During a Fourth of July address at Mount Rushmore, former President Donald Trump warned that Marxist ideology poses the greatest threat to the United States, accusing the far left of trying to erase national heroes and traditional values. Days later, at a rally in North Dakota, Trump claimed that left-wing figures conceal their true beliefs by adopting the label “social democrats,” before asking, “Doesn’t that sound pretty?” He asserted they are in fact communists. The remarks come amid rising support for socialist and communist economic systems among younger Americans, with a recent Cato Institute survey indicating that a majority of Generation Z voters prefer socialism over capitalism. Critics have dismissed Trump’s accusations as misleading, while the White House separately issued a report criticizing the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History for presenting a negative narrative of the nation’s past.