Trump denied asking to have his face carved on Mount Rushmore, but said it ‘sounds like a good idea to me!’
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President Donald Trump has said that adding his face to Mount Rushmore “sounds like a good idea” based on what he’s accomplished in his first term in office.
The president made the comment on Twitter Sunday night, when he also denied a Saturday New York Times report that a Trump administration official had asked about adding presidents to the national monument last year.
The report also said that Trump was presented with a miniature Mount Rushmore with his face added to it by the governor of South Dakota when he held a Fourth of July celebration at the monument this year.
Retweeting a CNN story about the Times report, Trump wrote: “This is Fake News by the failing @nytimes & bad ratings @CNN. Never suggested it although, based on all of the many things accomplished during the first 3 1/2 years, perhaps more than any other Presidency, sounds like a good idea to me!”
Trump also tweeted a picture of himself in front of the national monument from his Fourth of July celebration there this year.
While adding presidents to the monument is a frequent question, the National Parks Service has said that it’s not possible.
Maureen McGee-Ballinger, Mount Rushmore National Monument chief of interpretation and education, told the Black Hills Pioneer in June that there are two reasons why additional presidents won’t be added to the sculpture.
The first is that there’s no more space. While there appears to be space to the left of George Washington, the rock isn’t stable. In fact, the sculpture’s artist, Gutzon Borglum, intended to use that space for Jefferson’s sculpture, but had to wedge the nation’s third president between Presidents Washington and Teddy Roosevelt when he discovered the original rock wasn’t usable.
There also appears to be extra space to the right of Abraham Lincoln, but McGee-Ballinger said in a previous interview with the Sioux Falls Argus Leader that that rock is actually “beyond the sculpture” and it’s only an “optical illusion” that it looks close.
The second reason why a fifth president’s face wouldn’t be added is that it would defeat the artist’s intention for the piece, which was “to represent the first 150 years of the history of the United States.”
“It is one man’s artistic interpretation, and a tribute to that period of our nation’s history,” McGee-Ballinger said. “The National Park Service takes the position that death stayed the hand of the artist and the work is complete in its present form.”
“Thus, to maintain both the integrity of the structure and the artist’s concept, there is no procedure for adding another likeness, the sculpture is complete.”