LONGTIME TRUMP CRITIC QUIN HILLYER: Trump’s Rushmore speech was monumentally splendid.
Despite so much media drivel about President Trump giving a “dystopian” or “dark and divisive” or out-and-out racist speech at Mount Rushmore, his Friday speech, as written, was the single finest of Trump’s presidency.
It featured realistic, entirely justified pushback against civilization’s despoilers. And it married that with an appropriate, much-needed celebration of the essential goodness of the United States and its history, along with plenty of unifying thoughts and proposals. . . .
First, let’s be clear on who is waging the “culture war” for which the media blames Trump. Trump did indeed blast the “cancel culture” that is “driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees” so that “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.”
Trump here is just speaking the truth. There has long been an established, deeply admirable civic culture in this nation; it is the radical left who now wages war against it. All over the country, people are being fired for the mere utterance of inconvenient or unwanted thoughts, even anodyne thoughts. People are being physically (and dangerously) hounded from public forums. And it is an utter assault on the rule of law itself to deface or destroy public art, as opposed to removing it through legitimate representative processes. To defend the civic culture against such assaults is not an affront, but a duty.
Moreover, as Trump said, it is a duty rooted not in suppression but in a commitment to continued expression of the values and virtues that have “rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress.”
Since when is a rejection of such destruction, married to concrete achievements and aspirational themes, somehow “dystopian?” Only an establishment media and corporate culture that are morally twisted, themselves committed to the destruction, could somehow treat a defense of decency as if it were an affront.
Well, to them it is, because they’re on the other side.
Related: Byron York: Distorting Trump’s Words. “That much news coverage is biased against President Trump goes without saying. But every now and then there comes an episode of bias so egregious that it deserves attention. The coverage of the President’s July 3 speech at Mount Rushmore is one of those episodes.”
Think of the press as a psychological warfare operation against normal Americans and you won’t go far wrong.
The full text of Trump’s speech is here. Read it and make up your own mind.