SEOUL, July 05 (AJP) - United States President Donald Trump used the country's 250th Independence Day address on July 4 (local time) to brand domestic political opponents as communists, in remarks that major American news outlets compared to the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s.
Speaking at the National Mall in Washington after a two-hour weather delay caused by severe thunderstorms, Trump returned repeatedly to communism across a roughly 40-minute address, framing the November midterm elections as a contest between American values and an ideology he said posed an existential threat to the republic. The National Mall speech followed a similar address the previous evening at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, where Trump had called communism a "mortal threat to American liberty."
The language evoked the Red Scare of the 1950s, when alleged communists were persecuted and blacklisted from jobs across America, from Washington to Hollywood. What set Trump's remarks apart from Cold War-era presidential rhetoric was the target. Where presidents from Eisenhower to Reagan pointed at the Soviet Union as the communist threat, Trump pointed inward, at elected American politicians and a domestic political movement gaining ground in his own country.
The backdrop is a string of recent primary victories by democratic socialist candidates. New York City elected Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, as mayor earlier this year, and similar candidates have won primaries in Colorado and Texas. Trump said 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," calling communism "the enemy of the Constitution."
At the National Mall, he reached for a starker image. "Our warriors did not fight communism on battlefields across the world, only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America. We're not going to let it happen," he said. "It's like a cancer, you've got to cut it out."
Those warriors were on the stage with him. Trump thanked "veterans of the war on communism," including Marine Corporal Pat Finn and Private First Class Rudy Meekins, who fought in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War. The Battle of Chosin Reservoir, fought in the bitter winter of November and December 1950, saw United States and United Nations forces encircled and nearly overwhelmed by Chinese People's Volunteer Army troops in the mountains of northeastern Korea. The Marines who broke out of that encirclement are among the most decorated in the history of the Corps. For South Korea, the battle is not a historical footnote. It was fought on Korean soil, and the Chinese intervention it represented extended the war by nearly three years. "Because of heroes like these, our flag will always be a symbol of liberty and justice for all," Trump said.
The occasion itself made the tone remarkable. Independence Day addresses have traditionally served as moments of national unity, with presidents of both parties setting aside partisan conflict in favor of shared history. The Associated Press assessed that Trump mixed partisan politics and patriotic appeals in a manner unusual for an Independence Day address, and NPR noted the speeches marked a departure from the typically unifying tone past presidents like Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan had set on the holiday.
Trump also used the address to push for passage of the SAVE America Act, his proposed election overhaul requiring voter identification and proof of citizenship at the polls and prohibiting mail-in ballots in most circumstances. The bill faces an uncertain path in Congress.
The celebrations unfolded under punishing conditions. Temperatures reached a record 103 degrees Fahrenheit in Washington, an all-time high for July 4, with 160 million Americans under extreme weather warnings according to the National Weather Service. The thunderstorms that delayed Trump's address also forced thousands of attendees to evacuate the Mall and be rescreened by security before returning.
In New York, Mamdani delivered his own Independence Day address without mentioning Trump by name. "Those ideals upon which our nation was built are strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them," he said.
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