Trump at Mount Rushmore: “You Can Be a Communist or You Can Be a Patriot — Not Both”

President Donald Trump traveled to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota on July 3, 2026, to deliver a half-hour address kicking off the nation’s 250th anniversary celebrations, centering his remarks on what he called a “mortal threat” from communism within the United States. Standing before the carved faces of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln, Trump declared, “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,” comparing what he described as a resurgent communist movement to the threat posed by the September 11 attacks and calling it “the enemy of the Constitution” and “the enemy of July 4, 1776” [1, 2]. A fireworks show at the site followed the speech, which served as a prelude to the larger July 4 celebration on the National Mall in Washington the following day [3].

The choice of venue carries additional political weight beyond the speech itself: CNN reported on July 3 that Trump has long sought to have his own likeness added to the Mount Rushmore sculpture, an effort that has faced opposition from South Dakota officials and Native American tribes and has so far stalled [4]. Organizers set up a designated “First Amendment area” confining protesters away from the main crowd [2].

Why It Sucks:

Conservatives

• Turning a national monument into a partisan rally undercuts the message. Even supporters of Trump’s anti-communist message note that delivering a political attack from the base of a monument meant to honor the nation’s founders — not the current president’s battles — hands critics a ready-made rebuttal and dilutes the patriotic framing [4].
• The likeness campaign undermines the speech’s founding-era credibility. Reports that Trump has lobbied to carve his own face into Mount Rushmore alongside Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln make his invocation of those presidents feel less like a defense of American ideals and more like brand positioning [4].
• Protest containment zones are a tool conservatives once condemned. Designated “First Amendment areas” that shuffle dissenters out of sight were first widely used by the Bush administration during the Iraq War protests — a tactic conservative civil libertarians criticized then and that sits awkwardly alongside a speech about liberty [2].

Progressives

• “Communist” as a political label is a documented smear tool, not a policy critique. Applying the communist label broadly to political opponents has a documented history in American politics of being deployed to silence dissent rather than address substantive policy disagreements — a pattern that historians link directly to the McCarthy era [1, 3].
• Equating political opponents with 9/11 perpetrators is a significant rhetorical escalation. Comparing a domestic ideological movement to a terrorist attack that killed nearly 3,000 people in a single morning marks an escalation in political vilification that progressives argue makes compromise and governance harder [1, 2].
• The event physically excluded dissent from the frame. Forcing protesters into a corralled “First Amendment area” while declaring a defense of American liberty from the main stage creates an internal contradiction that undermines the speech’s stated values [2, 4].

Historians and Constitutional Scholars

• The McCarthy parallel is historically precise, not just rhetorical. Scholars of the 1950s Red Scare note that the political weaponization of “communist” accusations resulted in the blacklisting of thousands of Americans, the destruction of careers on unproven political associations, and a period of civil liberties curtailment that the country later repudiated [3].
• Mount Rushmore is carved into land taken from the Lakota Sioux in violation of a treaty. The Black Hills are considered sacred by the Lakota and were guaranteed to them under the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, a fact Trump’s speech celebrating American liberty did not address — and which Lakota scholars and activists have consistently raised at every presidential event held at the site [4].
• Defining what an American “can be” along ideological lines contradicts the Founders’ pluralism. The very Constitution Trump invoked protects the right to hold heterodox political beliefs; historians note that the First Amendment was specifically designed to protect unpopular speech and association, including those the governing majority finds dangerous [1, 3].

Sources & Citations:

[1] NBC News: Trump warns of communist ‘threat’ and touts America’s strength at Mount Rushmore
[2] South Dakota Searchlight: Trump uses Mount Rushmore speech to allege ‘mortal threat’ from communism
[3] CBS News: Trump warns of ‘communist menace’ in July Fourth speech at Mount Rushmore
[4] CNN: Trump heads to Mount Rushmore, where efforts to impose his likeness have stalled