The United States marked an unusually bleak Independence Day, with President Donald Trump attacking national opponents and China, but praising the country’s coronavirus response, despite a record increase in cases.
Instead of adopting a unifying tone, Trump, faced with harsh reelection and eager to mobilize his political base, criticized protesters demanding racial justice after a white police officer killed the unarmed African American George Floyd.
“We are now in the process of defeating the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators and the looters,” Trump said during a White House event on Saturday.
Some of the sharpest words from the American leader were to the media, whom he accused of a campaign to calm opponents as racist.
“The more you lie, the more slanders, the more you try to demean and divide, the more we will work hard to tell the truth and win,” Trump said, with four months to go before the election.
Across the country, virus fears dampened or canceled Main Street parades, backyard barbecues, and family gatherings on a day as Americans celebrate their declaration of independence from Britain in 1776.
Trump’s challenger in November, Democrat Joe Biden, cast a very different tone, tweeting: “Our nation was founded on a simple idea: we are all created equal. We have never lived up to it, but we have never stopped trying. This Independence Day, not only do we celebrate those words, we pledge to finally keep them. “
Trump’s divisive speech came when popular beaches on both coasts, normally packed on July 4, closed as California and Florida experience alarming waves of COVID-19 infections.
The death toll from viruses in the United States is rapidly approaching 130,000, about a quarter of the world total.
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