President Donald Trump, 80, drew the ire of critics on all sides when he made an embarrassing mistake in his Fourth of July speech Saturday night.
In a passage meant to condemn socialism, Trump invoked a section of the Declaration of Independence that does not exist.
“And as our Declaration of Independence tells us, we are all made in the image of one almighty god. And a communist will never say that. That’s for sure,” Trump said.
Neither does the founding document of the United States.
It does say “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
The gaffe circulated on social media after the speech, which was delayed due to weather issues. Trump did not take to the stage until after 11 p.m.
It was not clear if the remarks were pre-written or if Trump improvised them himself. The Daily Beast reached out to the White House for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Online, critics of all stripes laid into the president for his misstep.
“Nothing says ‘I love America’ like misquoting the Declaration of Independence on live TV and then pretending the fake quote proves everyone else hates the country,” wrote influencer Khary Penebaker.
Alex Nowrasteh, senior vice president for policy at right-wing think tank the Cato Institute mocked the mistake on X: “‘Trump may have misquoted the Declaration but that’s ok because the Declaration should have said that.’ -NatCons, probably,” he wrote, reposting the gaffe.
He also reposted a comment pointing out a potential double standard from MAGA Trump supporters. “Imagine if Zohran Mamdani had misquoted the Declaration of Independence in his 4th of July speech. We’d get a hundred threads about how this proves yet again that immigrants aren’t real Americans and shouldn’t be elected to public office,” the post said.
“It will go down in history that the person who was president on our 250th anniversary lied about what is in the document that the anniversary is about,” another X user pointed out.
Earlier in the speech, Trump called the Constitution “the most righteous political document ever conceived.” He then listed some of the rights defined in it.
“Unlike so many others in the world, in this country we have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, equal justice under the law,” he listed, before pausing to add a caveat.
“Although I wasn’t treated that well, but we won’t get into that,” he added seemingly unable to resist complaining about his personal legal problems.
“America in 2026: its president misquotes the Declaration of Independence,” Matthew Boedy, a professor of rhetoric at the University of North Georgia, wrote in response to the speech.
“Open the civics centers. Just for him.”
