Trump hitting familiar talking points in anniversary addresspublished at 04:46 BST
04:46 BST
Bernd Debusmann Jr
White House reporter
While Trump’s speech is perhaps more historical than the norm, he is hitting many of the same talking points that he discusses, at length, in many of his rallies across the US.
This included Trump’s vow to pass the SAVE America Act – which would mandate proof of citizenship and ID to vote, and bar mail-in ballots except in cases of illness, military deployment or other exceptional circumstances.
This has taken on renewed importance for the White House in the wake of this week’s Supreme Court decision which protected mail-in ballots – a notable defeat for the Trump administration from a conservative-leaning Supreme Court.
The spectre of “communism” has repeatedly been mentioned in his speech, with the president comparing it to a cancer that must be excised.
Trump’s detractors are likely to accuse him of conflating America’s Cold War enemies with his domestic opponents, rather than unifying the country.
Notably, however, Trump has so far not mentioned Democrats, Joe Biden, Barack Obama or some of the other frequent targets of his criticism.