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Element Five: The White House was interested in adding Trump's face to Mount Rushmore

The New York Times reported that the administration contacted the South Dakota governor to find out what the process was. The president denied, but said: "This is a good idea." The governor said in the past that he had spoken to her about the issue, and on July 4 he gave a belligerent speech at the foot of the mountain, photographed in a position where he blended in with the other four presidents.

• United States
• Donald Trump
• Mount Rushmore

News agencies

A White House official has asked the South Dakota governor about the possibility of adding President Donald Trump's face to Mount Rushmore, the New York Times reported, quoting a Republican source. Trump denied it today (Monday), but added that it "sounds like a good idea." According to the report, the same source turned to Governor Christie Noam's office and asked, "What is the process for adding more presidents to Mount Rushmore?".

According to reports in the United States, the governor greeted Trump on his last visit to the mountain, on the eve of the last Independence Day last month, with a 1.2-meter replica of the mountain, where his face was already carved alongside the four faces of the original presidents.

In a 2018 interview, the governor said she and the president discussed the monument during their first meeting in the Oval Office. She said she told him: "Mr. President, you need to come to South Dakota sometime. We have Mount Rushmore." He replied, "Do you know that my dream is for my face to appear on Mount Rushmore?"

"I started laughing," she said in that interview. "He did not laugh. He was very serious."

On Trump's last visit he was photographed at an angle where his face was seen as the fifth element on the mountain. His speech at the venue won demonstrations by indigenous activists, who see the carving on the mountain as a contempt of territory taken from them by force and pays homage to presidents who were hostile to their rights. Trump said at the time that the United States was under siege by "extreme leftist fascism."