If this isn’t an image to give you nightmares, I don’t know what is. Doug Burgum, who is Secretary of the Interior and thereby in charge of all the national parks and recreation areas in the country, was on Lara Trump’s eponymous show on Fox News. They chatted about what a perfectly swell idea it would be to have Donald Trump’s face carved into Mt. Rushmore. Burgum enthused, “There’s certainly room for it up there.”
And then they went on to talk about the nation’s 250th birthday celebration and how wondrous it would be if the head could be up there by then. Before you contemplate shooting yourself, there’s good news: Engineers say there’s no way to put another head up there. Wheeeee. I feel better already.
The National Park Service says no, there is no secure surface on the mountain. While a large expanse to the right of George Washington seems a likely spot for at least one more president, NPS officials point out that sculptor Gutzon Borglum intended to place Thomas Jefferson there.
But it turned out the area was not stable, so Jefferson was relocated and crunched between Washington and Theodore Roosevelt. The rock next to Washington is simply not available.
Mount Rushmore National Memorial Chief of Interpretation and Education Maureen McGee-Ballinger said it is a frequent question.
“From time to time individuals, groups or organizations make proposals to add the busts of other individuals to Mount Rushmore National Memorial,” McGee-Ballinger said. “Additions are not possible for two reasons.
“First, the rock that surrounds the sculpted faces is not suitable for additional carving. When Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore died in 1941, his son Lincoln Borglum closed down the project and stated that no more carvable rock existed.”
Since 1989 the National Park Service has worked with RESPEC, a rock mechanics engineering firm, to study the structural stability of the sculpture and to install rock block monitoring devices that assure long-term preservation of the sculpture, she said.
“RESPEC supports our long-held belief that no other rock near the sculpted faces is suitable for additional carving,” McGee-Ballinger said. “RESPEC also believes that if additional work were undertaken it is possible that exposing new surfaces could result in creation of potential instabilities in the existing carving.
So the entire thing could collapse if they attempted it. Not that Trump would care. In fact, if he can’t have his face on Mt. Rushmore, why should there be a Mt. Rushmore is his thinking, I would bet my bottom dollar. But this will definitely throw a wet blanket on a lot of MAGA plans.
The long-running MAGA campaign to have President Donald Trump’s visage etched into stone alongside former Presidents Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln has only intensified in the Republican leader’s second term.
Fox News pundits goaded the idea as “epic,” with MAGA Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna introducing a bill to make the idea a reality just days into his second presidency.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, formerly the governor of South Dakota where the monument is located, gifted Trump a bust with his face added to Mount Rushmore in July 2020.
Noem presented Trump with the gift during his speech at a controversial Independence Day celebration at the site, which was picketed by Native American activist groups opposed to the monument’s very existence, having been erected on land sacred to the Sioux tribe.
“It’s a symbol of white supremacy, of structural racism that’s still alive and well in society today,” one activist said about the memorial, reported the Associated Press at the time.
“It’s an injustice to actively steal Indigenous people’s land, then carve the white faces of the conquerors who committed genocide,” they added.
And the fact that the monument has been interpreted in these terms is grist for the MAGA mill. If they can worship their charismatic cult leader and own the libs at the same time, it just doesn’t get any better than that.
Unfortunately, geology is destiny and that’s that. If you can’t physically put another head up there, then Trump is going to have to live with that reality. Sorry, Donald. You were born in the wrong era. Although if you had run for president in a pre-television world, you would have been laughed out of the room at the first primary debate. Maybe the old days were better.
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Besides…since Musk is the man behind the throne…he’d want his mug there too. The Indian activist was entirely correct…another lie, which our culture has maintained over 200 years, is we had a right to do what we did to the Native tribes. We didn’t. We were the invaders. When you create a country by genocide, land grabbing, and slavery, and then lie about it, pretending we were the GOOD guys…well…maybe karma is finally asking the bill to be paid. By the way maggots…just carving a lie into stone doesn’t change a thing…it’s still a lie.
I must admit to not really minding if Trump is placed on Mt Rushmore.
Provided he was staked down properly and it could be proved he wouldn’t poison the vultures.
Are you suggesting something along the lines of what Zeus did to Prometheus in the TV series called Kaos? Yeah, I could get behind that.
What blasphemy it would be to have that traitor’s visage carved into any mountain. Statues are equally offensive!