Media Outlets Describe Trump’s Rushmore Speech As ‘Dark’ And ‘Divisive’

After President Donald Trump delivered a forceful defense of American principles and ideals at Mount Rushmore ahead of the Fourth of July weekend, mainstream media outlets have characterized the president’s speech as divisive.

Under the headline “At Mount Rushmore, Trump Digs Deeper Into Nation’s Divisions,” the Associated Press reports that the president “dug deeper into America’s divisions by accusing protesters who have pushed for racial justice of engaging in a ‘merciless campaign to wipe out our history.’”

The president, in remarks Friday night at the South Dakota landmark, offered a discordant tone to an electorate battered by a pandemic and seared by the recent high-profile killings of Black people. He zeroed in on the desecration by some demonstrators of monuments and statues across the country that honor those who have benefited from slavery, including some past presidents.

As The Daily Wire has previously reported, far-left activists have been targeting statues of the nation’s founders and American heroes, including President George Washington, President Abraham Lincoln, and President Ulysses S. Grant, the former Union general who played a key role in helping Lincoln win the Civil War.

Covering the Mount Rushmore speech in a purportedly straight news story, The New York Times published the headline “Trump Uses Mount Rushmore Speech to Deliver Divisive Culture War Message,” and accused Trump of turning his Fourth of July address into an effort to “mount a full-on culture war against a straw-man version of the left that he portrayed as inciting mayhem and moving the country toward totalitarianism.”

The Washington Post described the president’s speech as “dark,” and accused him of trying to “exploit the nation’s racial and social divisions.”

At the foot of Mount Rushmore’s granite monument to his presidential forebears, President Trump on Friday delivered a dark speech ahead of Independence Day in which he sought to exploit the nation’s racial and social divisions and rally supporters around a law-and-order message that has become a cornerstone of his reelection campaign.

Trump focused most of his address before a crowd of several thousand in South Dakota on what he described as a grave threat to the nation from liberals and angry mobs — a “left-wing cultural revolution” that aims to rewrite U.S. history and erase its heritage amid the racial justice protests that have roiled cities for weeks.

As The Daily Wire previously reported, Trump’s speech featured, in part, an unapologetic defense of the presidents carved into Mount Rushmore, describing them as “American giants” whose “deeds unleashed the greatest leap in human advancement the world has ever known.”

Trump also called on Americans to defend America from those who seek to destroy the country’s values, describing it as time “to speak up loudly and strongly and powerfully, and defend the integrity of our country.”

We will never let them rip America’s heroes from our monuments, or from our hearts. By tearing down Washington and Jefferson, these radicals would tear down the very heritage for which men gave their lives to win the Civil War; they would erase the memory that inspired those soldiers to go to their deaths, singing these words of the Battle Hymn of the Republic: “As He died to make men Holy, let us die to make men free, while God is marching on.”

They would tear down the principles that propelled the abolition of slavery in America and, ultimately, around the world, ending an evil institution that had plagued humanity for thousands and thousands of years. Our opponents would tear apart the very documents that Martin Luther King used to express his dream, and the ideas that were the foundation of the righteous movement for Civil Rights. They would tear down the beliefs, culture, and identity that have made America the most vibrant and tolerant society in the history of the Earth.

My fellow Americans, it is time to speak up loudly and strongly and powerfully, and defend the integrity of our country…

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 protect the greatest of this nation, for citizens of every race, in every city, and 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.

Toward the end of the speech, the president unveiled an executive order to start a National Garden to American heroes.

According to a White House press release, the garden may feature people such as “the Founding Fathers, those who fought for the abolition of slavery or participated in the underground railroad, heroes of the United States Armed Forces, recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor or Presidential Medal of Freedom, scientists and inventors, entrepreneurs, civil rights leaders, missionaries and religious leaders, pioneers and explorers, police officers and firefighters killed or injured in the line of duty, labor leaders, advocates for the poor and disadvantaged, opponents of national socialism or international socialism, former Presidents of the United States and other elected officials, judges and justices, astronauts, authors, intellectuals, artists, and teachers. None will have lived perfect lives, but all will be worth honoring, remembering, and studying.”