No, she's— And my first order of business as Prime Minister is to make you work a double shift every Friday until there are no more Fridays.

And I think the fact that President Trump, despite his double shift in position, has been pretty clear that he says the United States has to have Greenland not just for its security but for global security.

I'm on double shift.

American exceptionalism that conventional wisdom tells us makes our freedom a little more free is how we dug the Erie Canal and irrigated the West is why children in faraway lands grow up dreaming of one day moving here and yet the irony is that the story of America has so often been written by those who were told by others with power and influence and wealth that they were anything but exceptional for generation after generation we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores it has not sent its best it sent Puritans and Sikhs and Quakers and Muslims and Jewish people who were banished for praying the wrong way worshiping the wrong gods angering the wrong people it sent peasants and serfs from slums and shtetls who were treated as less because they hardly owned clothes let alone land it sent immigrants from whom power was something someone else had we are told that America is exceptional because we are richer stronger more powerful than everyone else the truth my friends is that America is exceptional because here nothing is fixed into place the frontier may be closed we may have walked on the moon but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence that work endures and it belongs to us all it belongs too to our newest Americans those standing here with me today all of whom were recently naturalized nearly a decade ago I too felt what you feel the joy of no longer being just a New Yorker but an American too you each hold a special power the power to determine what America means the powerful have always known their answer America in their view is an arena of supremacy where only a select few are allowed freedom where not all are created equal America if you ask them becomes less the more people it welcomes America they will tell you belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin the rest of us they insist should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit how small they are how weak how unoriginal at every moment in our past those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another division is the oldest trick in politics and the cheapest but time and again including two hundred and fifty years ago those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress as Thomas Paine once wrote this new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty hither have they fled and yet today too many of our leaders do not believe in a vision of this nation as an asylum for the persecuted but rather as one that persecutes those seeking asylum as we mark two hundred and fifty years what do we see we see a city of contradictions within a nation of contradictions we see the wealthiest country in the history of the world one where children go to sleep hungry while the world's first trillionaire hungers for more we see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections we see massed agents terrorizing our streets eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans we see a nation whose immense wealth has been built by those with calloused dirt streaked hands those who toil on factory floors and chisel into stone and we see a nation that has allowed so much of that wealth to be held instead in the soft hands of a precious few yes we see America in a health insurance industry that exploits the sick but that is not all we see when we look for America we see it too in the nurse who works a double shift and then stops on our way home to check on an ailing neighbor yes we see America in corporate landlords for whom negligence is a business model we see it too in the father who tucks his children into bed beneath a ceiling stained with leaks who wakes before dawn to go to work and still believes his country can do better by his family yes we see America when we spend our tax dollars on bombs and bailouts when we sell our elections to the highest bidder yet we see it just as clearly in every American who still believes this country belongs to we the people we see America each time neighbors link arms with neighbors without asking how long they have lived here or what papers they have as ice invades our neighborhoods we see America each time those young and old stand in the beating rain or the stifling heat to cast their ballots we see America each time working people demand more not just for themselves but for their fellow Americans there are some who respond to those who ask for more from America with a simple refrain love it or leave it they say but patriotism has never been about pretending our nation is without flaws patriotism is every act of righteous ascent it is every march led under the heavy sun it is every protest held a decade before its time it is precisely because we love this nation that we will not leave it after all who loves America more than those who have sacrificed so much to make it free today I think not only of the Fourth of July I think too of the Ninth of July five days after the Declaration of Independence was signed it arrived here in our New York City red coats had disembarked on Staten Island more than a hundred British ships loomed just offshore across this city the Continental Army prepared for an invasion George Washington commanded his brigades to assemble just a few feet from this building it was known then as the Commons today we call it City Hall Park there within range of British guns Washington ordered his generals to read the declaration aloud and with the world's mightiest empire poised to attack Washington told the people of New York City what we will celebrate tomorrow that we had declared our independence that freedom was within reach that evening danger loomed conflict was not a question but a certainty and yet when those early New Yorkers marched toward the statue of King George III that stood in the Bowling Green a statue they would melt down into bullets for their young army they walked in unison grounded not in the pursuit of plunder but in ideals that for the first time had a name America those ideals upon which our nation was built they are strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime but only if we reach for them ours is a nation working each day towards the perfection in which it was conceived a nation striving each day to better itself therein lies the work of America the striving the bettering the reaching towards perfection what a privilege each of us has to live in a nation that every one of its inhabitants can shape what a responsibility each of us possesses to prove ourselves worthy of all those who came before what power each of us holds to bring America ever closer to the greatness so many have seen when they looked upon these shores the greatness that for two hundred and fifty years has been America thank you God bless America God bless New York City and happy Fourth of July.