speech capped an Independence Day eve that was otherwise most notable for a brutal heat wave the gripped much of the eastern portion of the country. Officials have warned those celebrating the holiday to stay hydrated and take air-conditioned breaks as needed.
Philadelphia cancelled its Salute to Independence parade Friday. The Great American State Fair in Washington shut down in the early afternoon before reopening at 5 pm. The Capitol Fourth concert, a mainstay of the holiday in Washington, opened its gates a little later than normal but ultimately moved forward with appearances from Patti LaBelle, Trace Adkins, members of the Artemis II space mission and fireworks over George Washington’s Mount Vernon. An Independence Day parade scheduled for Saturday in Washington was cancelled.
Trump’s communist rhetoric
Trump called on Americans to protect the freedoms the nation’s founders envisioned 250 years ago against what he has portrayed as the “communist” threat posed by progressive Democrats, speaking on the eve of Independence Day at Mount Rushmore.
“We stand beneath the monument of these heroes, a true group of unbelievable people, and we rededicate ourselves to being a nation as big, bold, noble, and as great as these American giants, and that’s not easy to do, but we’re going to do it,” Trump said at the granite mountain in South Dakota where the heads of four American presidents are carved.
“There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success,” he said. “We’re not going to let this happen.”
Trump has been making such points about gains by democratic socialists for a week now, but he made his most pointed and prolonged argument on that theme on Friday, coming as Americans grapple with persistent inflation and high gas prices since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran.
Increasingly uneasy that the conflict could cost the party control of at least one chamber of Congress in November’s midterm elections, Republican lawmakers have seized on a recent string of successes by left-wing Democratic candidates.
Trump said that the threat also came from “newcomers to our country,” tying his anti-communist rhetoric to the anti-immigrant theme that fuelled his election and has been historically part of the criticism of communism in the United States. Trump at one point on Friday said the newcomers need to be expelled.
“We resolve and swear for all to hear that the citizens of the United States of America will vanquish communism quickly … We will send them quickly away, and we will continue to build our country bigger and better, stronger than ever before. America will never be a communist country!” Trump said, before seguing immediately into the issue at hand. (Agencies)
