Trump Warns Communism Is ‘Mortal Threat’ to American Liberty at Mount Rushmore Address

By Nicole Weatherholtz | Saturday, 04 July 2026 12:01 AM EDT

President Donald Trump delivered a speech beneath the monument honoring Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln on the eve of the Fourth of July, warning that communism poses “a mortal threat to American liberty” and urging Americans to embrace the nation’s founding principles as the United States marked its 250th anniversary.

In his remarks, Trump declared, “Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. Communism is the enemy of free people everywhere. Everywhere in the world. It never works.” He stated that communist ideology is fundamentally incompatible with the nation’s founding values, calling it “the exact opposite of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Trump characterized communist systems as promoting “death, tyranny and the pursuit of evil,” noting they “killed 100 million people just in the last century alone.” He contrasted America’s heritage with Marxist ideology, saying: “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.”

The president also accused “radicals and extremists” of attempting to undermine the country’s history and identity by attacking its founding principles and national heroes. Trump added: “As for those who peddle Marxist lies about our heritage, tell our children that we live on stolen land, or that our heroes were oppressors, they’re doing something much worse than slandering our past. They are slandering and attacking our future.”

Trump praised the four presidents memorialized on Mount Rushmore, calling them “the men who declared the freedom, won our freedom, and saved our freedom and secured our freedom.” He described them as “men of action, men of ambition, men of daring, men of destiny and men of truly great intelligence.”

He emphasized that the nation’s future depends on preserving its culture and identity: “We must never forget there is no American freedom without American culture. And there is no American founding without the American people.”

The Mount Rushmore address kicked off the United States’ semiquincentennial celebration, with Trump scheduled to deliver another major speech at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Saturday night ahead of a fireworks display.

Trump closed his remarks by pledging that the United States would continue to reject communist ideology: “America will never be a communist country.”