Historian dismisses Trump Independence Day rhetoric as 'Red Scare idiocy'

Bennito L. Kelty
July 4, 2026

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U.S. President Donald Trump delivers a speech during a celebration for the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence, at Mount Rushmore in Keystone, South Dakota, U.S., July 3, 2026. REUTERS/Kylie Cooper REFILE - QUALITY REPEAT TPX IMAGES OF THE DA

A presidential historian slammed Trump's Independence Day speech as nothing more than "Joe McCarthy Red Scare idiocy."

During an appearance on MS NOW on Saturday, Doug Brinkley tore into the speech that Trump gave in front of Mount Rushmore to kick off the Independence Day weekend. In particular, Brinkley found it "deeply offensive" that Trump would spend time warning about communists because of recent primary victories by democratic socialists.

"It was just Joe McCarthy red scare idiocy because he's out there talking about this communist menace as if it's the early Cold War years," Brinkley went off. "It's just what he wants the Republicans to run on in this election cycle."

MS NOW anchor Alex Witt agreed, adding, "When the president says, 'America will never become a communist country,' I was thinking to myself, 'Well, who said it was going to anyway?'"

Brinkley compared Trump's speech to "McCarthy starting to have his list in Wheeling, West Virginia, waving it, that they are infiltrators all over." McCarthy famously tried to root out alleged communists during a period called the Red Scare.

Trump's speech was "utter nonsense," Brinkley continued, while admitting that "politicizing" is "natural in our days."

However, he optimistically viewed most Americans "watching on Main Street" as having the "spirit" of "a red, white and blue blast, and let's have a barbecue, let's see some family, see some friends, and then we'll get on to the bickering of politics during Monday or Tuesday."]

He also suggested, "I think our inclination for this weekend should be to try to transcend Donald Trump's rhetoric and just sort of block it out for 48 hours."

Trump’s assault on nation’s founding promise hands the left perfect opportunity: historian

Alexander Willis
July 4, 2026 
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A sticker depicting U.S. President Donald Trump, next to security barricades near the Washington Monument ahead of Fourth of July celebrations, marking the 250th anniversary of U.S. Independence, in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 4, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

Donald Trump's assault on the nation's founding democratic promise has handed the political left a perfect opportunity to reclaim its legacy, argued historian Harvey Kaye in an analysis published in Zeteo on Saturday.

Kaye, professor emeritus of democracy and justice studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, wrote that the nation is marking its 250th anniversary even as "Donald Trump and his minions" pursue their "reactionary ambitions" – a timing he called "nothing less than ironic, as if history were playing a cruel joke on us."

“Hardly the grounds for a grand celebration. And yet, the 250th comes at the perfect time for the Left,” Kaye wrote.

“Indeed, rather than dismiss or scorn the occasion as we may be wont to, we progressives, populists, and democratic socialists should step up and embrace it. For are we not also finally seeing the beginnings of a real democratic surge – a surge that might actually lead to taking back the Democratic Party from the neoliberals and billionaires?”

Kaye called on Americans to remember they are "heirs to the promise and project of the American Revolution," invoking Thomas Paine's declaration that "we have it in our power to begin the world over again."

Kaye pointed to past national crises – the Civil War and the Great Depression – as models for how Americans previously responded to authoritarian threats, writing that each generation made the country "radically freer, more equal, and more democratic than ever before."

“Reminding ourselves of all of that, and sensing the democratic possibilities that are emerging, let us toast the 250th with words from the man who first turned us into radicals,” Kaye wrote.

“Angered by misrepresentations of the American Revolution in a history published in 1782 by the famed French writer, Abbe Raynal, Paine replied, ‘It is yet too soon to write the history of the Revolution.’”