{"id":532615,"date":"2026-07-04T11:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T11:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/532615\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T11:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T11:46:09","slug":"donald-trump-launches-americas-250th-birthday-celebrations-with-extraordinary-attack-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/532615\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump launches America\u2019s 250th birthday celebrations with extraordinary attack \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump<\/a> has kicked off America<\/a>\u2019s 250th birthday weekend with an extraordinary partisan attack on what he called the \u201ccommunist menace\u201d in America, framing its supporters as \u201cthe enemy of July 4th, 1776\u201d.<\/p>\n

The US president spoke for half an hour on Friday night at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, the latest stop on his tour celebrating the milestone anniversary of the US declaration of independence from Britain.<\/p>\n

Greeted by chants of \u201cUSA! USA!\u201d and briefly interrupted by a flyover of F-16 jets, Trump praised the four presidents whose faces are carved into the granite mountain: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were men of action, men of ambition, men of daring, men of destiny, and men of truly great intelligence,\u201d said Trump, who has never ruled out the idea of his own face being added to Mount Rushmore. \u201cAbove all, they were the great men of history.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president asserted that US exceptionalism is rooted not only in its constitution, but its distinctive culture and identity. He condemned recent attempts to \u201cbeat the American spirit out of us\u201d and \u201calienate us from our history\u201d, vowing to an overwhelmingly white crowd: \u201cWe are going to give our country its identity back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump then abandoned any pretence of making a traditional head of state\u2019s speech designed to rise above the fray, unify political parties and strike a chord with citizens of all persuasions.<\/p>\n

Instead, four months ahead of November\u2019s midterm elections for US Congress, he picked up on a theme he has repeatedly hammered lately: casting 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 address widely seen as a rebuke of Trump and his \u201cMake America great again\u201d movement.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Donald Trump is expected to visit Ireland in SeptemberOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\"AA helicopter flies above Mount Rushmore National Memorial during a July 4 event attended by US president Donald Trump in Keystone, South Dakota, on July 3, 2026. Photograph: Mandel Ngan\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

Four progressive \u200bcandidates, including three democratic socialists, won \u200bDemocratic primaries in New York last week \u200band in Colorado on Tuesday. Progressive candidates have also won contests in Kentucky, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania \u200band Texas.<\/p>\n

Trump also tied his anti-communist rhetoric to the anti-immigrant theme that fuelled his election. \u201cAs we approach this magnificent anniversary, we see our American identity under a renewed attack,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

He described communism as a greater threat to American liberty than both world wars and the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks. \u201cIt\u2019s the enemy of the constitution,\u201d he declared. \u201cAbove all, it\u2019s the enemy of July 4th, 1776 … Communism is the exact opposite of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It\u2019s death, tyranny and the pursuit of evil.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump argued that communists do not love God or religion and have no respect for law, justice, principle, tradition or God-given rights. \u201cYou 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president has been widely criticised for weaponising the semiquincentennial to rewrite history, promoting a narrative focused on white Christian men such as Washington and Jefferson while neglecting to acknowledge that both were slaveholders. He used Friday\u2019s speech to attack progressive narratives.<\/p>\n

\"USUS president Donald Trump speaks during an event at Mount Rushmore National Memorial in Keystone, South Dakota, on Friday, July 3, 2026. Photograph: Jesse Brown Nelson\/Bloomberg <\/p>\n

\u201cAs 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\u2019re doing something much worse than slandering our past,\u201d said Trump. \u201cThey are slandering and attacking our future \u2013 not going to let that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet he was speaking in the Black Hills, which the US government illegally seized from the Sioux Nation in 1877 after Congress forced the tribe to cede land it had been guaranteed under treaty.<\/p>\n

Trump went on to equate the alleged communist threat with immigrants whom he suggested could be expelled. Pledging to \u201cvanquish communism quickly\u201d and \u201csend them into exile\u201d, he told the cheering crowd: \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump urged Congress to terminate the filibuster and pass the Save America Act, which has been widely criticised as a voter suppression bill. \u201cWe do that, we\u2019re not going to lose an election for a hundred years,\u201d he said. \u201cThe communist party is made up of illegal immigrants, criminals and everybody that doesn\u2019t want to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier in the evening, actors portraying Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln had stood behind lecterns on a blue-carpeted stage and delivered some of their most famous quotations. Country music artist Chancey Williams played a set. In the crowd, a boy could be seen holding a handwritten sign which read \u201cTrump the GOAT\u201d.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, Trump, whose approval ratings are near historic lows, is scheduled to address a crowd on the national mall ahead of a massive fireworks show amid a searing heatwave that has disrupted independence day celebrations across the country. \u2013 Guardian<\/p>\n

[\u00a0What will Trump have to do before Ireland\u2019s golfers have had enough?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump has kicked off America\u2019s 250th birthday weekend with an extraordinary partisan attack on what he called…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[969,42,4320,43,40,38,41,39,115],"class_list":["post-532615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-new-york","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}