“It is time for our politicians to summon the bravery and determination of our American ancestors. It is time. It is time to plant our flag and to protect the greatest of this nation for citizens of every race in every city in every part of this glorious land. For the sake of our honor, for the sake of our children, for the sake of our union, we must protect and preserve our history, our heritage, and our great heroes. Here tonight before the eyes of our forefathers, Americans declare again, as we did 244 years ago, that we will not be tyrannized, we will not be demeaned, and we will not be intimidated by bad, evil people. It will not happen.”
President Donald J Trump, speaking at Mt. Rushmore last night, and aggressively defending the United States of America, its Founders, its history and culture.
Bravo.
Last night’s speech, a ringing assertion of American greatness and a defiant condemnation of those who would topple it, despite the inevitable Trump flourishes of exaggeration, hyperbole, and deliberate provocation, was exactly what was needed, called for, and had to be said. It was inspiring, or should have been: I wonder about anyone who could read the transcript and not be stirred. I would ask, “What happened to you?” We also now know why it was appropriate to give that speech by Mt. Rushmore. The President extolled and defended our heroes, and devoted a section of the speech to each of the Presidents on the mountain, including, as CNN said last night to its damnation, “two slaveholders.”
There are about ten passages in the speech that I could have highlighted. I picked that one because it reminded me of this speech by a fictional President in a movie I detest, “Independence Day.” I would not be surprised to learn the speechwriter had that model in mind:
“President Whitmore” is talking about space aliens trying to destroys us. The mobs of America-haters who are attacking our core values and culture remind me of the aliens in “Invasion of the Body-Snatchers,” taking over the minds and bodies of one rational citizens, and terrorizing those who won’t submit to their “conversion.”
Trump’s speech last night had to be made, and had to be made by him. The President of the United States was obligated to stand up for the nation he was elected to lead. This was made necessary by the weak, craven response of so many leaders in the private sector and others who have prostrated themselves at the feet of anti-white racists, rioters and revolutionaries.
Ann Althouse, who gets up much earlier than I do, beat me to a section by section analysis, but as usual, she did an excellent job, and I agree with her commentary completely. She also beat me to commentary about the revolting news media reaction, which should scare people to death on this Independence Day.
I woke up to a New York Times headline that said, “With US in Grip of Virus, Trump Puts On Show.” To be crude, but crudeness is mandates here, this is signature significance: no paper not run by partisan, unethical, hateful assholes would allow such a headline. Presidents have given speeches on or around Independence Day for much of our history, during wars, depressions, recessions and other national crises. It is not “putting on a show.” It is called “being President of the United States.” I know the Times, like the rest of the “resistance,” is invested in refusing to acknowledge that Donald Trump is a legitimate President, and continues to work to make it as difficult as possible for him to do his job, but this charges over the decency line. As Althouse demonstrated in her next post today, the Times had more to say in falsely framing the speech, and it was not alone:
The front page of the Washington Post has “Ahead of July 4, Trump exploits racial, social divisions/In a dark speech at the foot of Mount Rushmore’s monument, President Trump focused on what he described as a ‘left-wing cultural revolution’ that aims to rewrite U.S. history and erase its heritage” — reworded at the article page as “At Mount Rushmore, Trump exploits social divisions, warns of ‘left-wing cultural revolution’ in dark speech ahead of Independence Day.”
Oh, it’s a “dark speech.” It was full of optimism and painted the beautiful version of American history, but what the Washington Post saw is darkness. But it certainly did attack the left — for its dark vision. …
The New York Times has “Trump Uses Mount Rushmore Speech to Deliver Divisive Culture War Message/Down in the polls and failing to control a raging pandemic, the president cast himself as waging battle against a ‘new far-left fascism’ that imperils American values and seeks to erase history.” The speech is full of material that can be used to make the argument that Trump was pulling Americans together, but he was calling on us to reject the destructive message that he ascribed to the far left. The left is very conspicuously “waging battle” against American values, so it’s not as though Trump is starting it. He’s fighting back. Whether he’s fighting for America — as he says — or because he’s “down in the polls and failing to control a raging pandemic” is a matter of opinion.
…The CNN headline is “Trump tries to drag America backward on a very different July 4th.” He’s “stirring fear of cultural change.” The highlighted quote is “merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children.”
NPR has “Trump Flouts Virus Rules, Warns Of ‘New Far-Left Fascism’ In Speech Ahead Of July 4th.” One way to spin the speech is to downplay the text and stress the disease risk in holding an event at all. Like CNN, NPR highlights “merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children.”
Politico has “Trump seeks to claim the mantle of history in fiery Mount Rushmore address/The president’s speech, part of a July 4 weekend celebration, comes after weeks of protests against racism and police brutality that have forced broader discussions over America’s monuments.” What’s most interesting about that is that it’s not a big headline on the front page. In fact, it’s squirreled away under the much larger headline, “Yes, Biden is thrashing Trump. But he could still blow it/Biden’s polling lead over Trump is significant, though not unprecedented.” I’m going to interpret this to mean that Political saw an effective speech and is afraid and seeing an immediate need to boost Biden….
Read it all, and a “Brava!” to Althouse.
Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias…
Ethics Alarms 
I just unsubscribed from the annoying ‘Post Most’ emails I’ve been getting since I did the free subscription for a while years ago. I thought it was good to see their headlines, but they finally pushed me over the edge.
The country’s newsrooms have clearly been taken over by the forty and under crowd who were indoctrinated while in college and journalism school. They really want to remake American society in its entirety and think they have control of the levers of power to do so. I think they’re wrong. I think there’s going to be a big pushback.
Do not adults run the Democratic Party?
Adults who’ll do anything for a vote and they see lots and lots of votes in the forty and under demographic. But the seventy year-olds are pathetic in thinking the AOCs and Ihan Omars won’t push the geriatric set to the side ASAP.
I wouldn’t say so, no.
I found another politician to watch, the Governor of South Dakota. I am also watching Dan Crenshaw. Did anyone else see the idea to have Tucker Carlson run for office?
The only thing I wish Trump had done last night during the speech was during the crowds “Four more years” was say “Today, it isn’t about me its about America” He did actually seem to be almost humble last night, compared to his normal demeanor…
Opinions do not a leader make. Carlson has no qualifications whatsoever, even less than Stacy Abrams. Running talking heads is even worse than running actors.
Four short years ago, even Feel the Bern was a Mt. Rushmore LUVER.
Wonder what’s changed….?
Had a strange moment last night involving this speech. Some guy was being sketchy by our house. He tried to open our neighbors car door after pulling up his pants (for what reason they we’re down I don’t know). My wife from a distance asked what he was doing with the car, to which he lied about the car not being driven in months and being interested in buying it.
He was told to leave the car alone by my wife as I was on our deck outside calling my neighbor. After looking at us, he exclaimed “I love Trump!” then went to his car (with out-of-town plates) and sat there while as we stayed on the deck watching him while waiting to hear back from our neighbor. Eventually he rolled down his window and blasted Trump’s speech last night. Finally he left.
I’m not sure if this guy thought he could intimate us by using Trump and this speech. I don’t actually think this guy was even an actual Trump supporter. Just another weird moment in a weird year in a weird city.
Yeesh.
If I had lived closer to you, I would have brought my .45 over.
That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me. Thank you!
To the rescue! (draws his Sig)
The AP headline used on MSN that shows up on my browswr claimed he stoked racial division. I listened to him and know differently.
I am fed up with all those who claim that they are patriotic “conservatives” and either do nothing to push back against the left or give no quarter to Trump.
What I truly detest is being forced into an ideological camp. I am an American who demands that the Bill of Rights be preserved. I will not be forced to cancel our history so others feel good about themselves. I want our history on proud display warts and all. If a Confederate general must be toppled for his racial segregationist ideas so too must all the things named for Malcom X for he too preached that until he changed his perspective. Are those statue topplers ready to strip Malcolm X’s name off so many public schools across the country? No and they should not feel obligated to. Neither should those whose ancestors fought on the losing side..
When George Floyd died at the hands (knee) of a renegade cop I was with those that condemned that act. But, don’t infer or demand that I must stand with them again or be labeled a bigot.
I will not apologize for being white and I will not accept any responsibility for what others do or did in years gone by. Nor will I demand apologies from or suggest anyone else is inferior by virtue of their race or to hold anyone responsible for acts of their ancesters.
Why does no one ask the DACA recipients why they want to stay in what they consider a racist land? They stay because the know they have so much more opportunity here than from whence they came. They need to be pressed on why they fight so hard to stay when it is such a racist country. They make the racist claim because it appears to make white decision makers appease them.
We ended our civil war 155 years ago and we are on the precipice of another if this continues. The left is provoking a war that will result in the destruction of our economy, hundreds of thousands of dead Americans and nothing if value gained.
This is the Catch-22 that the media and the BLM mob is attempting: if you oppose BLM and its tactics, you are a racist, and exploiting “racial division.” The remedy is to refuse to play, and explain why BLM is the racist group, and the statute toppling mob the dividers.
There are a lot of social justice warriors that NEED to watch this film.
I remember that film. It eas so easy to get those kids to acclimated to facism
The parallels to what’s happening in our society right now is eye opening.
Ignorance or Societal Brainwashing?
I was there for quite a while beforehand, at least online. I saw the attempt to block the road and stop the audience from getting there. It was a fairly well planned attack (I use the word because it was an attack on good order and the rights of others). The activists drove three white vans into the center of the road so fast the observers thought they were law enforcement responding to an alarm. They then either removed or slashed the tires so that they couldn’t be moved on their own. The local sheriff’s department managed to keep the 200 or so protesters and the Trump people away from one another, but they really weren’t equipped to move them.
It didn’t take a VERY heavily armored contingent of the National Guard too long to arrive though, and it took them only about an hour to shove the protesters beyond the vans, to the point where tow trucks could come in and remove the vans. A few people were arrested, but no tear gas was deployed nor did I see anyone struck with batons. The SJWs failed. They failed to stop the event from happening (the president was coming in by helicopter anyway, so they couldn’t have stopped him), they failed to stop the audience from getting into place, and they failed to provoke an overreaction they could point to later as evidence that the political right is composed of violent fascists. All they did was give the audience a story to tell and make themselves look like the disorderly bullying children they are. I say that because bullying children block other people from getting where they are going. Bullying children smash other people’s property. Bullying children refuse to heed authority and ignore the words “no” and “stop.” Bullying children are the last people you want in change of anything, it’s like the inmates running the asylum.
The president was absolutely right about the current left-wing movement born out of the George Floyd freak-out. This isn’t Martin Luther King and the march on Selma or the march on DC. Those people wore their best clothes and never tried to destroy anything. This isn’t Gandhi and the march to the seaside to teach the people how to make their own salt. This definitely isn’t Chicago or San Francisco in the 1960s, with a lot of blissed-out, stoned folks who wouldn’t hurt anyone even if they’d been able to. This is more like the Weathermen and the Days of Rage, or Kristallnacht, or even the days of the Bolsheviks or the Paris Commune. Those movements were not directed toward getting justice, or equality, or fairness. They were aimed at destruction of those the destroyers, whether far right like the Nazis or far left like the Bolsheviks, opposed. They were also not sending the message of “this isn’t far and it needs to change.” They were sending the message that “we’re angry, we’re full of hate, and we’re going to hurt, kill, or destroy anyone who gets in our way.” What the Bolsheviks and Nazis did is history. They went too far before any internal force could bring them down. The only way to bring them down was a war from outside. The Paris Commune, like its ideological grandfather the French Revolution, and the Weathermen and the dark side of the hippy movement, were brought down the old-fashioned way – by the authorities deciding enough was enough and they were going to do whatever it took to restore order.
The “racial justice movement” as Bob Costa of WaPo called it in a tweet, isn’t about any kind of justice. Justice implies good faith and fairness. There is nothing fair about a movement whose adherents threaten violence against anyone who refuses to say “black lives matter,” without qualification, or, God forbid, pushes back. There is no good faith in a movement that openly puts up posters saying they are going to protest racism by tearing down a statue of some figure they disagree with and throwing it in the bay. There is no justice of any kind in a movement that says that destruction of businesses is justified.
This is a movement that counts on this nation’s collective guilt based on fiction to paralyze it. It counts on the police to be so ashamed of the actions of a few that they won’t do their jobs. It counts on the elected leaders to be so cowed that they will make sure there are fewer or even no police around to do the job. It counts on white people to be so guilted that they will just stand aside and say “do whatever makes you feel less oppressed.” Too many white folks are doing just that, and too many more are aiding and abetting because they think it will score them some political points.
This is where the president said no, and that the nation is finally going to put its foot down on this completely unacceptable behavior. Those people who’ve done this violence and damage are facing long prison sentences, and somehow acting up loses its appeal when you’re facing a long period of time on the inside with Bubba. He also made the point that “what you destroy we will rebuild.” I think it will take the wind out of a lot of these iconoclasts’ sails if they know that the statue they knock down today will just reappear in a park where they can’t get to it again.
I think this could be a “pivot” moment where the silent majority realizes it is only as helpless as it lets itself be, and it needs to stop letting itself be.
We watched a good portion of the President’s speech last night. It may have been the best job he’s done so far. He was tough without being arrogant. I told my wife this morning that when the President was elected, I did not believe he was really a Republican, much less a conservative. But I think the fact that the Democratic Party is now completely unhinged has pushed him further to the Right than he imagined he would be. He’s still not really there, and it could be that the Democratic Party’s movement to the far left just makes the President look like he’s changing, but I do think it’s happening.
By the way, I hear Secretary Clinton has been talking about how much better of a job she would have done as President dealing with Wuhan virus than President Trump. Backseat drivers and hindsight prophets are never wrong, and Hillary Clinton is a disgrace.
Re the media’s race/Trump racism false commentary.
Doesn’t anyone know any history? As an amateur historian of British history, Churchill, the Holocaust, and WWII, I understand the horrors of British imperialism in the 18th-19th century (Africa, the Near and Far East, and on and on), but…
Queen Victoria (against the South’s fond hopes) refused to support the Confederacy for one reason: slavery. Despite England’s need for cotton, she wouldn’t put her stamp of approval on slavery in the interest of their economy. Of course one could argue that British imperialism was almostas bad as slavery, but it really was not, and unlike the French, who conquered African nations, hunted with chieftains, slept with their women, stole their resources, then left when it seemed appropriate or necessary, the British, in their unique fashion, created whole government structures (e.g. India) that survived as useful bureaucracies after WWII and the end of British imperialism. Smart they were, though, creating the British Commonwealth, which their conquered countries could join if they chose. An amazing number did.
But slavery of a particular race was not in the British ethics. (Or the Romans either, who enslaved everyone they conquered, regardless of race/origin/culture…) The result — especially after WWII — is that Britain became populated by traditional Englishmen, Indians, African blacks, Asians — all with the hope and most always the realization of good, safe, respected, lives. (The European Union, Brexit, etc., is changing that, I’m sure. It’s been a decade since I’ve been to England.) But to the point:
Slavery is our country’s original sin. Our treatment of Native Americans also. Somehow we have to get over that. But erasing our history — demeaning Founders who were slaveholders when they were men of their culture then — will not solve the problem, will it? We have to face it. And we have to stop assigning blame to those — from the 17th century and onward — who were part of this original sin. An example (ignoring Washington for the moment): In retrospect, in our 21st century “wisdom,” we should now remove the Jefferson Memorial because Jefferson — author of the Declaration of Independence, a genius, a thinker and inventor, and a high water mark in the group of Founders who put their very lives on the line to break from Britain — was a slaveholder in 1776?
I am very concerned about this. Re-writing, erasing our history will not fix the problem. Erasing people from our history will not fix the problem. When I was a kid we lived next door to a USSR diplomat, who was our friend; he was highly placed — a general — and his wife and daughter were our friends as well. We knew them for about four years. Then he was suddenly sent back with one day’s notice to Russia. A few years later, when my mother was on some womens’ group tour of Russia, she asked about him, said they had been neighbors and friends, and would love to see him. Several days later, her tour guide told her that she must be mistaken about his name: there never was a general by that name, and none who served in the diplomatic corps. So clearly and horrifyingly for us, our old Russian friend had made it to the Gulag. He was erased. But not for my family. They were our neighbors, for God’s sake…
What’s going on here is a new American version of the Gulag: the ones that are dead are simply erased; the ones that are not are hounded with false accusations and media hatred.
It is not enough — will never be — to simply apologize for our sin of slavery, and the concomitant bias and prejudice that followed. But pretending that it’s my and recent generations’ fault is not the answer either. Right now, I see this all as only an opportunity to create chaos: no one really wants to engage and try to heal wounds.
Trump’s speech was a unifying one. And I am not a Trump fan. I don’t know who wrote it, but it was exactly right for a President of the United States. For Trump-bashers to somehow find a way to make it racist and divisive does not serve the country, their ’cause,’ or their own integrity.
Just don’t know what’s next, and frankly, I am afraid.
You should be afraid. Right now President Trump and the GOP in power wherever they may be are the only thing between freedom and a bullying tyranny of the left in this country. Oh, they won’t send you to the gulag, yet, but they will trump up charges to send you to prison, and they will not hesitate to take your employment and your employability. They will not hesitate to force you to say things their way, not yours. They will not hesitate to say you honor our people, not yours, and they will not hesitate to say not only can you not celebrate your way, but you can’t decline to celebrate theirs. Not a future I want.
Meanwhile, CNN’s very own Chris Cillizza deconstructs the President’s speech as only a CNN employee can:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/04/politics/donald-trump-mount-rushmore-south-dakota-speech-lines/index.html
Blech!