Trump launches America’s 250th birthday celebrations with partisan attack

Donald Trump has kicked off America’s 250th birthday weekend with an extraordinary partisan attack on what he called the “communist menace” in America, framing its supporters as “the enemy of July 4th, 1776”.

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.

Greeted by chants of “USA! USA!” 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.

“They were men of action, men of ambition, men of daring, men of destiny, and men of truly great intelligence,” said Trump, who has never ruled out the idea of his own face being added to Mount Rushmore. “Above all, they were the great men of history.”

The president asserted that US exceptionalism is rooted not only in its constitution, but its distinctive culture and identity. He condemned recent attempts to “beat the American spirit out of us” and “alienate us from our history”, vowing to an overwhelmingly white crowd: “We are going to give our country its identity back.”

Trump then abandoned any pretence of making a traditional head of state’s speech designed to rise above the fray, unify political parties and strike a chord with citizens of all persuasions.

Instead, four months ahead of November’s 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 “Make America great again” movement.

Four progressive ​candidates, including three democratic socialists, won ​Democratic primaries in New York last week ​and in Colorado on Tuesday. Progressive candidates have also won contests in Kentucky, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania ​and Texas.

Trump also tied his anti-communist rhetoric to the anti-immigrant theme that fuelled his election. “As we approach this magnificent anniversary, we see our American identity under a renewed attack,” he said.

“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 described communism as a greater threat to American liberty than both world wars and the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks. “It’s the enemy of the constitution,” he declared. “Above all, it’s the enemy of July 4th, 1776 … Communism is the exact opposite of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s death, tyranny and the pursuit of evil.”

Trump argued that communists do not love God or religion and have no respect for law, justice, principle, tradition or God-given rights. “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.”

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’s speech to attack progressive narratives.

“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,” said Trump. “They are slandering and attacking our future – not going to let that happen.”

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.

Trump went on to equate the alleged communist threat with immigrants whom he suggested could be expelled. Pledging to “vanquish communism quickly” and “send them into exile”, he told the cheering 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.”

Trump urged Congress to terminate the filibuster and pass the Save America Act, which has been widely criticised as a voter suppression bill. “We do that, we’re not going to lose an election for a hundred years,” he said. “The communist party is made up of illegal immigrants, criminals and everybody that doesn’t want to work.”

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 “Trump the GOAT”.

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.