President Trump had two messages in his speech at Mount Rushmore on the eve of July 4. The first, expected, message was a traditional celebration of the nation's 250th anniversary. The second, less expected message was a warning about a "resurgence of the communist menace" in the United States.
"As we approach this magnificent anniversary, we see our American identity under a renewed attack, a generation after we fought and won the Cold War against the menace of communism," Trump said. "There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success. These are not mere political disagreements like differences over taxes or regulations. Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty."
Trump's move wasn't a complete surprise. After the June 23 Democratic primaries in New York -- the one in which Democratic Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani emerged as a kingmaker by backing far-left candidates who upset progressive Democratic House incumbents -- Trump quickly branded those far-left candidates as "communists," and not as socialists, as they styled themselves.
"As you saw with the communists elected in New York City recently -- they're communists, they're not social Democrats -- they want to completely destroy the traditional American way of life," Trump told the Faith & Freedom Conference in Washington, D.C., on June 26. The Democratic Party, Trump said, is "becoming a communist party. These are not social Democrats, these are hardcore, godless communists. They're godless communists. All communists are godless. They don't believe in God. This is the most serious threat to our country since its existence, in my opinion, 250 years ago."
By the next week, when Trump delivered the Mount Rushmore speech, more Democratic socialists had won Democratic Party primaries, one in Colorado, and one in Washington, D.C. What some non-socialist Democrats had hoped -- that the Democratic Socialists of America victories would remained localized in New York City -- instead spread across the country.
Now Trump is on record calling the whole DSA group communists. On one hand, it's remarkable that so far there really hasn't been much outrage and pushback from mainstream Democrats. On the other hand, why would they push back? Many view the DSA contingent as invaders who used the Democratic Party's structure to power their campaigns -- for the purpose of defeating incumbent Democrats. "If your movement is so strong, why does it keep needing the Democratic Party's ballot line, infrastructure, volunteers, donors, and voter file to win?" wrote former Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison on X. "Apparently your apparatus isn't strong enough to do it on its own. Fight to make the Democratic Party better. Push it. Challenge it. But don't use the Democratic Party as an Uber to get to office and then complain about the ride after you arrive."
Take Harrison as the voice of institutional Democrats. And then, if you're a Democrat, ask yourself what you should do when DSA members who have beaten incumbent Democrats come under attack from Trump. Do you defend them, insisting, "They're not communists!" Or do you suppress your anti-Trump reflex and let them fend for themselves while you try to convince voters that Mamdani, Avila Chevalier and others do not represent the mainstream of the party? Right now, there hasn't been a lot of noise from mainstream Democrats in defense of the DSA.
Another reason for the quiet is that, for some of the DSA winners, the communist label either fits or comes uncomfortably close. Mamdani, of course, has specifically denied being a communist. But he has spoken of the "warmth of collectivism" and "each according to their need, each according to their ability" -- his paraphrase of Karl Marx. Also, at a DSA conference in 2021, Mamdani discussed goals like canceling student debt, Medicare for all and "seizing the means of production." If you are talking about "seizing the means of production," then you should not be too surprised when people think you are a communist.
Avila Chevalier has refused to answer the communist question. But darned if she, too, didn't include "seize the means of production" on a sort of to-do list she tweeted in 2019. She is also fond of calling fellow leftists "comrade," and her social media biographical description once included the phrase "how communist of you."
So the record is pretty suggestive for Mamdani and Chevalier. But it's not that way for the other DSA candidates who won recently -- Claire Valdez, Melat Kiros, Janeese Lewis-George and others. On the other hand, all of them are members of the Democratic Socialists of America, and the word "socialist" has always been a key part of the vocabulary of communism, in the 20th century and today. So one could say that Trump's accusation is reasonably true for some of the DSA comrades who have defeated Democratic candidates and at least adjacent to the beliefs of some others. In other words, it's close enough for a political campaign.
That said, Trump is absolutely on the money about communism, the ideology that led to so much death, deprivation and destruction in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Communist China, Cuba and elsewhere. "Communism is a loser, and it always will be," Trump said in his July 4 speech, the day after he spoke at Mount Rushmore. "Communism is the enemy of free people everywhere, everywhere in the world. Never works."
This content originally appeared on the Washington Examiner at washingtonexaminer.com/daily-memo/4637949/trump-anti-communist-manifesto/.
Byron York is chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner. Email him at byork@washingtonexaminer.com. For a deeper dive into many of the topics Byron covers, listen to his podcast, The Byron York Show, available on the Ricochet Audio Network at ricochet.com/series/byron-york-show and everywhere else podcasts are found.
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