President Donald Trump kicked off America's 250th birthday weekend with an extraordinary partisan attack on Friday night at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, accusing a resurgent 'communist menace' of threatening the nation and branding its supporters as 'the enemy of July 4th, 1776.' Speaking for half an hour before an overwhelmingly white crowd, Trump praised the four presidents carved into the granite mountain—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln—calling them 'men of action, men of ambition, men of daring, men of destiny and men of truly great intelligence.' He has never ruled out adding his own face to the monument.
Trump's Partisan Message
Trump abandoned any pretense of a unifying head-of-state speech, instead targeting progressive Democrats as communists who pose an existential threat. He spoke hours after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, delivered a pro-immigrant address widely seen as a rebuke of Trump. Four progressive candidates, including three democratic socialists, won Democratic primaries in New York last week and in Colorado on Tuesday, with others winning in Kentucky, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
Trump tied his anti-communist rhetoric to anti-immigrant themes, stating: 'As we approach this magnificent anniversary, we see our American identity under a renewed attack. A generation after we fought and won the cold war against the menace of communism, 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.'
Historical Controversy
Trump described communism as a greater threat than World War I, World War II, and the September 11 attacks, calling it 'the enemy of the constitution' and 'the enemy of July 4th, 1776.' He argued communists do not love God or religion and have no respect for law, justice, or tradition. 'You can be loyal to Karl Marx or you can be loyal to America. You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both,' he said.
Critics accused Trump of weaponizing the semiquincentennial to rewrite history, promoting a narrative focused on white Christian men while neglecting that Washington and Jefferson were slaveholders. Trump attacked progressive narratives, saying: 'As for those who peddle Marxist lies about our heritage, tell our children that we live on stolen land or that our heroes were oppressors, they’re doing something much worse than slandering our past. They are slandering and attacking our future – not going to let that happen.' Yet he spoke in the Black Hills, which the U.S. government illegally seized from the Sioux Nation in 1877.
Policy and Immigration
Trump equated the alleged communist threat with immigrants, pledging to 'vanquish communism quickly' and 'send them into exile,' telling the 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.' He urged Congress to end the filibuster and pass the Save America Act, widely criticized as a voter suppression bill, claiming: 'We do that, we’re not going to lose an election for 100 years. The communist party is made up of illegal immigrants, criminals and everybody that doesn’t want to work.'
Earlier, actors portraying the four presidents delivered famous quotations, and country artist Chancey Williams performed. A boy held a sign reading 'Trump the GOAT.' Trump, with approval ratings near historic lows, is scheduled to address a crowd Saturday at the National Mall ahead of a fireworks show amid a searing heatwave disrupting Independence Day celebrations across the U.S.
