Axios captured some of the key quotes from President Donald Trump’s Independence Day speech at Mount Rushmore on Saturday and compared it to the monologues from Fox News host Tucker Carlson over the past week.
During the 2016 campaign, Trump’s team dealt with at least three cases of plagiarism, including the most egregious, the Republican National Convention speech given by Melania Trump, which quoted word-for-word first lady Michelle Obama’s speech. While the weekend speech wasn’t quite as bad as that, it certainly borrowed some themes from Carlson.
July 1, Carlson said. “For more than a month, mobs of violent crazy people have roamed this country, terrorizing citizens and destroying things. No one has stopped them from doing that, so they’ve continued and they’ve become stronger.”
It’s remarkably similar to Trump’s claim on Saturday, “Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our Founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.”
That same evening, Carlson said, “The education cartel, enforced on your children, enforces their demands.”
Trump similarly spoke to what he called “fascism” in American places.
“In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance,” Trump claimed, without giving any evidence or examples.
Fascism flies in the face of liberalism, as fascism is a far-right ideology that prizes authoritarian rule by a single dictator. The left is obviously not the far-right and promotes liberalism, which is about representative democracies.
On June 24, Carlson took problems with a naked slave and nearly Native American being depicted in a statue in New York to being all about former President Teddy Roosevelt.
“Few people ever could have imagined that Teddy Roosevelt would be canceled. Roosevelt was the most popular president in American history,” said Carlson, incorrectly explaining the problems with the statue. Roosevelt, who is the fourth most popular president in American history, likely will remain in the statue without the slave and the Native American.
Trump took Carlson’s idea and echoed his newfound appreciation for the first Roosevelt.
“One of their political weapons is ‘Cancel Culture,’” he began. “Theodore Roosevelt exemplified the unbridled confidence of our national culture and identity. … The American people will never relinquish the bold, beautiful, and untamed spirit of Theodore Roosevelt.”
Carson went on to claim: “The Cultural Revolution has come to the West.”
Trump echoed the same philosophy Saturday: “Make no mistake: This left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution.”
See the full exposé from Axios.com.