A presidential historian slammed Trump's Independence Day speech as nothing more than "Joe McCarthy Red Scare idiocy."
During an appearance on MS NOW on Saturday, Doug Brinkley tore into the speech that Trump gave in front of Mount Rushmore to kick off the Independence Day weekend. In particular, Brinkley found it "deeply offensive" that Trump would spend time warning about communists because of recent primary victories by democratic socialists.
"It was just Joe McCarthy red scare idiocy because he's out there talking about this communist menace as if it's the early Cold War years," Brinkley went off. "It's just what he wants the Republicans to run on in this election cycle."
MS NOW anchor Alex Witt agreed, adding, "When the president says, 'America will never become a communist country,' I was thinking to myself, 'Well, who said it was going to anyway?'"
Brinkley compared Trump's speech to "McCarthy starting to have his list in Wheeling, West Virginia, waving it, that they are infiltrators all over." McCarthy famously tried to root out alleged communists during a period called the Red Scare.
Trump's speech was "utter nonsense," Brinkley continued, while admitting that "politicizing" is "natural in our days."
However, he optimistically viewed most Americans "watching on Main Street" as having the "spirit" of "a red, white and blue blast, and let's have a barbecue, let's see some family, see some friends, and then we'll get on to the bickering of politics during Monday or Tuesday."
He also suggested, "I think our inclination for this weekend should be to try to transcend Donald Trump's rhetoric and just sort of block it out for 48 hours."