Donald Trump repeats promise to defeat ‘radical left’ in July Fourth speech

US President Donald Trump on Saturday vowed to defeat the “radical left” in an Independence Day speech at the White House, condemning recent efforts to remove or rethink monuments to historical figures as attempts to destroy the United States.

Trump claimed without evidence that 99 percent of coronavirus cases in the United States were “totally harmless.” In fact, many US states marked a record number of new COVID-19 cases. In Texas alone, 7,890 patients were hospitalized after 238 new admissions over the past 24 hours.

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While criticism mounted over his handling of the pandemic, Trump said China must be “held accountable” for failing to contain the disease.

US President Donald Trump thrusts his fist as he arrives on the White House South Lawn to host a 4th of July 2020 Salute to America to celebrate the US Independence Day holiday at the White House in Washington, US. (Reuters)

Peaceful protesters called for racial equality just steps from where Trump spoke in Washington, D.C., marching down blocked-off streets around the White House, Black Lives Matter Plaza and the Lincoln Memorial.

Millions of Americans have been demonstrating against police brutality and racial inequality since the May killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. In addition to achieving police reforms in some cities, some protesters have removed Confederate statues and other symbols of America’s legacy of slavery.

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“There have always been those who seek to lie about the past in order to gain power in the present, those that are lying about our history, those who want us to be ashamed of who we are,” Trump said on Saturday. “Their goal is demolition.”

Trump’s Fourth of July remarks doubled down on a Friday night speech at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota where he accused “angry mobs” of trying to erase history and used the speech to paint himself as a bulwark against left-wing extremism.

Joe Biden, Trump’s Democratic rival in the November election, wrote a Fourth of July op-ed piece that struck a contrasting note with the Republican president and accused him of finding every day “new ways to tarnish and dismantle our democracy.”