President Donald Trump on Friday night framed domestic political opponents as existential threats to American identity and declared communism the nation’s “mortal enemy” during a speech at Mount Rushmore on the eve of the United States’ 250th Independence Day.
Speaking beneath the granite faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, Trump warned that “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.” “We’re not going to let this happen,” he said. “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 can’t be both.”
The address, delivered as temperatures in South Dakota approached 100°F (38°C), capped a day of polarized celebrations ahead of Saturday’s official holiday. Trump’s rhetoric echoed the Red Scare of the 1950s, when alleged communists were persecuted and blacklisted across American society. He described communism as “a mortal threat to American liberty” and claimed it posed a greater danger than the First and Second World Wars, Pearl Harbor or the September 11 attacks.
The president’s speech came as organizers in Washington, D.C., scrambled to adjust Independence Day festivities amid extreme heat and logistical setbacks. A planned parade in the capital was canceled Friday due to the heat wave, and at least seven attendees at Trump’s “Great American State Fair” required advanced life support after temperatures soared past 100°F.
Trump’s Mount Rushmore address also served as a campaign platform ahead of November’s midterm elections, where Republicans fear losing control of at least one chamber of Congress. He repeatedly tied progressive Democrats to communism, singling out New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist whose recent primary victories have energized the left wing of the party. “The radical left has become a full-fledged communist movement,” Trump told the crowd.
Critics accused Trump of hijacking the national anniversary to advance his political agenda. French daily *Libération* described the speech as “a cardboard discourse” set against the monumental backdrop, arguing it amounted to a “national narrative woven from stories of heroes, mostly white, based on supposed American exceptionalism and Christian nationalism” that erased slavery, segregation and the genocide of Indigenous nations.
In Washington, the official America250 celebrations have been overshadowed by Trump’s rival “Freedom250” events, which critics say have become a vehicle for personal enrichment and partisan messaging. A congressional report warned that the president had “seized” the anniversary, turning it into a “focus of corruption and personal enrichment.”
Despite the heat and political divisions, Trump vowed to deliver a lengthy address Saturday evening on the National Mall, where a massive fireworks display is planned. He told supporters he intended to speak “for a really long time, just to show that I can do it.”
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