Donald Trump’s head-on attack on the self-loathing left
In a powerful speech at Mount Rushmore standing up for the best of what America believes in, Donald Trump defined the terms of the coming November election, writes Miranda Devine.
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Whatever you think of Donald Trump, if you’re honest you’ll admit he is not to blame for the culture wars currently engulfing America in the shadow of November’s election.
It is the Democratic Party proxies, the Marxist Black Lives Matter movement and its Antifa allies, who are fomenting violence and mayhem on the streets.
Their “Defund the Police” attacks during the past six weeks have proved so successful in upending law and order that violent crime now is surging in once-safe cities like New York, with the primary victims being black kids.
Amplifying the revolutionary chaos, “peaceful protesters” have desecrated and toppled statues of America’s greatest heroes.
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What began as a campaign to tear down Confederate statues has morphed into a Year Zero bid to erase history and defame America as irredeemably racist.
Other figureheads now declared enemies of the people include America’s founding president George Washington, who won the War of Independence against the British; Thomas Jefferson, its third president, who wrote the Declaration of Independence; Abraham Lincoln and his general Ulysses Grant, who won the Civil War to end slavery at a cost of 620,000 American lives. No other country has been so noble.
The attacks have become so unhinged that, this week, a statue of slavery abolitionist Frederick Douglass was ripped from its base in New York.
Yet Trump opponents claim the unrest is all President Trump’s fault for being “divisive”.
No, the ugly divisions in the country today spring from the fact that they refused to accept the outcome of the 2016 election and have been staging a tantrum ever since. So deranged is their Trump hatred that they are willing to destroy America rather than see him win again.
To that end, they are aided and abetted by much of the formerly respectable establishment media, which has thrown aside any pretence of objectivity or balance this election season.
As an antidote to the viciousness, on Independence Day eve, Friday, President Trump made the case for American unity in a brilliantly patriotic speech delivered at the landmark Mount Rushmore monument in South Dakota.
The speech serves as a circuit breaker for his slump in the polls and laid the groundwork for a winning campaign pitch to restore national optimism.
It drew the defining line between Trump and Joe Biden, who is ahead in the polls despite being trapped in his basement during the pandemic.
Standing in front of Mount Rushmore’s gigantic granite carvings of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt, Trump spoke of building up the country, not tearing it down.
Of course, his media antagonists fell over themselves to find fault and misrepresent his words.
But for anyone who bothered to examine the speech, the dishonesty of their criticism is apparent.
It was a declaration of love for the nation, warts and all, a reaffirmation of the noble ideals on which it was founded, and a vote of confidence in “American greatness”.
Trump paid homage to America’s foundational document, the Declaration of Independence, signed in 1776, which “enshrined a divine truth that … ‘all men are created equal’. These immortal words set in motion the unstoppable march of freedom”.
He even dared to say America was “founded on Judeo-Christian principles” with the family “the bedrock of American life”, where “every child, of every colour — born and unborn — is made in the holy image of God.”
About one quarter of the speech was a criticism of the “merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children…
“Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities,” he said.
“Many of these people have no idea why they are doing this, but some know exactly what they are doing.
“They think the American people are weak and soft and submissive. But no, the American people are strong and proud, and they will not allow our country, and all its values, history, and culture, to be taken from them.
“This left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution.”
In his forthright way, he fingered a “new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language … recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished.
“It’s not going to happen to us.”
Trump slammed “Cancel Culture (which is) driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism”.
To push back against the vandalism, Trump announced an executive order establishing a “vast outdoor park” of new statues, “The National Garden of American heroes”.
Included in the executive order were education programs “about the founding documents and founding ideals” to counter anti-American teaching in schools.
“We will raise the next generation of American patriots,” he said.
“We believe that our children should be taught to love their country, honour their history, and respect our great American flag. We stand tall, we stand proud, and we only kneel to Almighty God.”
All this, of course, was kryptonite to the wokesters of establishment media.
The New York Times damned the speech as “dark and divisive”, as if standing against “cancel culture” and America bashing will split the country.
The Times also reminded readers Trump voters are racist, sexist and stupid, and think “reality TV is real”.
The Washington Post sneered at Mount Rushmore as “nationalist kitsch” and slammed a “dystopian” speech that “exploits social divisions” and seeks to “amplify racism”.
CNN reviled the landmark setting as a “monument of two slave owners”.
Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth falsely told CNN that Trump “spent all his time talking about dead traitors”.
And in a tweet it soon deleted, the Democratic National Committee earlier predicted the speech to be “a rally glorifying white supremacy”.
But this manufactured reality does not mean voters don’t know what is going on.
The President’s adversaries want to portray a parallel-universe America of peaceful protests, not the bloodshed and mayhem, bigotry and intimidation of law-abiding Americans by the bullies they enable.
They indulge in the same folly they fell into in 2016. Carried away with their moral superiority, they didn’t notice Trump was talking over their heads to an America that believes in itself, and whose resolve hardens with every blow.
Miranda Devine is in New York for 18 months to cover current affairs for The Daily Telegraph