KEYSTONE, South Dakota
\nUS President Donald Trump called on Americans to protect the freedoms the \u200bnation\u2019s founders envisioned 250 years ago against what he has portrayed as the \u201ccommunist\u201d threat posed by \u200cprogressive Democrats, speaking on the eve of Independence Day at Mount Rushmore.
\n\u201cWe stand beneath the monument of these heroes, a true group of unbelievable people, and we rededicate ourselves to being a nation as big, bold, noble, and as great as these American giants, and that\u2019s \u200bnot easy to do, but we\u2019re going to do it,\u201d Trump said at the granite mountain in \u200bSouth Dakota where the heads of four American presidents are carved.
\n\u201cThere is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our \u200bway of life and our great success,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to let this happen.\u201d
\nTrump has been making such points \u200babout gains by democratic socialists for a week now, but he made his most pointed and prolonged argument on that theme on Friday, coming as Americans grapple with persistent inflation and high gas prices since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
\nIncreasingly uneasy that the conflict \u200bcould cost the party control of at least one chamber of Congress in November\u2019s midterm elections, Republican lawmakers have seized \u200bon a recent string of successes by left-wing Democratic candidates.
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\nTrump said that the threat also came from \u201cnewcomers to our country,\u201d tying his \u200canti-communist rhetoric to the anti-immigrant theme that fueled his election and has been historically part of the criticism of communism in the United States. Trump at one point on Friday said the newcomers need to be expelled.
\n\u201cWe resolve and swear for all to hear that the citizens of the United States of America will vanquish communism quickly … We will send them \u200bquickly away, and we will \u200bcontinue to build our country bigger and better, stronger than ever before. America will never be a communist country!\u201d Trump said, before seguing immediately into the issue at hand.
\n\u201cWe can only lose the midterms if \u200bwe allow ourselves to lose the midterms.\u201d
\nFour progressive candidates, including three democratic socialists, won \u200bcompetitive Democratic primaries in New York City last week and in Colorado on Tuesday. Progressive candidates have also won contests in Kentucky, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.
\nTrump last week called their victories \u201cthe greatest threat to our country since its founding.\u201d
\nOn Saturday, Trump was scheduled to \u2060address a \u200bcrowd on the National Mall ahead of a massive fireworks show amid a \u200bsearing heat wave that has disrupted Fourth of July celebrations across a large swath of the country.
\nAt Mount Rushmore the temperature was a cool 65 \u200bdegrees Fahrenheit (18 degrees Celsius).
\nWith reporting by Jasper Ward and writing by Ann Saphir; Editing by Donna Bryson and Raju Gopalakrishnan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KEYSTONE, South Dakota US President Donald Trump called on Americans to protect the freedoms the \u200bnation\u2019s founders envisioned 250 years ago against what he has portrayed as the \u201ccommunist\u201d threat posed by \u200cprogressive Democrats, speaking on the eve of Independence Day at Mount Rushmore. \u201cWe stand beneath the monument of these heroes, a true group […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554619,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-554587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n