Trump to replace Lincoln on Mt. Rushmore

Problem: There isn't room to ADD Trump. So someone must be replaced.

Maybe Washington. Maybe Lincoln.

      "I think I've done more for the Black community than any other president, and let's take a pass on Abraham Lincoln, although he did some good, although it's always questionable. You know, in other words, the end result."

       Donald Trump, interview with Fox News's Harris Faulkner

Trump replaces Washington

Mount Rushmore is back in the news. Donald Trump's decision to give his Republican nomination speech either at the White House or at the battlefield site of Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" re-stimulated talk of Donald Trump being added to Mt. Rushmore. The Snopes internet rumor debunking website published today that the story of Trump angling to be added to Mount Rushmore is "True."  Click: Trump on Mt. Rushmore

Trump on Rushmore is classic Trump; his signature trademark for self branding is putting his name boldly atop monuments, usually buildings. He also brands himself with items that are, he says, singularly the greatest, most huge, best. The best golf courses. The best real estate training. He sold, he said, the "world's greatest steaks." 

Mt. Rushmore is an iconic celebration of presidents. It is the big one, in a whole greater league than monuments on the Mall, or a popular painting in the National Portrait Gallery, Obama's current physical legacy. The Gettysburg site of Lincoln's speech rededicating the purpose and meaning of the Civil War, is equally iconic. Schoolchildren memorize the speech. Everyone has heard of Gettysburg. What other presidential speech is known by its location, not its content? So where better for Trump to give a partisan nomination speech?

Trump brought up having his face on Mt. Rushmore with the South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, back when she was a member of the U.S. House. "Did you know it's my dream to be on Mount Rushmore," she reported him saying. She said she laughed at the prospect before realizing Trump was serious.

Impossible. No room to the left.

Trump raised the issue again speaking at a political rally in Youngstown, Ohio. 

     "I'd ask whether on not you think I will someday be on Mount Rushmore. But here's the problem. If I did it, joking, totally joking, having fun, the fake news media will say, 'He believes he should be on Mount Rushmore.' So I won't say it, OK?"

He said it by saying he won't say it.

When he spoke at the Independence Day celebration this July Governor Noem presented him with a 4 foot model of the improved Mount Rushmore, with his face on it. Shortly after, a White House aide sent this photograph to the Trump-friendly NY Post, which published it.

Over this weekend Trump again teased with the idea:

     "This is Fake news by the failing @nytimes & bad ratings @CNN. Never suggested it although, based on all the many things accomplished during the first 3 1/2 years, perhaps more than any other Presidency, sounds like a good idea to me!"

Is this actually real?  Is Donald Trump seriously suggesting/promoting this "good idea"?

Posing in South Dakota

Trial balloon. Yes, in the way that ideas get floated in DC, the classic deniable tease. An idea is posited as a suggestion of someone else, or by oneself as a maybe-joke, maybe-serious, not actually requested but put out there for discussion. Being on Mt. Rushmore is deserved, sure, he said, but Trump isn't actually requesting it himself, no, that would be fake news. 

The idea will have some traction. Trump is understood as transformational and superlative by some people in his base. Supporters send me emails suggesting that God intervened to put Trump here to give God and Jesus the boost they sorely needed. 

The problem for Trump is that the Trump on Mt. Rushmore meme accentuates the narcissism and megalomania meme. Trump always risks looking ridiculous, grandiloquent rather than grand, a self promoter. He is understood to be a master salesman who will tell you want you want to hear and make you believe it, because he believes in himself most of all. That is Trump's brand. Of course he wants to be on Mount Rushmore. That actually isn't all bad. The best incentive for Trump to do a good job as president--a constitutional leader rather than a distracted failure-- is the hope and prospect that he might someday enjoy enormous respect and his face might someday appear there.

Again, impossible. No room.

Trump is making a mistake talking about it, though. It is a bridge too far. He understood the American voter's respect for monuments, and he benefited from images of destruction of monuments to familiar and traditional heroes. There is a lot of emotional inertia at work, which is why even statues to Confederate generals have a constituency, although a diminishing one. A majority of voters don't want statues to American heroes changed. Monuments, once erected, become semi sacred. Defacement is sacrilege.

That is Trump's Mount Rushmore problem. He would be an interloper, a vandal. The talk of adding Trump comes across as defacement. 



[post updated to correct Harris Faulkner's first name.]