Amid US virus struggle, Trump visits Rushmore and bemoans racial protests
KEYSTONE, July4 (AFP) - US President Donald Trump bemoaned protests demanding racial justice as “violent mayhem” Friday, but said little about an alarming resurgence of coronavirus cases as he attended a crowded, fireworks-studded Independence Day celebration beneath majestic Mount Rushmore.
Trump, under fire for his response to America's spiraling coronavirus caseload four months before the presidential election, spoke on the eve of the July 4th celebrations before thousands of closely- packed people -many of whom chanted
“Four more years;” few of whom were wearing masks.
In the shadow of four notable predecessors -George Wa s h i n g t o n , Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, whose likenesses are carved into a granite cliff in South Dakota's Black Hills -- the president called on supporters to defend America's “integrity”.
He accused protesters calling for racial justice of “a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.”
“The violent mayhem we have seen in the streets and cities... is the predictable results of years of extreme indoctrination and bias in education, journalism and other cultural institutions,” he added.
The US has been engulfed by a once- in- a- generation reckoning on racism and police brutality since George Floyd, an African American man, was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis on May 25.
That has included a rethink of how America venerates symbols of the pro-slavery Civil War South, from removing statues of Confederate generals to retiring the Mississippi state flag, which featured the Confederate emblem.