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Even before Donald Trump became president, he longed to have his face carved into Mount Rushmore. Now, he might get that chance. On Jan. 28, Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna introduced legislation directing the secretary of the Interior to “arrange” for the carving of Trump on Mount Rushmore and add his portrait to those of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. The idea has received support from Republican members of Congress, conservative media, and Elon Musk, who even offered to help chisel Trump’s visage into the granite.
It is easy to understand why Trump and the broader MAGA movement have become fixated on Mount Rushmore, favoring the large sculpture in the Black Hills of South Dakota over other iconic American monuments like the Statue of Liberty or Lincoln Memorial. Ever since Donald Trump spoke at Rushmore on July 3, 2020, holding a highly unusual political rally at a nonpartisan national park, the memorial and the 60-foot faces that compose it have seemed, to many, allied with Trump’s version of American history and identity—one that champions the idea of America’s manifest destiny and the righteousness of our past and founding ideals.
This framing is reflective of how the memorial’s sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, originally conceived of his work of art. In August 1924, South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson asked Borglum whether he would be interested in carving a “heroic” sculpture in the Black Hills. Borglum was then working on the mammoth Confederate Memorial at Stone Mountain—he was enmeshed politically, financially, and personally with the Ku Klux Klan—and Robinson reached out because of Borglum’s experience carving portraits into granite.
As American commodities prices cratered following World War I, Robinson sought ways to diversify South Dakota’s rural economy. He struck on an idea to carve representations of the American West into the granite pinnacles of the Central Black Hills: The Lakota leader Red Cloud, Lewis and Clark, George Armstrong Custer. He envisioned works of art that would attract car tourists and bring money to a depressed state, but when he invited Borglum to join as sculptor, the project’s tenor shifted.
Borglum first saw Rushmore a year after receiving Robinson’s letter. In August 1925, in search of a location for his sculpture, Borglum was being guided on horseback through the Black Hills when he was shown a gnarled, knobby shelf of granite almost 2 billion years old. Native communities called the mountain Igmu Tanka Paha, Cougar Mountain, and Tunkasila Sakpe Paha, the Six Grandfathers. But when Borglum first saw the mountain, it had been renamed after New York City lawyer Charles Rushmore, who had been representing tin-mine investors when he rode around the mountain in 1885 and provided its eponym.
Borglum dismounted from his horse, climbed up the mountain face in an ascot, golf pants, and cowboy hat, and began to transform Rushmore into the political monument we know today. “A group of Empire makers,” he wrote in his journal that night. “Jefferson = Lincoln = Roosevelt.” George Washington, though omitted from this equation, had always been present in Borglum’s vision of a sculpture that would represent the manifest destiny that had shaped the United States. Borglum believed the American political system was the apotheosis of human civilization, and he wanted his sculpture to stand alongside the Parthenon and pyramids as testaments to grand civilizations and cultures.
It is this vision of American history and identity that Trump’s second administration has championed in its early weeks. Trump has advocated for expansionist American policies both abroad and in outer space, renamed nature to fit his nationalist vision, and promoted a distinctive view of American history, culture, and identity. In many ways, the idea of including Trump among this group makes a certain kind of historical sense. It certainly reflects the memorial’s thorny origins as a monument to “Empire makers.”
But as I’ve learned while researching my upcoming history of the memorial, Mount Rushmore has come to mean something different in the 100 years since Gutzon Borglum’s hike. Placing Trump on Mount Rushmore would add even more conflict to the memorial’s already contentious existence, would reduce its audience, and would narrow our historical narratives.
The name “Black Hills” derives from the Lakota term Paha Sapa or He Sapa, Black Hills or Black Ridge, descriptions that distill the beauty of the ponderosa pine as they appear from a distance: a lush, black oasis that rises above the plains. The name also underscores the historical conflict of who owns the land Mount Rushmore sits on. In 1868, after the two-year Red Cloud’s War, a beleaguered United States signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie. The treaty gave the lands of today’s western South Dakota to the Lakota Nation, an area that included the Black Hills, which many Native American tribes relied on for food, shelter, and medicine, and that are still sacred and holy today—the home of ceremonies, myths, and origin stories.
Traces of gold were found in the hills in 1874, however, and after Custer’s 7th Cavalry was routed at the Battle of Little Bighorn in June 1876, an enraged United States forced the handover of the Black Hills and the annulment of the 1868 treaty. It was an action that has been described by American federal courts as “a ripe and rank case of dishonest dealing,” and many in the Lakota Nation and broader Native American community see Mount Rushmore as a reminder of this action and the damage wrought by Europeans and Americans as we moved west in pursuit of the manifest destiny that Trump and his movement idealize.
That Mount Rushmore exists on stolen, sacred land is well documented. And though South Dakota and the memorial have grappled with this historical complexity—some would say not enough—what is at stake both at Mount Rushmore and in the discussion over whether to include Trump is historical narrative, historical memory, and historical truth. They are debates that reflect our contemporary moment, when the narratives of our past inform the policies of our present, when national memories shape American identity, and when simple historical truths—such as that the Capitol was attacked on Jan. 6, 2021, by a Trump-inspired mob, or that Russia invaded Ukraine—are contested.
Historical memory is at the heart of Mount Rushmore. Few know that instead of commemorating four important presidents or embodying its moniker as the “Shrine of Democracy,” Mount Rushmore National Memorial was built to commemorate the first 150 years of the United States. This emphasis on American history is why placing Trump on Mount Rushmore would be so troublesome. Trump tells a national history rife with errors, a sanitized story that omits the complexity—alternately ugly and hopeful, bitter and beneficent, full of violence and ingenuity—that makes the history of the United States so compelling and remarkable. The best memorials and monuments reflect these complicated histories, and though they are often physically staid and immutable, the meanings of monuments evolve.
Rushmore embodies this evolution. When Borglum orchestrated the first dedication of Mount Rushmore in 1925, the emphasis was on “Empire,” on manifest destiny. By the time construction halted on Halloween, 1941, five weeks before the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, Rushmore had shifted to being the “Shrine of Democracy.” When we emerged victorious following World War II, Rushmore became synonymous with freedom. As we grew to understand the complicated relationship many Native communities have with the mountain of Rushmore, the memorial evolved to include the rich history and culture of the more than 20 tribes that have historic ties with the Black Hills. Today, in large part because of his speech in 2020, Rushmore has come to reflect Trump and the MAGA movement. Conservatives like Rep. Luna want to capitalize on this latest shift of meaning to alter Rushmore to fit this moment.
Yet through all these changes of meaning, the sculpture itself has been unchanged. This is in part due to geology, as the National Park Service has said no room on the mountain exists for another face. But beyond this fact—facts don’t faze Trump—I like to also think it is due to our understanding of historical evolution. How we view our country’s history in 2025 will not reflect how we view it 10, 20, or 100 years from now. As it is, Rushmore struggles to be a memorial for all Americans, and this struggle is part of its power, part of its complexity. If Trump were to be carved next to Lincoln, the potential Rushmore holds to interrogate our dominant national narratives would be squandered, its audience diminished by a man and movement that are of a moment. Carving Trump onto Mount Rushmore would diminish that complexity and cause the memorial to lose resonance for many Americans. But since Trump and his supporters have consistently shown little regard for these concerns, we may yet see Trump’s portrait in the Black Hills.
