Trump launches US’s 250th birthday celebrations with partisan attack

In speech at Mount Rushmore, US president claims resurgent ‘communist menace’ poses threat to country Donald Trump has kicked off the US’s 250th birthday weekend with an extraordinary partisan attack on the “communist menace” in the US, framing its supporters as “the enemy of July 4th 1776”. The US president spoke for half an hour on Friday night at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, the latest stop on his tour celebrating the milestone anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence from Britain. Greeted by chants of “USA! USA!” and briefly interrupted by a flyover of F-16 jets, Trump praised the four presidents whose faces are carved into the granite mountain: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. “They were men of action, men of ambition, men of daring, men of destiny and men of truly great intelligence,” said Trump, who has never ruled out the idea of his own face being added to Mount Rushmore. “Above all, they were the great men of history.” The president asserted that US exceptionalism is rooted not only in its constitution, but its distinctive culture and identity. He condemned recent attempts to “beat the Ame