On July 4, 2026, President Donald Trump delivered a half-hour speech at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, marking the start of America’s 250th birthday celebrations. During the event, Trump launched a partisan attack, warning of a resurgent “communist menace” within the United States and framing its supporters as “the enemy of July 4th, 1776.”

Amid chants of “USA! USA!” and a flyover of F-16 jets, 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 also hinted at the possibility of adding his own face to Mount Rushmore.

Trump asserted that American exceptionalism is rooted not only in the Constitution but also in the country’s distinctive culture and identity. He stated, “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.”

He criticized those who, in his words, “peddle Marxist lies about our heritage,” accusing them of slandering the nation’s past and attacking its future. The speech took place in the Black Hills, land that was seized illegally from the Sioux Nation in 1877 after Congress forced the tribe to cede territory guaranteed under treaty.

Trump also called on Congress to end the filibuster and pass the Save America Act, a bill widely criticized as a voter suppression measure. He claimed, “We do that, we’re not going to lose an election for a hundred years,” and described the “communist party” as being composed of “illegal immigrants, criminals and everybody that doesn’t want to work.”

The speech came hours after Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York and a democratic socialist, delivered a pro-immigrant address seen as a rebuke to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

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