Will the real America please stand up?
This Fourth of July weekend, in between barbecues and fireworks and celebrations galore, the country was treated, naturally, to two speeches by our headliner politicians: New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani and President Donald Trump. The speeches were built up by pundits as a political doubleheader, offering twin visions of America present, past, and future, one from the left and the other from the right.
But if you were to judge the weekend by their blustering words, you’d find, lamentably, that the land of the pilgrims’ pride was nowhere in evidence as we celebrated the semiquincentennial of this great and godly nation. Instead, we got two tumescent orations, vastly divergent in tone and content, yet both reminding us just how much work we’ve ahead of us as we struggle to live up to the Founders’ sacred vision.
First, Hizzoner.
Sounding very much like a Temu Barack Obama as he spoke from City Hall on Friday night, Mamdani delivered a speech thick with Grimace-purple prose that read like someone prompted an AI chatbot to pull heavily on the heartstrings.
