The Supreme Court ruled that the land where the monument sits was illegally taken from Indigenous people in the 1800s.
In a tweet on Monday morning, President Donald Trump denied reports that he had ever suggested his likeness should be included alongside the four other presidents depicted on Mount Rushmore, but also said the idea was appealing to him. A report from The New York Times this past weekend detailed several conversations between Trump and Gov. Kristi Noem (R-South Dakota) about Mount Rushmore over the past few years, including one in which the president described his “dream” to be on the monument. “He said, ‘Kristi, come on over here. Shake my hand,’ and so I shook his hand,” Noem recounted. “And I said, ‘Mr. President, you should come to South Dakota sometime. We have Mount Rushmore.’ And he goes, ‘Do you know it’s my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?’” “I started laughing. He wasn’t laughing, so he was totally serious,” Noem added. Mount Rushmore sits on Indigenous lands that were stolen by the United States government. In July of this year, according to the Times’s reporting, when Trump traveled to Mount Rushmore for July 4 celebrations, Noem greeted him in a private setting with an unusual presentation: a four-foot tall replica carving of the monument with his likeness included on it, according to a source with knowledge of the interaction. The Times also reported that the White House had reached out to Noem about the possibility of adding Trump’s likeness to the mountain last year.
