President Trump started his administration with a dystopian inaugural speech on Jan. 20, 2017, in which he talked about “American carnage” and said the country has “an education system flush with cash but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge.”
This year, in his Fourth of July speech at Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota on Friday, he changed that narrative: Now, in his view, schools are teaching kids to “hate our country” with a “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,” he said.
Trump blamed public schools for the popular uprisings across the country that have led to the removal of statues honoring leaders of the Confederacy and other historical figures who owned slaves, such as George Washington.
“Against every law of society and nature, our children are taught in school to hate their own country and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes but that were villains,” he said. “The radical view of American history is a web of lies, all perspective is removed, every virtue is obscured, every motive is twisted, every fact is distorted and every flaw is magnified until the history is purged and the record is disfigured beyond all recognition.”
