President Trump’s Mt. Rushmore Speech & the Left’s Unhinged Response

Written by Laurie Higgins

The juvenile, unhinged, and dishonest responses to President Trump’s magnificent Mt. Rushmore speech on July 3, 2020 reveal exactly what patriots are up against.

President Trump began his speech by reminding all who call America home of the reason for the existence of the monument at Mt. Rushmore, the reason why America is unique among nations, and the reason so many still want to call America home:

Our founders launched not only a revolution in government, but a revolution in the pursuit of justice, equality, liberty, and prosperity. No nation has done more to advance the human condition than the United States of America and no people have done more to promote human progress than the citizens of our great nation. It was all made possible by the courage of 56 patriots who gathered in Philadelphia 244 years ago and signed the Declaration of Independence. They enshrined a divine truth that changed the world forever when they said, “All men are created equal.” These immortal words set in motion the unstoppable march of freedom. Our founders boldly declared that we are all endowed with the same divine rights, given us by our Creator in Heaven, and that which God has given us, we will allow no one ever to take away.

Then Trump expressed critical truths about the divisive forces that have burrowed into our institutions and generated virulent hatred of America that boiled over in the past two months, destroying lives, property, public order, and freedom. The time is long overdue for public leaders to confront the forces that seek to divide rather than unite the country—forces that taxpayers subsidize in government schools.

The truths President Trump addressed are truths that no other Republican against whom he ran in the primary four years ago would have addressed. He warned Americans of the threat America faces from within. He identified the specific nature of that threat. And he identified who poses that threat:

[A]s we meet here tonight, there is a growing danger that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought so hard for. … Our nation is witnessing a 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. …

One of their political weapons is cancel culture, driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and to our values and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America.

This attack on our liberty … must be stopped. …  We will expose this dangerous movement, protect our nation’s children from this radical assault, and preserve our beloved American way of life. In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, 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.

Make no mistake. This left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution. In so doing they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress. To make this possible, they are determined to tear down every statue, symbol, and memory of our national heritage.

The violent mayhem we have seen in the streets and cities that are run by liberal Democrats in every case is the predictable result of years of extreme indoctrination and bias in education, journalism, and other cultural institutions. Against every law of society and nature, our children are taught in school to hate their own country and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes but were villains. The radical view of American history is a web of lies, all perspective is removed, every virtue is obscured, every motive is twisted, every fact is distorted and every flaw is magnified until the history is purged and the record is disfigured beyond all recognition. This movement is openly attacking the legacies of every person on Mount Rushmore. …

The radical ideology attacking our country advances under the banner of social justice, but in truth, it would demolish both justice and society. It would transform justice into an instrument of division and vengeance and it would turn our free and inclusive society into a place of a repression, domination, and exclusion.

Trump concluded by offering a vision of America that defies the dystopian socialist nightmare leftists will create if given the chance:

We declare that the United States of America is the most just and exceptional nation ever to exist on earth. We are proud of the fact that our country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles and we understand that these values have dramatically advanced the cause of peace and justice throughout the world. We know that the American family is the bedrock of American life. We recognize the solemn right and moral duty of every nation to secure its borders and we are building the wall. We remember that governments exist to protect the safety and happiness of their own people. A nation must care for its own citizens first. … We believe in equal opportunity, equal justice, and equal treatment for citizens of every race, background, religion and creed. Every child of every color, born and unborn, is made in the holy image of God.

We want free and open debate, not speech codes and cancel culture. We embrace tolerance, not prejudice. We support the courageous men and women of law enforcement. We will never abolish our police or our great Second Amendment which gives us the right to keep and bear arms. We believe that our children should be taught to love their country, honor their history, and respect our great American flag. We stand tall, we stand proud, and we only kneel to Almighty God.

In response, CNN’s Brian Stelter made this mind-boggling statement:

When the president says … “schools are teaching kids to hate their own country,” that makes no sense unless  you’re plugged into the Hannity universe. It was in such contrast to what is the biggest cultural event—entertainment event—of this weekend. What’s the biggest moment this weekend? The release of Hamilton on Disney Plus. … I think it’s such an interesting contrast that at the same time the president is at Mt. Rushmore delivering a speech for Fox about trying to protect statues, you actually have millions of people likely streaming this extraordinary Broadway play

If it’s not eye-popping enough that a news pundit thought President Trump’s speech was about statues, surely it pops the eyes of even some leftists that Stelter believes a musical premiering on a leftwing children’s streaming service is more significant than the president’s watershed speech.

CNN editor-at-large Chris Cillizza offered what CNN identifies as “analysis” of Trump’s true statement about public education:

I took a peek at my kids’ curriculum just to double check this so I can now officially say there is nothing in there about hating America.

Lol. I’m pretty sure that a “peek” at the curricula of two little boys yet in elementary school provides no counterevidence to Trump’s claim about government school indoctrination. Cillizza is even dumber than he sounds if he thinks curricula foment hatred explicitly.

What leftist-infused curricula do is present an imbalanced view of American history, emphasizing past leaders’ flaws and government failures while giving short shrift to the exceptional achievements of exceptional leaders that have made America the greatest nation in the history of the world, and the place emigrants long to make their home. After 8-10 years of such selectively curated curricula, children graduate from high school with a well-developed animus for America.

New York Times reporter Annie Karni characterized President Trump’s speech as “dark and divisive,” claiming that President Trump  “cast” his campaign for “a second term as a battle against a ‘new far-left fascism’ seeking to wipe out the nation’s values and history.” Hey, if the jackboot fits.

Karni continued her futile but valiant rhetorical effort to mask the chaos, oppression, and destruction caused by tyrannical leftists:

With the coronavirus pandemic raging and his campaign faltering in the polls, his appearance amounted to a fiery reboot of his re-election effort, using the holiday and an official presidential address 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.

Word to Karni: There is, indeed, a full-on culture war, but it wasn’t mounted by the president. It was mounted by leftists in the late 1960s who burrowed deep into institutions like a parasitic Guinea worm and are emerging through America’s sinews causing enormous human suffering.

And the version of the left that President Trump portrayed is not a man made of straw. The version of the left Trump describes and against which millions of Americans daily battle is real, made of flesh, blood, and malignant ideas. It’s tyrannical. It seeks to circumscribe religious liberty and speech rights. It has destroyed marriage and family. It has robbed citizens of a sense of agency in their own lives.  It censors resources in public schools. It fires people for expressing ideas that leftists define as “hateful.” It destroys public property and seeks to abolish the police. It has turned blacks and whites against each other.

Political analyst Amy Walter tweeted:

Listening to Trump speech right now about the “cancel culture”. This is a president trapped in 2016. It is no longer 2016.

What is Walter talking about? Surely, she doesn’t believe cancel culture ended in 2016. Surely she knows that Americans have had their jobs canceled for tweeting “all lives matter” or tweeting about a Princeton University professor’s research on protests. Surely she knows that the New York Times canceled the job of editorial page editor James Bennet because he published and op-ed by U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR). And surely she knows that Oklahoma State University football coach Mike Gundy has had his salary docked a million dollars for wearing a t-shirt from a conservative news outlet when on vacation.

Walter is right, though, it’s no longer 2016. It’s 2020, and finally a president has the spine to take on the cancel culture, government school propagandists, and the faux-social justice movement that seeks to divide and conquer.

Parents, as you think about where and how to educate your children, please know that if you place them in public schools, your children will have teachers who think and feel just like Brian Stelter, Chris Cillizza, Annie Karni, and Amy Walter.

Not only will they have propagandist/agitators who identify as teachers and who think and feel just like CNN/MSNBC talking heads, but those propagandists will also bring their animus toward America into the classroom. To make matters worse, the few conservative teachers who hold dissenting views are too cowardly to “speak truth to power.”

I will repeat an anecdote I’ve told before: When I worked at Deerfield High School on Chicago’s North Shore, I once helped a student with her paper for American Studies. Her paper was startlingly critical of America. She told me that by the end of first semester in American Studies she “hated America and hated being an American.” That happened over 12 years ago, and the same course is being taught by the same two men. Imagine the damage done by just these two propagandists in this one school; now imagine this happening in countless schools by countless propagandists across the country over decades.

While leftist teachers pay public lip service to the idea of respect for ideological diversity, the resources they choose and the comments they make in the classroom where only their captive audiences hear them expose their true mission: making leftist disciples out of other people’s children on the public dime. Recent events show they’re doing a bang-up job.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

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