Last July 3 Speech at Mount Rushmore
Got Trump Meltdown Under Way in 2020
Rob Reiner Gets Laugh on Trump as George Washington
in Larry David's New American History Show on HBO Max
Capitol Inside
July 4, 2026
Texas Republicans who are superstitious have new cause for concern about the 2026 midterm election as a result of President Donald Trump's return on Friday to Mount Rushmore exactly six years from the day his first re-election campaign went into a downward spiral there and never recovered.
Trump's unraveling in 2020 got under way on the eve of Independence Day at the foot of the monument in South Dakota in the darkest and most divisive speech that he'd delivered in more than three years as the president. Instead of using the Fourth of July as an opportunity to rally Americans around the flag, Trump painted a picture of a nation under siege by cancel-culture revolutionaries who hate their country and want to burn it down.
“Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children,” Trump told a packed crowd at Mount Rushmore on the night before July 4th in 2020. “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.”
The president barely gave lip service to the covid pandemic beyond the doling of praise to people in the audience who agreed that the health crisis was much ado of nothing and refused to wear masks at the speech as a symbol of their mutual defiance. After unveiling plans for a national park filled with statues of American heroes who he would select, Trump promised in his last Mount Rushmore speech that no historic monuments in the U.S. would ever be removed again on his watch.
Then - on the following day - protesters celebrated July 4 in Baltimore when they pulled down a giant statue of Christopher Columbus with ropes, broke it into pieces and tossed them into the Maryland city's Inner Harbor.
The rest is history that Trump still refuses to accept. Democrat Joe Biden beat Trump by almost 5 points with over 51 percent of the vote in the 2020 general election that the incumbent Republican to this day swears was stolen despite the lack of evidence to support the claim.
Trump carried Texas despite a collapse in major swing states that year. But Trump defeated Biden by less than 6 percentage points in Texas when there were no statewide races on the ballot that year. It would be Trump's lowest victory margin in the Lone Star State in three bids for the Oval Office.
Democrats picked up one Texas House seat in 2020 after both sides expected them to win more. But the low-hanging fruit had all but disappeared in the Texas Legislature's lower chamber after the Democrats flipped 12 House seats two years before in the midterm election of 2018. The Democrats won two Texas Senate seats and two congressional districts that the GOP tried without success to defend during the first Trump midterm election that year.
Trump has made it clear that he believes that he belongs on the monument in South Dakota that's featured the faces of four American presidents. Kristi Noem, who was the governor there in 2020, gave Trump a minature Mount Rushmore statue with his face carved into it as a gift on the day after he left the White House in 2021. Trump appointed Noem four years later to serve as the Homeland Security secretary in his cabinet after he reclaimed the White House in a comeback win in 2024. Noem was forced out of the post eventually amid several scandals including the production of a taxpayer-funded advertisement that featured her riding a horse with Mount Rushmore as the backdrop.
Back here in Texas, the Republicans will be hoping that Trump's Mount Rushmore speech the day before Amerca celebrates its 250th birthday on Saturday is not an omen like his visit there a half-dozen years back proved to be. Democrats have their best shot at a U.S. Senate seat in Texas in 38 years with James Talarico as their nominee in a monumental clash with Republican Ken Paxton, who's bounced from scandal to scandal during a long career in politics here.
Paxton has wrapped himself in Trump as much as a candidate possibly could despite the president's historically low approval ratings. After reserving the brunt of his wrath for immigrants who've entered the U.S. across the southern border, Trump has a new target in his sights based on his speech in Keystone last night.
"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," Trump said at Mount Rushmore on Friday. "You can be a communist, or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both.".
more to come ...
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