WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump described the influx of communism as the biggest danger to the nation on June 26 while delivering the keynote address at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference.
“This is the most serious threat to our country, since its existence, in my opinion, 250 years ago,” Trump said.
The president cautioned the audience about communism’s insidious nature and its overarching goal of destroying religious liberty.
“They will close your churches in this country, if they go communist, and they’re trying to,” Trump said. “They will kill your people, and that’s what they’re about. They want to end religion, they have to end religion, because their ideology doesn’t work if you have strong religion.”
Recent elections caught his attention after three candidates won their congressional primary races on June 23, thanks, in part, to endorsements from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, he said.
“And as you saw with the communists elected in New York City recently, they’re communists; they’re not social democrats,” Trump said. “They want to completely destroy the traditional American way of life.”
He likened the rise of communist ideology to a slow creep of ideas that sound appealing to the uninformed but result in disaster for society.
“Communism is very easy to sell,” Trump said. “It destroys everything, but it’s very easy.”
The consequences of communism are widespread and devastating, he warned.
“You‘ll live in squalor, there will be no food, there will be no housing, there will be no military, there will be no law and order, there will be no nothing,” Trump said. “You’ll be a third world inhabitant in every way. And everyone will suffer or die.”
Efforts at communist rule, including in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, Cambodia, and Ethiopia in the past and in China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos currently, have caused death and suffering for billions of people, and regimes across the world have subjugated citizens.
“That’s what [has happened] for thousands of years,” Trump said. “It’s been happening by different names.”
He made the remarks during his first visit to the Washington Hilton’s International Ballroom since a foiled attempt to assassinate him during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 25.
The Faith and Freedom Coalition event brought together lawmakers, religious leaders, and people of faith for a three-day conference in the nation’s capital.
The president received a 223-page draft report from the Religious Liberty Commission at the White House shortly after he spoke at the conference.
“As we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our founding next week, it is only appropriate that we work to strengthen this fundamental right and to, most essentially, have liberty for generations to come,” Trump said during the Oval Office ceremony. “We want religious liberty.”
The draft suggests more collaboration between church and state and explores the historical separation of the two while encouraging building bridges rather than walls.
Other findings include suggestions to promote “know your rights” campaigns across schools, workplaces, and hospitals nationwide, along with strengthened protections in public schools and the military, among other groups and institutions.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, chairman of the commission, seconded the president’s earlier comments about the dangers of communism.
“We know what communists do around the world,” Patrick said. “They remove God. They close the churches. They punish the believers.”
Since Trump’s first term, he has consistently warned about the global influence of communism and socialism.
For example, at the 2019 U.N. General Assembly, Trump warned world leaders about the “specter of socialism,” describing it as one of the most serious challenges facing nations.
Trump said at the time that socialism and communism killed 100 million people in the preceding century, and he condemned the “brutal oppression” of people in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
Trump has also repeatedly criticized Democrats for embracing “radical socialism” in the United States. He has denounced proposals such as open borders and the Green New Deal, labeling them as extreme.
In his speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition policy conference, Trump said it is important to protect religious freedom amid rising persecution worldwide.
“All communist countries attack religions violently,” Trump said. “It’s part of their deal.”
He mentioned his actions to address the persecution of Christians in Nigeria.
“We recently struck Nigeria and largely ended the slaughter of great Christian populations,” he said.
According to a 2019 Pew Research Center study, nearly 85 percent of the world’s population lives in countries with high or very high restrictions on religion. China, ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, is identified as having one of the highest levels of religious restriction.
Arthur Herman, a historian and the author of the new book “Founder’s Fire: From 1776 to the Age of Trump,” agreed that the rise of communism is a threat to the nation.
“The growth of socialism and socialist sentiment, especially among young people in the United States today, threatens the American economy, its growth, and its global position,” Herman told The Epoch Times.
He noted that 65 million Chinese people died under Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s efforts to establish a new “socialist” China and that 25 million to 30 million people died in the former Soviet Union under communism.
“The rosy picture that the younger generation has gotten from teachers and ideologically minded mentors about communism flies in the face of history,” Herman said. “It’s also one that flies in the face of what is fundamentally the American experience and American exceptionalism.”
