"What Trump Said at Mount Rushmore Should Worry Every American!" — Bill Clinton

[0:00] You know, there are certain moments in the life of a country where what's said matters less [0:05] than where it's said and why. Last night, on the eve of America's 250th birthday, [0:16] President Trump stood beneath the granite faces of four presidents at Mount Rushmore [0:21] and delivered a speech that, on its surface, was supposed to celebrate our founding. [0:28] And parts of it did. But if you listen carefully, really carefully, what you heard wasn't just a [0:38] celebration. It was something else entirely. And I want to walk through it with you tonight, [0:46] because I think what happened at that mountain deserves more than a headline. It deserves a [0:52] conversation. Now, let me start by giving credit where it's due. The setting was extraordinary. [0:59] Mount Rushmore is one of the most powerful symbols of American democracy on the planet. [1:06] Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt carved into the Black Hills of South Dakota as a reminder [1:15] that our republic was built by imperfect people who did extraordinary things. And the idea of [1:23] gathering there on the eve of our 250th anniversary, that's a beautiful idea. That's the kind of event [1:32] that should unite us. The fireworks were spectacular. The Air Force flyover, the military bans. All of [1:43] that speaks to something real about American pride. And when President Trump said the United States is [1:51] the most exceptional nation ever to exist, well, I happen to agree with that sentiment. I've spent my [2:00] whole life believing in American exceptionalism, not because we're perfect, but because we've always had [2:09] the capacity to get better. So I want to be clear. This is not about rejecting patriotism. This is about [2:17] asking a harder question. What kind of patriotism are we being offered? Let me tell you something. When I [2:27] stood at that same podium as president, or when I walked through the halls of the White House, trying to [2:34] figure out how to bring Republicans and Democrats together on a budget deal or a peace agreement, [2:40] one thing I learned is that the words a president chooses at a national monument are never just words. [2:50] They carry the weight of that place. They echo. They become part of the historical record. And what [3:00] President Trump chose to do with that moment, at that mountain, on that night, was not simply to honor [3:10] the founding. He used it to launch a political argument. He declared communism the greatest threat [3:20] America has ever faced. Greater than World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or September 11th. Now, I want you to sit [3:31] with that for a second. Greater than Pearl Harbor, greater than 9-11. The Blue Bill actually traced [3:39] the specific political sequence that led to this rhetorical escalation, connecting the Faith and Freedom [3:48] Coalition speech, the primary results, and this address into a pattern that I think most coverage has [3:57] treated as separate events. And that matters. Because when you see the pattern, you understand [4:04] this wasn't spontaneous. This was a strategy. Now, look, I understand why some Americans are worried [4:13] about the direction of the Democratic Party. A handful of Democratic Socialist candidates have won primaries [4:21] in New York and Colorado. That's real. That happened. And in a healthy democracy, it's completely legitimate for the [4:30] opposing party to draw contrasts. If Republicans want to argue that expanding government programs [4:37] will hurt economic growth, make that argument. If they want to debate the size of the social safety net, [4:44] the tax implications, the trade-offs, I welcome that. I spent eight years in the White House, [4:53] balancing budgets, and negotiating exactly those trade-offs. That's democracy. But here's where things [5:01] start to get complicated. What President Trump did was not draw a policy contrast. He conflated Democratic [5:10] Socialism, which operates entirely within the framework of elections and constitutional institutions, [5:17] with communism. And he didn't just blur the line. He erased it. He called the Democratic Party the [5:25] Communist Party. He said they're made up of illegal immigrants, criminals, and everybody that doesn't want to work. [5:34] Now, I've been in politics a long time. I've been called a lot of things. But when a sitting president stands [5:43] beneath the faces of Washington and Lincoln and tells the country that the opposing party is the enemy of the Constitution itself, [5:53] that's not campaigning. That's something different. That's defining tens of millions of your fellow citizens [6:03] as enemies of the Republic. And we should all be concerned about where that leads. [6:10] Here's the honest truth. I've studied the history of moments like this. When political leaders began defining domestic opposition [6:19] as an existential threat to the nation, history tells us what follows. It starts with language. It escalates to exclusion. [6:32] Eventually, it becomes justification for restricting the rights of the people you've defined as the enemy. [6:40] That's not speculation. That's the documented pattern of democratic backsliding in countries all over the world. [6:50] And what makes this moment particularly dangerous is the specific mechanism President Trump tied to it. [7:00] He didn't just warn about communism. He then pivoted in the same speech at the same mountain [7:09] to calling for the elimination of the Senate filibuster and the passage of the Save America Act. [7:18] He said, and I quote this carefully because the words matter. If we terminate the filibuster and immediately vote for the Save America Act, [7:29] then we will not lose an election for 100 years. Now, the Save America Act requires proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo identification at the polls. [7:43] Whatever you think about voter ID in principle. When a president says a single piece of legislation will guarantee his party wins for a century. [7:55] That's not election security. That's election engineering. And the filibuster exists precisely to prevent one party from ramming through laws that reshape the democratic playing field without any minority input. [8:13] I know this because I governed with a filibuster in place. Every president has. It forces compromise. It forces you to listen to the other side. [8:26] And when someone wants to eliminate it specifically so they can pass a bill they say will lock in power for 100 years. [8:36] Well, you don't need to be a constitutional scholar to see the problem with that. [8:41] And let me tell you what worries me even more than the speech itself. It's the backdrop. It's the staging. [8:50] Hours before he spoke, President Trump posted a video on social media showing a golden version of Mount Rushmore with his own face carved into the granite next to Abraham Lincoln. [9:09] The White House spokesperson said there would be no better addition to the iconic Mount Rushmore than the 45th and 47th president. [9:22] A member of Congress, Representative Anna Paulina Luna, has introduced actual legislation, House Resolution 792, directing the National Park Service to carve Trump's likeness onto the monument. [9:41] Now, the sculptor who built Mount Rushmore, Gutzon Borglum, wrote back in 1936 that the stone has serious limitations and a fifth head is not structurally possible. [10:01] Interior Secretary Burgum contradicted that, saying there's certainly room. [10:08] But whether or not it's physically possible isn't really the point. [10:14] The point is what it represents. [10:19] In a healthy republic, no living leader campaigns for their own monument. [10:24] The men on that mountain didn't ask to be there. [10:28] They were placed there by future generations who looked back and recognized their contributions after the passions of their time had cooled. [10:38] The impulse to put yourself on a monument while you're still in office? [10:44] That's not confidence. [10:47] That's not patriotism. [10:48] That's a warning sign. [10:50] The Blue Bill documented the full timeline of how this push evolved. [10:56] From the 2018 Oval Office conversation with Governor Noem, through the AI-generated images, and the Luna legislation. [11:06] And seeing it laid out that way, it becomes clear this has moved well beyond a joke. [11:13] There's another dimension here that I think deserves our attention. [11:17] President Trump spoke about American culture. [11:21] He said there's been an undeniable attempt to change this exceptional character. [11:29] To beat the American spirit out of us. [11:33] Alienate us from our history. [11:35] And then he said, [11:36] You can be loyal to Karl Marx, or you can be loyal to America. [11:42] You can be a communist, or you can be a patriot. [11:47] You cannot be both. [11:50] We've got to remember something here. [11:52] The genius of America has never been ideological conformity. [11:58] It's been ideological argument. [12:02] The founders themselves disagreed violently about the shape of the Republic. [12:07] Jefferson and Hamilton could barely stand to be in the same room. [12:11] Lincoln was called a tyrant and a dictator by half the country while he was saving it. [12:18] The idea that there is one correct way to be an American. [12:23] And that anyone who dissents from that definition is a communist. [12:29] That's not a founding principle. [12:31] That's a loyalty test. [12:33] And loyalty tests are what authoritarian governments use. [12:36] Democracies use elections. [12:39] Meanwhile, here on the same day, Mayor Mamdani of New York gave his own 250th anniversary speech. [12:48] Surrounded by newly naturalized citizens. [12:52] And argued that patriotism has never been about pretending our nation is without flaws. [12:59] Now, I don't agree with everything Mayor Mamdani said. [13:03] And I think some of his rhetoric about ICE and oligarchs went further than I would go. [13:11] But here's what struck me. [13:12] We had two visions of America presented on the same night. [13:18] One that says, love it exactly as I define it. [13:22] And one that says, love it enough to keep fighting for it to get better. [13:28] When I was president, I believed in both of those things simultaneously. [13:35] You can love your country and still believe it has work to do. [13:41] That's not communism. That's citizenship. [13:45] Let me tell you what I think happens next. [13:48] President Trump has now road tested this communist menace framework at the Faith and Freedom Coalition. [13:57] On social media. [14:00] And now at Mount Rushmore. [14:02] On the most symbolic night of America's 250th year. [14:08] This is the midterm message. [14:10] The blue bill noted that four progressive candidates, including three backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, won primaries in New York and Colorado within the last two weeks. [14:24] That gives the strategy a factual anchor. [14:27] But here's the thing about anchors. [14:30] They can also drag you to the bottom. [14:33] What Trump is betting on is that the word communist still carries enough emotional weight with enough voters, particularly older voters who live through the Cold War to override any policy discussion. [14:50] He's betting that fear is a stronger motivator than argument. [14:54] And historically, sometimes it is. [14:58] But here's what I think the risk is for both parties and for the country. [15:03] If the Republican strategy for the midterms is to label every Democrat a communist, then there is no space left for governing. [15:15] You can't negotiate with someone you've declared an enemy of the Constitution. [15:20] You can't pass bipartisan infrastructure or health care legislation with someone you've said wants to destroy America. [15:30] The language forecloses the cooperation. [15:34] And that means regardless of who wins in November, the country loses. [15:40] Because the work of democracy happens in the space between elections, in the negotiations, in the compromise, in the hard and unglamorous business of actually governing. [15:55] I want to close with something I've been thinking about since last night. [15:59] Mount Rushmore sits in the Black Hills of South Dakota, land that the United States government illegally seized from the Sioux Nation in 1877 in violation of the Fort Laramie Treaty. [16:14] The Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that the taking was illegal and awarded compensation. [16:23] The Sioux refused the money. [16:25] They want the land back. [16:27] Now, President Trump stood on that ground and warned about people who, quote, [16:35] tell our children that we live on stolen land and called them peddlers of Marxist lies. [16:43] But the Supreme Court of the United States, not Karl Marx, is the one that said the land was taken illegally. [16:51] That's not a radical position. [16:53] That's a legal finding by the highest court in our country. [16:59] And when a president dismisses the rulings of his own Supreme Court as Marxist propaganda while standing on the very ground in question, that should give every American pause. [17:14] Not because loving your country is wrong. [17:18] Loving your country is essential. [17:20] But because loving your country means loving the institutions that hold it together. [17:26] The courts, the Congress, the Constitution, the democratic process itself. [17:34] And when those institutions become inconvenient, when they issue rulings or produce election results that you don't like, the measure of a leader is whether they respect those institutions anyway. [17:51] That's what Washington did when he stepped down after two terms. [17:56] That's what Lincoln did when he preserved the Union under the rule of law. [18:03] That's what Roosevelt did when he used government to lift people out of poverty without destroying the system that made it possible. [18:14] Those are the men on that mountain. [18:18] And the question we should all be asking ourselves, every American, regardless of party, it's whether what we heard last night lives up to what they built. [18:30] I don't think it does. [18:33] But I still believe we can. [18:36] That's the difference between giving up on America and fighting for it. [18:42] And I choose to fight. [18:46] Happy Fourth of July.