[Video below.] President Donald Trump used a patriotic address at Mount Rushmore on the eve of Independence Day to deliver a forceful warning that communism threatens the nation’s freedoms, urging Americans to stand firmly behind the ideals of the Founding Fathers as the country began celebrating its 250th year.

Speaking before the towering memorial honoring Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, Trump said the United States is entering a historic milestone while confronting what he described as growing challenges to its identity and core values.

“Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty,” Trump said during remarks broadcast live by Newsmax. “Communism is the enemy of free people everywhere. Everywhere in the world. It never works.”

He continued by saying, “It’s the enemy of the Constitution,” adding, “Above all, it’s the enemy of July 4, 1776.”

Trump argued that communist doctrine stands in direct opposition to the principles that gave birth to the United States, describing it as “the exact opposite of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

“It’s death, tyranny and the pursuit of evil,” he said, adding that communist systems “killed 100 million people just in the last century alone.”

Drawing a sharp contrast between American patriotism and Marxist philosophy, Trump declared, “You can be loyal to Karl Marx, or you can be loyal to America.”

“You can be a communist, or you can be a patriot,” Trump said. “You cannot be both.”

The president also criticized what he called efforts by “radicals and extremists” to rewrite American history by disparaging the nation’s founding and its historic leaders.

“As for those who peddle Marxist lies about our heritage, tell our children that we live on stolen land, or that our heroes were oppressors, they’re doing something much worse than slandering our past,” Trump said. “They are slandering and attacking our future.”

Earlier in the speech, Trump paid tribute to the four presidents immortalized at Mount Rushmore, describing them as “the men who declared the freedom, won our freedom, and saved our freedom and secured our freedom.”

“They were men of action, men of ambition, men of daring, men of destiny and men of truly great intelligence,” he said.

Trump also stressed that preserving America’s traditions and national character is essential to safeguarding its future.

“We must never forget there is no American freedom without American culture,” he said. “And there is no American founding without the American people.”

The appearance at Mount Rushmore officially launched the nation’s semiquincentennial observance ahead of the main Independence Day celebration on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where Trump is scheduled to deliver another speech before a large fireworks display.

Concluding his remarks, Trump vowed that the United States would never embrace communist ideology.

“America will never be a communist country,” he said.

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{Matzav.com}