Trump at Mount Rushmore: You Can Be a Communist or a Patriot, You Cannot Be Both
"You can be a communist, or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both."
President Donald Trump delivered that line at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota's Black Hills on July 3, 2026, as the country opened its 250th birthday weekend. Behind him were the carved faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. He praised all four by name during the evening, and he used their monument as the backdrop for one of the sharpest warnings of his second term.
The warning was about communism. Trump called it the greatest threat the United States has ever faced. He said it was a bigger danger than World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor or the attacks of 9/11. He said communism killed 100 million people in the last century, and he described it as an enemy of free people and of the Constitution itself.
He followed with a pledge from the stage: "We resolve and swear for all to hear that the citizens of the United States of America will vanquish communism quickly."
The speech covered other ground as well. Trump pointed to $19.2 trillion in investment he says has come into the country since he took office again. He spoke about Venezuela and Iran. He mentioned the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, one of the early moves of his second term.
The communism line is the one that traveled. It came at a time when democratic socialist candidates have won races in several large American cities, and many listeners read the warning as aimed squarely at that movement. Supporters said the President was saying out loud what many politicians avoid saying at all. They argued that a country marking 250 years of freedom should be clear about the ideas that oppose it.
Critics saw it differently. They said a national birthday belongs to every American, and that drawing a line between patriots and communists on that stage turned a celebration into a political rally. Some also questioned the comparison to Pearl Harbor and 9/11.
The setting was not new for him. Trump also gave an Independence Day speech at Mount Rushmore on July 3, 2020, during his first term, and that address also focused on what he described as threats to American history and values.
The 250th anniversary events continue through the rest of the year. With this speech, the President made clear the theme he wants attached to them: loyalty to the country, and a hard line against the ideology he calls its greatest enemy.
The sentence is short, and it leaves no room in the middle. That was the point.
He also warned that the communist menace could rise again inside the country itself, and said the threat now comes from people who oppose American values. That warning, more than anything else in the speech, set the tone for the anniversary year.
Do you agree with the President that a person cannot be both a communist and a patriot? YES OR NO?
