President Donald Trump has denied a report by The New York Times that a White House aide reached out to South Dakota’s governor last year to ask about the prospect of adding more presidents to Mount Rushmore.
After her election in 2018, Kristi Noem visited the Oval Office, where Trump told the governor that he was interested in having his likeness etched alongside the 60-foot carvings of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, The Times reported this weekend, citing anonymous officials aware of the matter.
Noem, one of Trump’s staunchest allies, was pushing for a holiday extravaganza with Trump as the centerpiece, and even greeted the president with a 4-foot replica of the historic monument that imagined Trump’s face in a fifth spot, The Times reported, citing inside sources.
On Sunday, however, Trump described the report as “fake news,” tweeting: “Never suggested it although, based on all of the many things accomplished during the first 3½ years, perhaps more than any other Presidency, sounds like a good idea to me!”
After Trump was inaugurated in 2017, the president reportedly told then-U.S. Congresswoman Noem during their first meeting: “Do you know it’s my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?” she said in a 2018 interview, according to Forbes.
As Noem introduced Trump at the Fourth of July speech at Mount Rushmore, she compared him with Roosevelt, a leader who “braves the dangers of the arena”; and she echoed the president’s condemnation of nationwide protests that have toppled numerous relics of the Confederacy, saying protesters were seeking to discredit the country’s founders, The Times reported.
In the days before the speech, Trump also signed two executive orders to protect Confederate and colonial statues and to establish a new National Garden of American Heroes.
Noem surprised some of her advisers when she took a late flight back to Washington on Air Force One with Trump after the speech. The governor and Trump spoke privately for more than an hour, The Times reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
The Times story also pointed to speculation within Republican circles that Trump might consider Noem as a new running mate, in what would be a surprise shift away from Vice President Mike Pence.
A White House official called the notion that Trump is open to replacing Pence ridiculous, and then pointed out that adding the president’s image to Mount Rushmore would be a federal, not state, decision, the Times reported.
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