KEYSTONE, S.D. — A federal building in Washington has been named after Donald Trump, as have naval battleships, an airport in Palm Beach, Florida, and a new government savings account.
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But no presidential distinction rivals having one’s likeness carved onto Mount Rushmore — an honor destined to elude Trump, as even some of his ardent supporters seem to recognize.
Trump flew to the monument Friday night on the eve of the 250th anniversary of the nation’s independence. He is to speak beneath the towering granite images of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. Weather interfered in the pre-program, with rain and hail forcing visitors to seek shelter in a cafeteria on the grounds.
Would Trump like to be the fifth face on the mountaintop? Back in his first term, then-Rep. Kristi Noem of South Dakota said he told her his “dream” was to join his celebrated predecessors atop Mount Rushmore.
“I started laughing,” Noem, a Republican who was Trump’s homeland security secretary this term, said in 2018. “He wasn’t laughing, so he was totally serious.”
He had to settle. As South Dakota governor in 2020, Noem gave Trump a 4-foot-high model of Mount Rushmore that included his image.
That year, news outlets reported that Trump White House aides had inquired about adding faces to the monument. Trump denied it, though he said on social media that “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!”
For a face to be added to Mount Rushmore, Congress would have to approve, but the practical reality is that the mountain can’t handle one. It lacks enough rock to sculpt another face.
That was evident early on. The sculpture was built from 1927 to 1941. During construction, lead sculptor Gutzon Borglum wrote that the “stone limitations are so serious, that I doubt if it would be possible to change the composition, which is fixed, in any way to include a fifth head.”
Greeting visitors at the monument before the celebration began, Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said in an interview, “Unfortunately, we actually looked at Ronald Reagan, as well, and the problem is the geologists we’ve talked to tell us there’s simply no good rock on the mountain.”
Hope still lingers. A week after he was sworn in last year, one of his allies, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., introduced a bill calling for Trump’s likeness to be carved on the mountain. The bill went nowhere; it never advanced out of the House Natural Resources Committee.
Luna has since found new ways to celebrate Trump. In October, she nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize, an accolade that has also been on his mind. Her office didn’t reply to a request for comment.
South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden, a Republican, said in a statement Friday, “There’s supposedly not enough room up there to add another face, but if they were able to find some extra space to add someone, I think presidents Trump or Reagan would be good candidates!”
Rounds, though, was noncommittal.
“I think America decides those things,” he said.
A running theme of Trump’s second term is how he’ll be remembered. He has one idea, his detractors have another, and the courts have emerged as the referee. A Kennedy Center board populated by Trump loyalists added his name to the building, but a federal judge ordered it struck off.
The Trump administration chiseled his name onto the U.S. Institute of Peace Building in Washington. That one remains.
One of Trump’s supporters, who won a special lottery to attend the Independence Day event at Mount Rushmore, said Trump has earned a place on the mountaintop.
Wearing a MAGA hat as he sat in the cafeteria at the site, Mike Pack, 74, of Oregon, said: “He’s the greatest president we’ve had in my lifetime. I like that he’s trying to get everybody together and unite everybody.”
A pair of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln impersonators strolling the grounds considered whether they should share company above with Trump. In appropriate costume, each said he’d like to see the monument preserved intact.
“I think they’ve captured the necessary elements, and any changes might create more trouble than it’s worth,” Lincoln said in an interview.
“And I wholeheartedly concur with my able co-agitator across time, Mr. Lincoln,” said Washington. “I think things as they stand are just fine.”
