US July 4th celebrations disrupted

**Alex Ritson** (0:00)
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.
I'm Alex Ritson and in the early hours of Sunday, the 5th of July, these are our main stories. Americans turn out to mark 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, but a severe heat wave has seen some festivities scaled back or cancelled. A senior Venezuelan official has insisted that search and rescue operations are still ongoing following last month's devastating earthquakes, as the number of confirmed fatalities rises to almost 3,000. France has become the second team to reach the quarterfinals of the Men's Football World Cup after beating Paraguay.

**Lise Doucet** (0:46)
Also in this podcast, what's expected to be a huge procession, millions are expected to turn out. Many will, but many won't. Those who suffered during the restrictions and repression of his nearly four decades of rule.

**Alex Ritson** (1:02)
Our chief international correspondent reports from Tehran on the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Severe weather has been disrupting events in the United States which are being held to mark the 250th anniversary of America's independence from Britain. The flagship Salute to America Gala in the capital Washington DC was delayed with attendees evacuated and told to seek shelter due to thunderstorms. President Trump has been accused by opponents of politicizing the celebrations. In a major speech in Washington, he had this to say.

**Donald Trump** (1:41)
America will never be a communist country. It won't happen.
Communism is a loser and it always will be. The communist system is the opposite of the American system and the communist system has never worked. Our warriors did not fight communism on battlefields across the world only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America. We're not going to let it happen.

**Alex Ritson** (2:10)
I heard more from our correspondent in Washington, Howell Griffith.

**Howell Griffith** (2:14)
It's very hard to say with Donald Trump what was scripted and what was his ad libbing compared to Mount Rushmore and the speech we heard on the Mall last week. There was less pure politics. There was less swiping at opponents. And there was certainly a greater part of history in there. I mean, bringing on veterans from the war means, of course, he did have to speak about previous wars, American achievements on the battlefield, lives lost, and the service given by fellow countrymen.
So there was a greater emphasis there. And that will be more unifying, maybe, because people from both sides of the divide can rally to that and honor and respect to the commitment and the service given by others. However, there was still a bit of politics in there. And while we're on sort of the theme of the military, there was one bit that I was drawn to about him claiming that the military had become more powerful, particularly in his first term. And then he said, about to say second term, when he said, maybe I should say my third term, obviously slipping in of the fact that he still disputes the result when he lost to Joe Biden. And then saying that they'd had tremendous success. When you look at Venezuela, when you look at Iran, we wiped it out, wiped out their military. So for all the historical sweep, a lot of it did come back to the last couple of years and the last couple of weeks, really, of his presidency.

**Alex Ritson** (3:41)
Why does he keep coming back to Communism?

**Howell Griffith** (3:43)
It's interesting and it doesn't have a lot of structure. These are big swipes talking about the villainy and tyranny of Communism, how it's a cancer, he said this evening. Now listeners may be confused if they think through American history that the Cold War is long over.
More recently in domestic politics, we've seen a resurgent Democratic Party winning in primaries and the mayor of New York seemingly having great success. And that is a left-leaning side maybe of the Democratic Party.
But none of these people are members of a Communist Party and they don't hold to a strict Communist ideology. It is rather a way of tarnishing his critics and his opponents, particularly maybe as he looks to the midterm elections coming up in November, when they threaten the Republican control of the House and maybe even the Senate. So, I think it is a way for Donald Trump and the right-wing media here, because these terms are echoed and amplified by some of the news channels here and people online, that they see the Democrats who are winning as Communists and painting them in that way in order to put off the maybe undecided voters in the middle in America.