First he came for the immigrants and I said nothing …
In his inaugural address, President Trump sketched the picture of “American carnage” — a nation ransacked by marauders from abroad who breached U.S. borders in pursuit of jobs and crime, lured its companies offshore and bogged down its military in faraway conflicts.
Nearly 3½ years later, in the president’s telling, the carnage is still underway but this time the enemy is closer to home — other Americans whose racial identity and cultural beliefs are toppling the nation’s heritage and founding ideals.
Trump’s dark and divisive 42-minute speech at the foot of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota late Friday served as a clarion for his campaign reelection message at a time when the nation — already reeling with deep anxiety over the devastating public health and economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic — is also facing a cultural reckoning over the residue of its racially segregated past.
As he has so often during his tenure, the president made clear that he will do little to try to heal or unify the country ahead of the November presidential election but rather aims to drive a deeper wedge into the country’s fractures.
For Trump, that has meant defining a new foil. If his 2016 campaign to put “America first” was focused on building a wall to keep out immigrants and shedding alliances with nations he believed were exploiting the United States, the president is now aiming his rhetorical blasts at groups of liberal Americans who, he believes, constitute a direct threat to the standing of his conservative base.
At Mount Rushmore, under the granite gaze of four U.S. presidents, Trump railed against “angry mobs” pursuing “far-left fascism” and a “left-wing cultural revolution” that has manifested in the assault on statues and monuments celebrating Confederate leaders and other U.S. historical figures, including some former presidents, amid the mass racial justice protests of recent weeks.
“Their goal is not a better America; their goal is the end of America,” the president declared.
“We are now in the process of defeating the radical left — the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters,” Trump told guests Saturday during an Independence Day celebration on the South Lawn of the White House.
In making the case that a radical and violent ideology underpins much of the social justice movement that propelled the nationwide demonstrations, Trump has dropped virtually all pretense that he supports millions of peaceful protesters who have called for broad reforms to address what they see as systemic racism and a culture of brutality in police departments.
Trump made no mention Friday of the victims of police violence, including more than half a dozen black families he met with in the Oval Office last month before he signed an executive order to create national training certification guidelines for law enforcement agencies and establish a database to track police brutality cases.
Instead, he warned of a “growing danger” to the values of the nation’s founders — a “merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.”
He boasted of federal authorities apprehending hundreds of looters and vandals, even though the number is lower. He warned of “violent mayhem” in streets of cities run by “liberal Democrats.” He celebrated the arrest of a “ringleader” in the unsuccessful attempt from demonstrators to topple a statue of President Andrew Jackson, Trump’s favorite past president, in Lafayette Square across from the White House. And he asserted that schoolchildren were being taught to “hate their own country.”
“This was a deeply divisive speech aimed at what Trump sees as real Americans versus anarchists,” presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said. “That’s not just bigotry to the outside world, but now he’s really attacking millions of Americans as worthless, as socialists, as anarchists.”
I watched both speeches. They were appalling. Just because we’ve been watching this grotesque clown for the last three and a half years doesn’t make it any less shocking when he goes full Stephen Miller. Doing it on the 4th of July just makes you feel sick.
He is fomenting violence now and it’s extremely worrisome. He’s can already claim a body count of 130,000 Americans, for whom he has not even the slightest concern, clearly considering them nothing more than collateral damage in his culture war. Now he wants to see some real bloodshed on the streets of America.
I always thought it was just a little bit weird that so many leftist types bought into the idea that this violent jackass was some sort of anti-war peacenik simply because he wanted to “save money” by ending his predecessors wars. (Reversing anything they did is the only thing he knows how to do)
He loves war, don’t kid yourself. He just wants to fight his domestic political enemies. This has been clear from the beginning.