DISGUSTING: Mamdani And Clinton Use America’s Birthday To Attack The…

If Americans needed any further proof of just how far the Democratic Party has drifted from the basic patriotism that once united the country across party lines, the events of Independence Day weekend provided it in abundance. As the nation celebrated 250 years of independence with fireworks, naval reviews, and a sitting president who unapologetically called America “the crowning achievement of human history,” prominent Democrats used the same occasion to deliver a very different message, one steeped in grievance, accusation, and barely disguised contempt for the country they claim to want to lead.

The tone was set the night before Independence Day itself, when New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the self-described democratic socialist who now occupies City Hall, delivered what his own office billed as a “major address” marking the country’s 250th anniversary. Rather than offer anything resembling gratitude, Mamdani used his platform to accuse America of allowing children to go hungry while “the world’s first trillionaire” hungers for more, and to describe the country as dominated by “monopolies” and “oligarchs who buy elections.” He went on to claim that “masked agents” were “terrorizing our streets,” a thinly veiled attack on federal immigration enforcement delivered on the eve of the nation’s birthday.

Mamdani’s speech was staged for maximum symbolic effect. He sat behind a desk once used by George Washington, flanked by recently naturalized citizens waving American flags, and argued that the country’s wealth was built by those with “calloused, dirt streaked hands” while its rewards flow instead to “the soft hands of a precious few.” It was an unmistakably Marxist framing of American history, one that reduces 250 years of national achievement to a simple story of exploitation. Even the mayor’s own allies seemed to sense the speech had gone too far. By the following day, Mamdani had noticeably softened his tone in follow up remarks, suggesting that even Democratic strategists recognized the political risk of appearing to bash America on its own birthday.

Not content to let a sitting mayor carry the torch of grievance alone, former President Bill Clinton issued his own lengthy statement on the 250th anniversary that read less like a birthday tribute and more like an opposition research memo. Clinton declared that the country was marking its milestone “amid another period of deep division, renewed questions about America’s future and role in the world, and serious threats to our own institutions and to our democracy itself.” Without ever naming President Trump directly, Clinton accused “the people in charge” of using masked agents to seize people from their homes and workplaces, of launching an “unconstitutional war” with no clear objectives, and of turning the federal government into “a new profit center for themselves and their allies.”

The accusations were striking not just for their content but for their source. This is the same Bill Clinton whom Trump had, just one day earlier, praised warmly during a lighthearted public event with Second Lady Usha Vance, calling him “a nice guy” whom he still likes “a lot.” Clinton’s response to that goodwill was to spend America’s 250th birthday accusing the sitting president of weaponizing government to settle personal scores and prosecute enemies. Even commentators sympathetic to Clinton’s politics struggled to explain why a two term former president would choose the nation’s sestercentennial as the moment to deliver his most combative political attack in years, rather than a message of unity befitting the occasion.

Clinton was not alone among the Democratic Party’s living former presidents in using Independence Day to needle the current administration rather than celebrate the country. Barack Obama echoed similar themes, describing America as “a constant work in progress” and tying his message to the values on display at his new presidential library, framing the nation’s story primarily around the work still left to do rather than what has already been achieved. Joe Biden likewise emphasized the fragility of democracy and the need for Americans to “fight” for it, a notably darker frame for a national birthday celebration than anything offered by the nation’s founders, who risked their lives and fortunes for the very independence being commemorated.

Only George W. Bush, to his credit, struck something closer to a genuinely unifying tone, reminding Americans in a television interview that democracy is “self correcting” and that citizens who dislike the country’s direction have the power to change it through the ballot box rather than through grievance politics. Bush’s message, that Americans should be “citizens, not spectators,” stood as a rare bright spot amid what was otherwise a coordinated effort by prominent Democrats to use the occasion of America’s 250th birthday as a vehicle for attacking the current administration.

The pattern extended well beyond the party’s most prominent figures. Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson, a sitting Democratic member of the House of Representatives, has on multiple occasions described the United States as the “world’s number one bully,” arguing on a nationally syndicated radio program that America uses its “immense unrivaled power to rule over those who have less power.” Statements like these, made not by fringe activists but by elected members of Congress, reveal just how mainstream open hostility toward the country has become within one of the nation’s two major political parties.

This is not an isolated pattern confined to a single election cycle. It reflects a deeper and more troubling shift within the Democratic coalition, one that the polling data released around the anniversary confirms in stark terms. As covered elsewhere in this publication, the share of Democrats who say they are proud to be American has fallen sharply in recent years, down to just 58 percent according to one major survey and as low as 27 percent when measuring only those who say they are “extremely” or “very” proud, according to Gallup’s long running tracking poll. Compare that to Republicans, more than 90 percent of whom consistently express pride in their country regardless of which party controls the White House. The gap is not a coincidence. It is the direct and predictable consequence of a party whose leaders spend national holidays cataloging America’s sins rather than expressing gratitude for its blessings.

It is worth asking what exactly Democratic leaders believed they were accomplishing with this approach. The 250th anniversary of American independence was, by any reasonable measure, an occasion custom built for a message of unity, an opportunity for leaders across the political spectrum to set aside their disagreements and honor an achievement that predates and transcends any single party or administration. Instead, Democrats from the mayor’s office in New York to the halls of Congress to the ranks of former presidents chose division. They chose grievance. They chose, in speech after speech and statement after statement, to make America’s birthday about what is wrong with the country rather than what is right with it.

The contrast with the Republican messaging over the same weekend could not have been more complete. President Trump told the crowd on the National Mall that no people in history have “done more good, showed more courage, made more progress, righted more injustice or achieved more greatness” than the American people. Vice President Vance, speaking aboard a naval warship in New York Harbor, urged Americans to “reject the view of your nation that sees only its sins, but not its grace and its greatness.” Where Republicans offered gratitude, Democrats offered indictment. Where conservatives celebrated 250 years of hard won liberty, prominent Democrats used the same moment to allege that the country is controlled by oligarchs, patrolled by masked thugs, and sliding toward authoritarianism.

This dynamic is not without political risk for Democrats, and some in the party clearly understand that. The rapid softening of Mamdani’s rhetoric within a single day, along with the notable restraint shown by figures like Bush relative to Clinton, suggests an awareness within Democratic ranks that openly disparaging the country on its own birthday carries real electoral consequences. Yet the instinct to reach for grievance first, even on a day explicitly designed for national celebration, reveals something durable about the party’s current character. It is no longer simply a matter of policy disagreement over immigration enforcement, judicial appointments, or economic strategy. It has become a broader unwillingness among many Democratic leaders to express uncomplicated gratitude for the country itself.

That unwillingness carries consequences beyond a single news cycle. When children raised in Democratic households consistently hear their party’s most prominent voices describe America as a nation of bullies, oligarchs, and masked enforcers rather than a nation of opportunity, sacrifice, and hard won freedom, it should surprise no one that pride in the country declines most sharply among the young and among Democratic voters specifically. The polling data bears this out precisely along those lines. This is not a mystery. It is the direct and measurable result of a steady diet of rhetoric that treats patriotism as naive at best and dangerous at worst.

Defenders of the Democratic messaging will argue that criticizing a sitting administration is not the same as criticizing the country, and in a healthy political culture, that distinction would hold. But the substance of the speeches delivered this Independence Day weekend went well beyond ordinary policy criticism. Mamdani did not simply critique specific immigration enforcement tactics. He framed the entire structure of American economic life as a system of exploitation by “oligarchs.” Clinton did not simply disagree with specific judicial nominees. He accused the government of being turned into “a new profit center” for those in charge. These are not the words of leaders offering constructive opposition. They are the words of leaders who view the country’s current trajectory and, by extension, its current leadership, chosen by the American people at the ballot box, as fundamentally illegitimate.

There is also a deep irony in Democrats accusing the Trump administration of authoritarianism and the abuse of power on the very same weekend that the president stood before a crowd of a million Americans on the National Mall, delivered a speech broadcast freely to the entire nation, and then peacefully allowed the celebration to continue without incident. Meanwhile, it was a Democratic mayor who used his own Independence Day platform to suggest that the nation’s founding ideals are strong enough to “endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them,” an unmistakable insinuation that the sitting, democratically elected president of the United States represents exactly that kind of regime. That is not measured political disagreement. That is rhetoric designed to delegitimize the outcome of a free and fair election.

None of this is to suggest that America is beyond criticism or that no legitimate grievances exist. Every nation, including the greatest one in human history, has room to improve, and healthy democratic debate requires the freedom to point out where government falls short. But there is a vast difference between constructive criticism offered in a spirit of shared citizenship and the wholesale framing of the country as a corrupt, bullying, oligarch-controlled state, offered specifically on the day set aside to celebrate the nation’s founding. Democrats chose the latter path this year, and the American people, if the polling is any indication, are noticing the difference.

The 250th anniversary of American independence should have been an occasion that rose above ordinary partisan combat, a moment when leaders across the political spectrum could honor an achievement that belongs to every American regardless of party. Instead, prominent Democrats turned it into another opportunity to attack the current administration, cast doubt on the legitimacy of American institutions, and frame the country’s history primarily in terms of oppression and injustice. Conservatives spent the weekend celebrating gratitude, sacrifice, and 250 years of hard-won liberty. Democrats, by their own words and their own choices, spent it demonstrating just how far the party has drifted from anything resembling love of country.

As the nation moves forward into its 251st year, voters will have every right to ask which vision of America they want their leaders to embody, one rooted in gratitude for an extraordinary inheritance of freedom, or one rooted in perpetual grievance against the country that made that freedom possible