Interior Secretary Doug Burgum says there’s “room” on Mount Rushmore, the mountain in South Dakota carved with the faces of four former U.S. presidents, for the visage of President Donald Trump.
The secretary’s comment was prompted by Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, on her Saturday show on the cable television network Fox News.
Lara Trump noted that Burgum oversees the National Park Service, which manages the national memorial in South Dakota. The faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln were carved in the side of Mount Rushmore in 1941.
“A lot of people wonder, will we ever see President Trump’s face on Mount Rushmore?” Lara Trump said, perhaps referencing a bill Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) proposed in January to add Trump’s face to the memorial.
It was one of a flurry of proposals flattering to Trump that emerged from loyal Congress members after the president was elected for a second term. Other ideas include putting Trump’s face on a new $250 bill, renaming the Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia after the president and making Trump’s birthday a national holiday.
“They certainly have room for it there,” Burgum quipped, noting that he recently signed an order to have fireworks at Mount Rushmore during Independence Day celebrations next year, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The order revives a plan from Trump’s first administration to conduct fireworks at the site.
The park service suspended fireworks at Mount Rushmore in 2009 after a mountain pine beetle infestation deteriorated the forest and raised the risk of wildfires.
Burgum is responsible for overseeing a host of nationwide celebrations, including the creation of a monument garden with the statues of 250 U.S. historical figures, for the anniversary.
The Interior Department did not provide elaboration on Burgum’s remark when asked.
The Rushmore memorial is a point of contention for several Native American tribal nations that hold the Black Hills, where the busts were carved, sacred. The Black Hills were granted to the Sioux in perpetuity in the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868, but the treaty was violated shortly after when gold was discovered in the region.
The Supreme Court in 1980 ordered the Sioux compensated for the Black Hills, but the Sioux have refused to accept payment, which now exceeds $1 billion.
In response to the construction of Mount Rushmore, a monument of Crazy Horse, an Oglala Lakota warrior who fought the U.S. government, was commissioned in the nearby mountains in 1948, but the sculpture is today unfinished.
