Promoters again seek support for adding Trump's face to the vandalism already dynamited onto Mount Rushmore

The last time there was talk of sticking Donald Trump’s visage next to the four presidents dynamited into Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills, it started with then-president No. 45 discussing the matter with South Dakota’s then-Gov. Kristi Noem shortly before his visit there in the summer of 2020. She thought he was kidding. He wasn’t. And now, as Liam Archacki at the Daily Beast reported earlier this week, there’s more talk of sculpting this obscenity on the mountain sacred to the Lakota, Cheyenne, and other Native tribes.

Is it serious? Or is it just another Trumpy distraction to flood the zone and siphon off his foes’ political energy via recreational outrage in the midst of the new administration’s totally serious dismantling of the Constitution? Sometimes, it’s hard to tell. One thing for sure, if a sculpture were to be approved, Trump would figure out how to turn it into the biggest grift yet. Gold (9 carat) statuettes would be just the start.

Corey Lewandowski, a top but jettisoned campaign aide for Trump in 2016 who joined the 2024 campaign in August, brought the matter up Friday with the host of The Benny Show. “Some really smart congressman should go and say, Donald Trump’s face on Mount Rushmore,” he said, “What are we waiting on? We got the votes in the House. We got the votes in the Senate. I know a guy is gonna sign it, named Donald John Trump. Let’s get it done to memorialize what this man’s been able to achieve for this country.” 

This catalyzed Alex Lorusso, the Benny Johnson Show’s executive producer to tweet on Xitter, “Which Member of Congress will do the honors?” Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, an ultra-rightist Trump superfan, took up the request within minutes of the tweet. “I’m actually filing the legislation as we speak,” she wrote.

On Foxaganda’s Outnumbered panel on Monday, co-host Harris Faulkner asserted that “a growing number of conservatives are pushing to add Trump to the legendary monument” because they think “he’s already done enough to be immortalized alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.” Said former GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, a Foxaganda contributor, “If there’s room up there I think it’d be great.” 

Even though Victoria Sunday at the Daily Beast crafted a depiction of the mountain with Trump appearing in a MAGA hat, the National Park Service says there isn’t room up there for the face or the hat. Mount Rushmore National Memorial Chief of Interpretation and Education Maureen McGee-Ballinger told the Black Hills Pioneer in 2020, “From time to time individuals, groups or organizations make proposals to add the busts of other individuals to Mount Rushmore National Memorial. Additions are not possible for two reasons. First, the rock that surrounds the sculpted faces is not suitable for additional carving. When the sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, died in 1941, his son Lincoln Borglum closed down the project and stated that no more carvable rock existed.”

So breathe a sigh of relief. Of course, Trump could create a national monument entirely devoted to himself without having to share it with those other fellows. No. 47 aside, the vandalizing of a mountain sacred to several tribes with the sculpture of three Indian killers and one Indian hater, was bad enough.

Here are some excerpts from what I wrote in 2020 about this—If Trump wanted a real celebration at Rushmore, he'd support Lakota sovereignty over the Black Hills:

In a time of belated monument removal—officially or by volunteers—it’s fitting that on Friday Donald Trump will be on hand for Independence Day fireworks in the Black Hills of South Dakota at the nation’s biggest statuary monument to white supremacy.

Trump certainly won’t be the first occupant of the White House to appear at this tourist attraction dynamited into the mountain that the Lakota (Sioux) call the “Six Grandfathers (Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe) and "Cougar Mountain" (Igmútȟaŋka Pahá). Calvin Coolidge was there in 1927 to dedicate the project before the first drill-bit spun a hole in the granite. For the campaign team, It’s all about getting some of that iconic greatness displayed on the mountain to rub off on their guy come election day by having him pay public homage to a sculpture that he thinks his own visage should be squeezed onto. 

The marketers label Mount Rushmore the “Shrine of Democracy.” The late American Indian Movement leader Dennis Banks called it the ”Hoax of Democracy.” Oglala Lakota President Julian Bear Runner told USA Today last week that Trump had failed to show respect by consulting with tribal leaders about coming to the Black Hills. Bear Runner is one of the many Lakotas, Cheyennes, Indians of other tribes, and non-Indian allies who have no love for the sculpture, with or without Trump’s mug added. "I don't believe it should be blown up, because it would cause more damage to the land," Bear Runner said, adding, however, that there are environmentally sound solutions. “Removed, but not blown up." [...]

To the Lakota, the Black Hills are Pahá Sápa. Sacred ground. Not sacred only to them. Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, and Crow feel the same about this land to which they also have ancient attachments. [...]

Okay, the men on the mountain were flawed, just like all human beings, but they are heroes to many Americans. Removing them would be orders of magnitude greater than pulling down a bronze statue of Columbus or moving one of Nathan Bedford Forrest out of a public park, right? Surely the good of these four presidents outweighs their bad. Isn’t calling for their removal the perfect target for Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump himself to ridicule and label “extremist”? Won’t many liberals see such a removal as a step too far? After all, one of these men was the Father of the Nation and initiated a tradition of leaving office after two terms. Another wrote the Declaration. One was the Great Emancipator. One was the Trustbuster who hated monopolies almost as much as he loved the environment. Wouldn’t scraping their depictions off the mountain after 80 years be erasing American history, the good with the bad? Wouldn’t it be like smashing Abu Simbel because Ramses II had his flaws?  [...]

The depictions of the four presidents were completed in 14 years, in 1941. That same year a monument to Crazy Horse got underway on nearby private land. Nearly eight decades later, that sculpture, like American Indian policy, remains unfinished business. No progress in this regard can get started as long as the man rallying his followers at Mount Rushmore Friday remains in office. But when the next president steps into the White House, that unfinished business deserves fresh attention.

Although it certainly wasn’t on his top priority list, President Joe Biden made some progress on that unfinished business. Not only did he appoint Laguna Pueblo citizen Deb Haaland to the key post of Interior Secretary, he reinforced the Native-favored, nation-to-nation approach in the federal government’s interaction with the tribes. Trump, of course, has no such intention. He has routinely dissed Indigenous Americans even when he was supposedly honoring them, as happened with one of the last living Navajo “codetalkers” of World War II. His deportation round-ups have snared some Navajo. And, citing obsolete 19th Century statutory law and a superseded court ruling, his lawyers have challenged the nearly universal view that Native Americans have birthright citizenship just like anybody else born here. 

Given all that, perhaps Lewandowski, Rep. Luna and Trump’s other avid Rushmore promoters could make a better case than they have for his mug being blasted into the mountain since his attitudes about Indians aren’t that far removed from the guys already up there.